Pharoah Sanders – Wisdom Through Music (1972)

1.High Life (Sanders) – 4:20			play
2.Love Is Everywhere (Sanders) – 5:23
3.Wisdom Through Music (Sanders) – 5:40
4.Golden Lamp (Bonner) – 4:40
5.Selflessness (Sanders) – 10:55

Musicians:
    Pharoah Sanders – Flute, Sax (Soprano), Sax (Tenor)
    James Branch – Flute
    Joe Bonner – Piano
    Cecil McBee – Bass
    Norman Connors – Drums
    Babadal Roy – Percussion
    Lawrence Killian – Percussion
    James Mtume – Percussion

Living up to the promise of its title, Pharoah Sanders‘ Wisdom Through Music delivers just that. Although he made a name for himself as a fiercely expressionistic, almost anarchic tenor saxophonist in John Coltrane’s later bands, the music on this album is guided by gentler passions. More reflective of Pharoah’s Eastern-looking musical collaborations with Coltrane’s widow, Alice, Wisdom Through Music manages to soothe the soul without sacrificing any of the intensity that defined his earlier work as Trane’s apprentice. Much like his previous Impulse! LP, Black Unity, this 1972 offering finds Sanders and his group weaving together cosmic musical mood collages in front of which the occasional solo peaks out. What makes this record so unique is the strong emphasis on song over solo.

Pharoah sings out soulfully as members of the band join their voices together in an all male gospel chorus, creating an African-flavored call and response dynamic that lends weight to the album’s two message-songs, “Love Is Everywhere” and “Selflessness.” Throughout the record, chanting voices float over the music, calling to the spirits. The music shimmers ecstatically with the dancing bass lines of Cecil McBee, the Lonnie Liston Smith inspired piano stylings of Joe Bonner, the driving intensity of drummer Norman Connors, and the wall of African and Indian tribal rhythms provided by percussionists Mtume, Lawrence Killian and Babadal Roy. “High Life (Adaptation of Nigerian High Life)” opens the record with exuberant shouts of joy from Pharoah and the band. The song pushes strongly forward with rhythmic hints of the Carribean mixed in with a traditional African High Life celebration. Pharoah’s tenor belts out with barely contained enthusiasm, giving way to a densely percussive drum break in the middle of the song.

The title track, “Wisdom Through Music,” harks back to Pharoah’s work on Alice Coltrane’s Indo-Jazz masterpiece, Journey In Satchidinanda. “Golden Lamp” is as sensuously layered and entrancing as such Pharoah classics as “The Creator Has a Master Plan” or “Thembi.” The album closes with the generous beauty of “Selflessness,” an 11-minute epic which finds Pharoah finally letting loose, his tenor screaming out passionately until the record spins to its end. This album sounds so good, it’s no wonder that it remains out of print (as the saying goes, “Anything that feels this good MUST be illegal”).

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