Mtume Umoja Ensemble – Invocation / Baba Hengates
Mtume Umoja Ensemble – Utama
Mtume Umoja Ensemble – Sifa (The Prayer) / Circe of Creation (Introduction of Musicians)
“The truth is that which needs to be told…” – Mtume – “Invocation”
I first encountered this record while hosting a jazz show, “Stompin’ Grounds” on WORT in Madison, WI. That station had one of the best jazz collections I’ve ever seen, included 3/4’s of the entire Strata East catalog. This record is probably the most sought after one from that label and for good reason. It’s a wild, intense, maddening avant-garde freakout made all the cooler because of the overt black nationalist revolutionary rhetoric that courses throughout the entire record.
I found my copy, which as you can see from the picture above has quite a bit of character, at Oakland’s House of Soul books and records. Back when I got this record, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, it was trapped underneath extra dusty stacks of albums and 45s. The dude who worked there didn’t even know if he could sell it to me and had to actually call the owner twice to make sure it was okay to give up. Even in it’s rather ragged condition, you can understand why the owner wasn’t completely willing to part with it. I’ve listened to some wild avant-garde records and I’ve heard quite a few products of black liberation ideology from the 1960s/70s, but rarely does it come together with quite the punch of this ensemble.
The album begins with a 4 minute spoken “invocation” by Mtume where he lays out his, and the group’s, philosophy for creating music that is artistically meaningful and expressly designed for the revolutionary purpose of consciousness raising, some of those ideals are represented inside the record in the form of these “Seven Principles”
Immediately after Mtume breaks it all down, things get started off with “Baba Hengates,” quite possibly the single craziest (and in all seriousness I mean that in the best possible way) 18 minutes of music I’ve ever heard. The sounds from the band, which features Gary Bartz, Carlos Garnett, Stanley Cowell, Billy Hart and Leroy Jenkins, would be one thing…the voices, led by Andy Bey and Joe Lee Wilson would be another, but then there are these kids, kids I say, spouting black nationalist “truths” that just blow you right out of your seat.
I often wonder what happened to these kids, if the experience of growing up within this “circle of creation,” as the musicians are called on this record, made an indeliable mark on their lives or if as the 70s progressed into the 80s they moved away from these revolutionary ideals to supposedly more “pragmatic” and “realistic” lives. They aren’t listed on the liner notes, so a more careful archeology will have to dig up who they were and the lives they ultimately led. I’m hopeful that will one day happen, because this record could use a deluxe reissue and proper resequencing of the live material. In addition to “Baba Hengates” I’ve also included my favorite other tracks, the truly sublime “Utama” and the wild and deep “Sifa (The Prayer)” which shares quite a bit, thematically at least, with the Gary Bartz NTU Troop tune “Sifa Zote.”
This record don’t come cheap on the open market, but it’s a monster and something that all fans of this time period should own. I can’t recommend it highly enough and I hope you enjoy this capsule of might seem more like a movie to those who feel they live “post-racial” lives, instead of it being a moment in the not so distant past when it seemed the “revolution” was only a day away.
Cheers,
Michael
p.s. Here’s an additional post on this record that you should also check out.