Search - Babatunde Lea :: Umbo Weti: Tribute to Leon Thomas (Dig)

This ultra-fiery live double-disc recording of The Babatunde Lea Quintet lifts the spirit of avant-garde jazz vocal legend Leon Thomas to the creative forefront of today's jazz scene! * Babatunde Lea's quintet fearlessly, flawlessly follows its creative muse on a soaring Thomas-inspired journey. From explosive blues numbers to African spiritual vocalizations, the quintet is driven by Lea's hypnotic percussive grooves. If "the creator has a master plan" for jazz, this may well be it!
* Umbo Weti is the first ever recorded tribute to Leon Thomas who, in his brief career as a pioneer of the 1960s spiritual jazz movement, influenced an entire genre through innovations with musical giants such as Ornette Coleman, Roland Kirk, Archie Schepp, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, Pharaoh Sanders, Louis Armstrong, and Carlos Santana.
* Featured tracks on include "The Creator Has a Master Plan" and "Colors," co-written by Thomas with Pharaoh Sanders for their groundbreaking 1976 Karma release on the Impulse label. The 32-minute masterpiece put Thomas on the map, and put avant-garde jazz on mainstream FM radio.
* Liner notes by veteran rock journalist Gary Graff provide insight to Thomas' career and how it intersects with Lea's contemporary expression of "spiritual jazz." "Babatunde Lea is a fiery example of everything that's not dead about jazz." -- SF Weekly "Not since Mungus and Blakey has music bristled with a sense of message like this." -- DownBeat