Day 15: Pharoah Sanders - Karma

Album cover courtesy of Impulse! Records

It was horribly busy at work today and I’d had a late breakfast, so I decided to give my nervous system a break by skipping lunch and spending my lunch break doing some light yoga and stretching instead. As my accompaniment, I chose something that’s been on my list for a while: Karma by Pharoah Sanders.

As a casual dabbler in spirituality, and to a lesser extent also jazz, it’s a bit baffling that I’ve never actually listened to spiritual jazz. As the old saying goes, better late than pregnant. Karma, first released in 1969, is the third full-length recording fronted by the American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. Along with John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane, he was at the forefront of the spiritual jazz movement and played on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme — the record is apparently a seminal work of the genre, and it’s now going straight to the top of my things to listen to soon.

I listened to the first 20 minutes of Karma during my little lunchtime yoga session, then listened to the whole thing again after work. I was sold on Karma pretty much at the first second. I was stone cold sober both times but let me tell you, I felt like I was floating. The 32-minute “The Creator Has a Master Plan” was like an auditory car wash, except I was not the passenger, I was the car. At one stage, there was what I can only describe as yodelling in ecstasy, and even that worked – I didn’t think I’d ever be very into hearing impassioned yodelling, but you learn something new every day.

So it turns out I very much like spiritual jazz, or at the very least Pharoah Sanders. This is something I’ll be deep-diving into in the near future. What am I saving my perfect scores for, if not this? I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did, but I have had An Experience. My first 10/10 is very happily doled out to Karma. Looks like I’ll be delving into anything released by Impulse! in the 60s.