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Baker's Dozen

Delving Into Consciousness: Hamid Drake's Favourite Music
Sean Kitching , September 4th, 2019 09:47

Percussionist Hamid Drake guides Sean Kitching through 13 favourite albums of cosmic enlightenment courtesy of Alice and John Coltrane, Don Cherry, Ravi Shankar, Jimi Hendrix and much more. Photo by Ludmilla Faccenda

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John & Alice Coltrane - Cosmic Music
If you want just one more that’s really important to me, then I would have to say Coltrane’s Cosmic Music. But that’s not really being fair either because when I think about my younger history, things that have had such an influence on me, that are still having an influence on me now, I have to go back groups like Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul, featuring a group called the Bar-Kays. It’s like super funk but with a message. The recordings of Sly and the Family Stone. Karma, Jewels of Thought and Black Unity, all by Pharoah Sanders, had a huge impact on me. Or Yusef Lateef’s Live At Pep’s, with James Black on drums, which was one of the first records I ever had that I listened to, that had jazz musicians other than like Dave Brubeck, playing in odd metres.