Soul of a nation 2 : Jazz is the teacher, funk is the preacher

"Eighteen months ago, London's Tate Modern staged Soul Of A Nation, an exhibition that brilliantly corralled undersung American visual artist from the '60s and '70s. To complement it, the Soul Jazz label curated a searing comp of congruent jazz and funk. Now, with the show running at the Brooklyn Museum, comes a very welcome second volume. Key players recur from the first, and Soul Jazz pull their usual trick of juxtaposing canonical jams (...) with deeper crate digs like the fervid "Damballa" by The Pharaohs, Chicago radical jazzers who would eventually provide Earth, Wind & Fire with their horn section. The whole thing, though, swings with relentless urgency: political, spiritual, life-affirming".