AZANYAH

Azanyah since 1984 was a septet under the co-leadership of Mamaniji Azanyah and Immanuel Zechariah. The band has toured in South-Eastern United States in several venues and jazz festivals. The style is similar to that of earlier spiritual jazz. They clearly had a gospel-like message referring to Jesus with a few small narrative intro’s with simultaneous male/female voices and loud echo expressed as if loudly preaching, then to improvise moodily and freely while singing (with a convincing and powerful, soulful jazz female voice). The piano improvisations can be jazz-like, the double bass at times repetitive to allow more free improvisations on top with the moody saxophone or flute ; there’s also lots of conga percussion. Here and there acoustic rhythm guitar is added too. Like most spiritual jazz you can feel the “black” (=pan-African) energy or nature of its genre too. From http://www.psychemusic.org