you can't say pharoah than that really

Luke Davis on Pharaoah Sanders and his recent concert in London:

"The apex of modernism is jazz. More so than cubism, more so than Pound and Eliot and more so even than that terrifying and impossible cathedral Joyce constructed.

"To see Pharaoh Sanders walk on stage the sense of occasion becomes obvious. This is a peer of John Coltrane and Sun Ra. This is one of the 20th century’s very greatest artists. A man who has made my life more numinous. This is one of the last of the earth’s titans, and we’re sharing a room with him.
For me these are the saints. My saints, very simply, are those artists who lived in selfless devotion to their muse. Through thick and thin. To be an instrument for that voice. You get a sense of this very strongly with the Arkestra and the dignity and grace and beauty and most of all the meaningfulness of a life lived under those self-imposed conditions, by that chivalric code, is made manifest when you share a room with them. The requirements for being an artist are simple and straightforward. You are to make yourself into a receiver. You have to be attuned. You have to be in tune. Or the message won’t get through. It can’t. You’ve jammed the signal. With your own noise. There is a science of attunement and musicians hold the key to it. Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy. The music plays you. You are the resonating chamber. I’ve heard rhythms that made me cough up phlegm from 20 years ago.

"Seeing the Art Ensemble of Chicago the same, and now Pharaoh Sanders, who means the most to me personally, the same. It meant a lot to me to be an anonymous point in a huge auditorium giving Pharoah Sanders a standing ovation. To be able to personally say thank you. Art Ensemble played better music but they deserved a standing ovation in an auditorium. It lacked the sense of occasion. And the giving of thanks. The big crowds. The wild applause. Among all my favourite musicians only Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield have that same level of deeply human beauty, that way of testifying to the beauty and goodness and grace of people. That faith in people that transcends to the religious. Sanders is within his body and rooted to the earth in a way Coltrane and Davis weren’t. Their muses were not of this world but with Pharaoh it’s always viscerally embodied sound and it’s that extraordinary humanity that makes him an incomparably greater and more profound artist than, Ezra Pound, for example. They are human noises. The most sublime noises a human can make for sure, achingly impossibly beautiful noises, profound, wise noises, but always completely human."