5. John ColtraneKulu Sé Mama

A great album. Kulu Sé Mama is Coltrane experimenting with bata drums and Afro-Cuban singing. It’s an area that’s weirdly not really talked about both in terms of Coltrane and the potential of jazz.  This album and what it means in the context of 1960-whatever, ’67 I think, is disregarded when people discuss recent jazz crazes and how jazz is being influenced in different ways. Coltrane took such a drastic approach when connecting the strong spiritual function of the music he was experimenting with, and so completely took it outside of the American borders. He did this in a way that seeks to heighten these genres, that’s really inspiring to me.