Hikima: Creativity by Yusef Lateef

In the early 1980s, famed jazz saxophonist and musical luminary Yusef Lateef traveled to Nigeria as a Senior Research Fellow to study, write, and teach at the Centre For Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University. He cut this record with students and local musicians while there; it only got a small local press, and remained virtually unknown by jazz fans and collectors for over 30 years. On Hikima, Lateef leads a nonet of African musicians in seven compositions that fuse his deep blues and jazz roots with native Nigerian instruments, drums and chants. The sounds stretch from meditative and melancholic to urgent and unrelenting. A singular recording impossible to classify or box in.

"Lateef’s Hikima is immediately wayward, frenetic, radical, the kind of highlife you want to march to." - Yinka Elujoba