SPOOKY MEDITATION

Juilliard trained but restless, clarinetist Tony Scott left New York at the end of the 1950s to travel and absorb musical influences from around the world. After visiting Japan he released Music For Zen Meditation And Other Joys (1965). This album of gentle, spacious music features Shinichi Yuize playing koto and Hozan Yamamoto on shakuhachi. The peacefulness of the music is reflected in the titles: “The murmuring sound of the mountain stream”, “To drift like clouds”.

Time in India led to another reflective album, Music For Yoga Meditation And Other Joys (1968). Tony Scott is considered a pioneer of New Age and World music.

In 1972 the third part in his “meditation” trilogy was released. It is entitled Music For Voodoo Meditation and is a rather different kettle of bones.

Invitation to Chango:
- Calling the Gods
- The Curse


Calling the victim's spirit
Blood sacrifice
The effigy
The victim's spirit returns
Death ritual

This fabulous slab of rhythmic voodoo-jazz is as peaceful as a midnight ritual in the Haitian jungle.

Percussion opens proceedings, joined by cascading marimba and Scott’s pensive clarinet. They dance, alone yet intertwined; the music is, at first, wistful rather than incantatory. Gods are being invited, welcomed, not commanded. The melody instruments take a break, ceding the ground to gourds and other pattering instruments… “The Curse” weaves a rainstorm of shaking, tapping, and hitting while the clarinet casts a wispy spell.

The suite making up the second part of Music For Voodoo Meditation follows the same music template as part one. There is more tuned percussion (steel drums, I believe) and some of the conga work sounds like drumsticks are being deployed. There is a stronger rhythmic pulse, perhaps reflecting the unpleasant sounding rituals indicated by the track titles. Listening to this music, it is almost impossible not to visualise the climactic scenes of Live And Let Die. Here, the more insistent percussion certainly ups the tension while Scott and his clarinet stand further back.

The final section, “Death ritual” presumably, gathers the complete tribe of percussionists for a final ecstatic dance; congas, marimba, shakers, that twisty thing on a stick™, cow bell. Again, the clarinet has retreated to observer status as if shy of the primitive power of this rhythmic storm.

It’s an exhilarating thirty-four minutes.

™ My young research assistant tells me it’s a cabasa.

No reviews of this album could be located, nor any information on musicians other than the leader.

Apart from a French re-issue in 1976, the vinyl has all but disappeared. It has never been released on CD and is not on Spotify, though the complete LP is on youtube. I suspect malign forces are at work.