Graham Reid | | 3 min read
Saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Muriel Grossman is a problem at this point in the 21st century when the culture of complaint is peaking, grievances real or imagined are given oxygen and the merest suggestion of a slight is taken as a declaration of war.
Pity poor Muriel then, all she wants to make is spiritual jazz, as on her 2023 album Devotion.
And right there some doubtless see a problem: here is a white woman entering the field which has previously been the domain of black artists like John Coltrane, Sun Ra and dozens on the axis of Seventies free jazz.
Some might go down that winding road where accusations of cultural appropriation emerge from the bushes.
Equally however, others would argue that Grossman is challenging the black patriarchy and cite Alice Coltrane as a predecessor.
She isn't, but Alice Coltrane is an interesting case: her intensely spiritual journey, especially after her husband John died, has been championed recently and many draw attention to how she was overshadowed by her husband.
The issuing of her albums in recent years comes with added cachet: many of them were obscure (always a plus for collectors) or never readily available (even better).
Those who previously took little interest in Alice Coltrane and even jazz can now fully embrace her for many reasons, and some might have to do with the music.
Grossman comes into the discussion from an even more problematic direction: she's not even American, yet here she is immersing herself in a black American idiom, and specifically that black spiritual jazz.
Those who are quick to take umbrage or be outraged on the part of others have a lot to work with when it comes to 53-year old Muriel Grossman who was born in Paris, raised in Austria and didn't play saxophone until she was 21.
She was largely self-taught (although did have some formal studies) and she lives in party paradise of Ibiza.
Hardly an ashram in monastic California.
Grossman discovered the music of John Coltrane and – while still playing R'n'B, funk and so on -- repositioned her music to follow his path, but in her own way.
Her 2018 album Golden Rule – which included the 14 minute-plus Traneing In – saw her embrace the idea of music as a spiritual quest.
On soprano and tenor, she also brought something of her own to the journey: a sense of groove, drone (she also plays tamboura) and rolling boil from bass, drums and organ which, on subsequent albums, added an often joyful psychedelic aspect.
If Grossman doesn't go as deep or out there as Coltrane did after A Love Supreme, she certainly takes the listener on a trip into distant realms where Middle Eastern and Indian sounds are evident alongside the touchstones of Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy and others.
Her Devotion album – her debut on Jack White's Third Man label and first on a US label – is an expansive double. The titles of the pieces (with her band of guitar, Hammond B3 and drums plus her own artillery of saxes, flute, bass, kalimba, tamboura, harmonium and percussion) include Absolute Truth, Calm, Care, the title track and Mother of All.
Those names alone signal the serious spiritualism she aims for.
However, Grossman uses that ethos for something different: some reviewers have noted that Grossman and her band – Abel Boquera (Hammond B3) guitarist Radomir Milojkovic and drummer Uros Stamenkovic – sound like they having fun. Which, in some circles especially in the realm of spiritual jazz, is anathema.
But equally that is exactly what is so enticing about Devotion: the players bring influences from blues, pop, funk, Fela Anikulapo Kuti's Afrobeat and slightlydelic R'n'B as much as the spiritual seekers in jazz.
It is very hard to not get swept along in this very approachable music, to get down with the grooveliciously soulful playing of Boquera on Calm, the fall into the drifting Indo-psychedelic mood of Knowledge And Wisdom courtesy of the bluesy guitar and airy flute, the swing of All Heart . . .
Critics smart enough to know that John Coltrane et al are just starting points for Grossman (who has also recorded an album For Ornette which hasn't been released) take Devotion as they find it.
And Elsewhere finds it joyful, gently unpredictable within the spiritual jazz ethic, swinging, funky . . .
Needless to say while we wouldn't put it in the same zone as A Love Supreme and all those albums which define spiritual jazz, we don't have a problem with the music by this European white woman who lives in Ibiza.
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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.
It can be ordered on double vinyl through Southbound Records, Auckland here
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