My spiritual guide is now free to roam. What a life. RIP Pharoah Sanders. When I was 23 - in 1995, and I had just started assisting live sound at the Knitting Factory, he was playing 2 sets a night for 5 nights. I experienced every set, some while working and some just in the audience. I have never been the same. On the opening night, after they soundchecked, everyone left, except me, and Pharoah. Pharoah went to the back to practice. He didn't know anyone else was around. I sat around the corner slumped in a hallway, and listened to him play, alone, for probably 45 minutes. It was like he told me everything I needed to know about life in that moment. I sat and smiled and cried and smiled and went places in my mind and came back... no one there... just Pharoah playing to the gods while I listened. My life was so drastically altered and opened because of Pharoah Sanders. Go find him now. He is still out there, and you can listen too, like I did. If you watch and listen to this with full attention from beginning to end, you will be elevated to a new consciousness too.
My GF passed away recently, 29 years young. This allows the emotions to just pour out of me. It’s not even sadness. Just peace and acceptance. Thank you Sir, RIH
That is simply you being able to now connect with your higher self, which is outside of all time. You’re able to perceive the melancholia that the higher self experiences or rather, you experience it as a form of déjà vu when in actuality, it is your higher self perceiving that Dimension, if that makes any sense 😂
Me and some friends had the privilege to see Pharaoh Sanders play in August 2022 at We Out Here festival, which would go on to be his final live performance. They opened with this song and while the man himself was fashionably late and did seem quite frail (he needed his bandmates to help him in/out of his chair), you wouldn't believe the power in his lungs at 81 and his enduring ability to draw energy through his music and breathe it out as pure emotion to the crowd. About 5000 people huddled on a hill to watch a man who has been a leading figure in Jazz and an active contributor to modern music for nearly 70 years display his virtuosic mastery one final time. He managed to create such an incredible feeling of unity amongst the crowd - looking around and seeing people you've never met before brought to the same tears as yourself, holding loved ones and stunned into humbled silence - from the moment they began playing there was an immediate impression on the crowd that we were witnessing something profound and much larger than all of us. He was escorted on and off stage by his son the incredibly talented Tomoki Sanders, who's words on his death will do better than mine: "To some, they lost Pharaoh Sanders, one of the greatest black creatives in black American music... To some, they lost a friend, who had a big heart, and a beautiful and humble spirit... To some, they lost Ferrell Lee Sanders, a brother, a cousin, a husband, a father, an uncle, a grandfather To me, I lost a father, the best dad in the entire universe. I’ve been listening to his music, or music that sampled his music, relentlessly... and I am feeling better that, his sound and his music makes me feel that he’s still alive... As he says (after the festival), "the world needs more music! ..." and he’s absolutely right. The world needs more music" RIP Pharaoh Sanders 1940 - 2022
I just wanted to say: I get the exact same sense - that he lives on. I feel this with Fela Kuti also. Both created streams of meaning that hint at eternity, through their music. They journeyed and took us with them, and the sound says emphatically that the journey, the permutations, do not end.
i wish at a certain time of day everyday this played thru loudspeakers througought all cities througoght the world. then everybody go back to work. calm and peaceful.
Being in 1 city, how do you know this records 5 was played everywhere? This record resonates with the depths of my soul yet I find it hard to contemplate this record was played for the masses. My parents nor grandparents never played Pharaoh but I feel him on another level.. my 2¢
One day if I ever become wealthy enough to make it a reality, I think it'd be nice to start a sustainable farm project utilising the vast arid land in my state of Australia for a solar panel farm to power a hydroponic open air farm. Then as the sun set on this arid-desert land every evening, over a vast array of speakers pointed into the distant nowhere over these fields; this would play.
I am a student at Cornell University and three times a day the bell tower plays 15 minute chimes concerts that can be heard across campus. Sadly most days are pop songs that don't sound good on chimes. The large bells would be the perfect medium for music in the vein of Pharoah and other ambient work
Whenever I have a difficult time in life this is one of the videos I come back to. Thank you for posting and thank you Pharoah for being the embodiment of artistic truth.
This is the greatest jazz recording of all time. It’s so different to the record. I wonder if it survives anywhere other than here? And if not, how can we preserve it? I worry about it.
you don't understand, i could actually feel the emotions conveyed through those sullen melodies. i feel a deep sense of profound sadness, sometimes a peace that trancends my own comprehension of being, as such sensations are rarely ever evoked so gracefully as this piece. now i feel both hopeful and enlightened by the world, now i am devastated. fuck. i can't believe this exists.
i am having a stupid peeloff mask on my face for a saturday morning spa and tears started flowing down my face after the first few notes. its spring again in vienna, finally.
I watch this video whenever I feel scared of death. God bless you for this little piece of joy. Even when life gets bad you’re never alone. Everything and nothing.
Hi Damien 👋 You never have to be afraid of death if you have J e s u s. “Where, Oh death, is your victory? Where, Oh death, is your sting?” - C o r i n i n t h i a n s 1, 15:55.
This footage is taken from Mark B. Allen’s 2007 film "Pharoah Sanders Live In San Francisco!", which compiles concerts recorded in 1981 and 1982, alongside an interview with jazz journalist Herb Wong.
I was 12 years old when this soulful journey of a masterpiece was manifested by the great late Pharaoh Sanders. R.I.P elder on your cosmic journey to the one "Allah".
There is something transcendent about Pharoah's playing. He has always struck me a western Sufi mystic and nothing illustrates that more than this video. From the first frame to the last the spirit flows through breath and brass. "Hearken to this Reed forlorn, Breathing, even since 'twas torn From its rushy bed, a strain Of impassioned love and pain. The secret of my song, though near, None can see and none can hear. Oh for a friend to know the sign And mingle all his soul with mine! 'Tis the flame of Love that fired me, 'Tis the wine of Love inspired me. Wouldst thou learn how lovers bleed, Hearken, hearken to the Reed!" Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
What a beautiful piece of verse. Thanks for posting it. It goes so well with this gorgeous performance by Pharoah. (I 'll be seeing him live in Dublin in less than 3 weeks - can't wait!)
Salaam Alikum, I am a practicing Sufi and neyzen/soprano saxophonist. From what I can tell Pharoah is Muslim and may even have taken hand (bayat) in a Sufi order. That being said I see this composition as in the tradition of devotional music he was taught by the great John Coltrane. I just shared this video with friends paired with a wonderful Ney Video as two expressions of devotional wind music.May the most merciful of the merciful continue to bless you. Hu
That truly was incredible ..... and the way he comes out of it with this beautiful tone.... no one was like him! Such a unique style sound. Above all... he was transcendent !
When I think of melancholy I think of a chilly blue fall evening when I was in 9th grade on my bed warm light from a ceiling fan shinning, window open as I listened to Stella blue by the Grateful Dead and felt a certain way I never had before and a feeling I would crave since. This also hits that itch
I have had the good fortune to hear Pharaoh in person numerous times, from 1965 to ~2005. This unpretentious little recording is one of his best--Pharaoh at his purest.
His Grace Cathedral stuff is the ultimate. Lucky to have been there. I remember an ambulance was coming up the hill and he mimicked it. What an incredible performance.
It so happens that am listening to this masterpiece on what would have been your 82nd birthday. RIP legend. You have gifted us with your magnificent talent and your music will live forever.
The harmonic resonance is incredible...I thought this was over dubbed on a mixing board when I 1st started watching. Everything Pharoah does is supernatural
I always found it tricky to get absolutely sucked into jazz, Coltrane was cool but just never pulled me in; it was the same with everyone else I listened too. Bill Evans was the closest I ever came to being pulled in, but even that never lasted long. But when I found Pharaoh, things changed. The week I found Pharaoh I blasted through 10 of his albums one after the other with continued relistens in between. I think maybe its his spiritual approach that drags me in, even his more straight free jazz stuff feels accessible and enjoyable.
i’ve cried from hearing music only one time before at a church because the lyrics were particularly moving and relatable to me at that time. this is the second time, and i can’t tell if they’re solemn tears or joyful ones, but this is the second time in my life that music has ever made me cry. RIP Pharoah.
I remember watching a video of Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra and Syd Barrett in Egypt, the great pyramids, for the summer solstice. It may have been a dream, because I can’t seem to find it anymore. I once met a man who named his daughter Thembi, when I said…beautiful name and my favorite Pharoah Sanders album, he was very impressed a young man knew the origins of his inspiration. We were brethren from other sistren. Blessings and Respect.
A customer of mine just recommended Sanders to me a month or two ago, just before he passed. I feel blessed to have heard some of his music while he was still here. And i will continue to listen for years. Truly an inspiration
What a thrill to read all these amazing comments! Thank you all. Ever since I first heard Pharoah’s music I envisioned something like this performance. For helping to make this happen, thanks go to my wife Barbara Allen and partner Allan Kessler; Allen Pittman, Mark Needham, and Betty Kazuko Ishida of Theresa Records; Benjamin Young, Jim Nadel, and André Spears; and: Howard Rosen of Evidence Music. And of course, thanks to Pharoah and Paul Arslanian for this sublime performance!
Mark Allen, this is awesome, thanks for helping make it happen. I've listened to/watched it many times. Are there more pieces to this performance - is this part of a larger set? Is it available to get in higher res somewhere? Fascinated.... Thanks.
@@danielmiller-lionberg5037 Sorry for very slow response. Looks like the DVD Pharoah Sanders Live in San Francisco is still available on Amazon. Unfortunately, at the time, ¾" video was all we could afford. We did record the sound on a professional film tape recorder (Nagra). Also, I do not know how they got hold of it, but someone uploaded one of the totally unedited reels we shot at the Great American Music Hall in 1982 (not 1985) here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DRlg8mg1czA.html also: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TgznlEpwq8E.html
so simple, beautiful and profound: a man walking through a tunnel, light at the beginning and at the end, looking for and finding inspiration, floating time ..
SPACE MUSIC across the Universe. Ocean 🌊 waves. Sirens haunting whispering voices, echoing individual words until one voice "is all". Uh huh 😉 Pure musical liguid gold 🥇 A glance from the Creator.
I saw Pharoah last Wednesday and oh my god. My spirits have been lifted indefinitely and the fact that I can feel my toes this frigid winter says something about that sweet earsplitting sax. I can't believe last Wednesday. Thanks Mr. Sanders. You'll always be in my ears. Wow the way you trill is mesmerizing. I love being afraid. The shadows. The figures peak into the peripherals of my eyes and they grow my detailed every time. I can see them they are real. Thank you again Mr. Sanders.
