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**Pharoah Sanders - Karma ★★★★★**

In the pantheon of spiritual jazz, few albums burn as brightly or as transformatively as Pharoah Sanders' "Karma." Released in 1969 on Impulse!, this double LP stands as both culmination and revelation – the moment when Sanders, having served his apprenticeship in John Coltrane's final, most exploratory ensembles, stepped fully into his own cosmic light.

The path to "Karma" was paved with fire and devotion. Sanders had spent the mid-sixties pushing boundaries alongside Trane, contributing his volcanic tenor saxophone to albums like "Ascension" and "Meditations." When Coltrane died in 1967, Sanders inherited not just a musical legacy but a spiritual mission – to continue exploring the outer reaches of consciousness through sound. His early Impulse! recordings, including "Tauhid" and "Jewels of Thought," had hinted at the profound statement to come, but nothing quite prepared listeners for the transcendent journey that "Karma" would provide.

Musically, "Karma" exists in that rarified space where free jazz, Eastern philosophy, and pure spiritual yearning converge. This is music that defies easy categorisation – part avant-garde exploration, part devotional practice, part primal scream therapy. Sanders' tenor saxophone doesn't merely play notes; it channels emotions that seem to bypass the brain entirely, speaking directly to the soul through multiphonics, overblown passages, and techniques that make the instrument sound like a living, breathing entity in pain and ecstasy.

The album's centrepiece, "The Creator Has a Master Plan," unfolds over thirty-two minutes of the first LP like some ancient ritual being performed in real-time. Beginning with a deceptively simple theme stated by Sanders and pianist Lonnie Liston Smith, the piece gradually builds into something approaching religious experience. Leon Thomas's vocals – part singing, part yodeling, part glossolalia – weave through the instrumental passages like a shaman guiding listeners through successive levels of consciousness. When Sanders unleashes his full fury midway through, his saxophone becomes a conduit for something larger than music itself. The rhythm section of bassist Richard Davis and drummer Roy Haynes doesn't merely keep time; they create a foundation solid enough to support the weight of the cosmos.

But "Karma" isn't all fire and brimstone. The second disc offers "Colors," a gentler but no less profound exploration that showcases Sanders' remarkable range. Here, his tenor takes on an almost vocal quality, singing melodies of heartbreaking beauty over Smith's impressionistic piano work. It's a reminder that for all his reputation as a fire-breather, Sanders possessed one of the most emotionally direct voices in jazz.

The album's power lies not just in its individual moments but in its totality – this is music designed to be experienced as a complete journey rather than consumed in fragments. The production, overseen by Bob Thiele, captures every overtone and harmonic interaction with startling clarity, creating an sonic environment that feels both intimate and vast.

Nearly five decades after its release, "Karma" continues to reveal new dimensions to successive generations of listeners. Its influence can be heard in everyone from spiritual jazz revivalists like Kamasi Washington to electronic artists sampling its transcendent passages. The album proved that jazz could be simultaneously intellectual and visceral, structured and free, earthbound and cosmic. It demonstrated that the genre's capacity for spiritual expression was far from exhausted in the post-Coltrane era.

More significantly, "Karma" established Sanders as more than just Coltrane's heir – it revealed him as a unique voice capable of channeling the divine through reed and breath. The album's title proved prophetic; the positive energy Sanders put into the universe through this recording has been returned manifold through its enduring impact on musicians and listeners alike.

In an era when jazz was supposedly losing its audience to rock and soul, Sanders created music that transcended genre boundaries entirely. "Karma" doesn't just deserve a place in any serious jazz collection – it demands one. This is music that doesn't merely entertain; it transforms. In Sanders' own words, it's about "healing," and nearly fifty years later, that healing power remains undiminished. Essential listening for anyone seeking to understand not just where jazz went after bebop, but where music itself might take the human spirit.