Jeff Majors – For Us All (Yoka Boka) LP
Alice Coltrane’s harp and Brother Ah’s finger percussion meet ’80s drum machines, synthesizers, and soul-jazz vocals on this holy grail private press spiritual jazz record lovingly reissued by Toronto’s Invisible City Editions.
Originally released in 1986; Composed on harp, drum machines and synths, “For Us All (Yoka Boka)” follows a similarly transcendent path to Alice Coltrance’s later compositions; no surprise since Majors was a student at her Ashram, as well as playing in Brother Ah’s band. But where Coltrane opted for the chanted mantra, Majors enlists vocalists to experiment with standard songs, here The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and the Gershwins’ “Summertime”. Each song on this album is an inspired vision of the personal and the devotional via the harp’s universal glistening tones, shimmering synths, Linndrum machine and African percussion.