Sama Layuca

Imagine being part of John Coltrane's legendary quintet but the end of the 1960s finding you driving a taxi to pay your rent, and then you get into your own groove and release a run of 11 legendary albums in a row. Wild. So what does "sama layuca" even mean? Nothing, according to the dictionary. Rather, it is a name, a title, an interpretive reference to what one reviewer called "pseudomorphosis", the natural incorporation of old cultural elements into the extant modern culture, as the rhythms of the world beyond American borders underpin the compositions. And you'd have to have had your head in the sand to not know that a lot of jazz at this time is conscious of and explicit in expressing the struggles and spirituality of the Black experience in the United States.