Home Is Where the Music Is / The African Connection

Good vibes 😎

A really solid Masekela outing, though not sure why this one rather than any other. Probably hidden depths that are yet to reveal themselves to me - must listen again.

3.5/5. Solid jazz record. The way it’s produced and played makes it feel quite smooth and easy on the ears, without sacrificing the power of Hugh’s horn playing which is consistently pretty great. I also enjoyed a lot of the piano playing throughout. I will say though, it picks up significantly for me in the second half, some of the tracks early on in the album drag on just a bit too long. But once you get to the chaotic drumming of “Blues for Huey” or the catchier and faster paced “Maseru” things become real good.

The surprise here is genuine — a record this good, sitting this quietly in the catalog, not quite a household name outside of jazz circles. Home Is Where The Music Is is a live double album recorded at Ronnie Scott's in London, and it has all the occupational hazards of that format: extended passages that meander, moments where the band is finding rather than delivering, connective tissue between the peaks. None of that is disqualifying. The peaks are excellent enough to carry it.
Those peaks are specific. Big Apple and Inner Circle are where the Afrobeat and Soul Jazz tags on the record become most literal — the ensemble stops exploring and commits to a pocket, and when Masekela's flugelhorn settles into that groove the whole thing locks in with a satisfying completeness. Nomali is a different kind of pleasure, warmer and more lyrical. Maesha earns its runtime by actually going somewhere over the course of the track — evolving rather than repeating, which is the distinction between live jazz that takes you somewhere and live jazz that simply continues. Ingot Pow-Pow closes things out as the outlier, interesting without fully connecting, which is an honest ending for a record that never pretended to be perfect front to back.
Masekela's horn playing throughout sits in the lyrical, accessible tradition — melodic presence rather than virtuosic display, ensemble-first in the way that the best jazz always is. The band is the instrument; the trumpet is the voice.
A strong four that earns its place in the high-probability Latin and African zone this project has been quietly building. The only surprise is not having found it sooner.

Nice surprise

It’s Jazz…..nice!

Actually ok as background music, but not my thing really.3

It’s good. I just felt waaay too stressed hearing this and it just made me even more stressed out. Definitely will give a listen again

Well idk didn’t quite get to me

3.7 stars

I can’t explain why I like some jazz and not others. But I like this one

There’s parts of this I really liked and parts that were too much for me. About double the length it needs to be so probably won’t come back to this vs. other jazz albums I’ve enjoyed

Pretty good but a bit too long

Interesting jazz, nothing too earth shattering to my ears but worth a listen.
I find jazz hard to rate, I liked it but I'm not sure I'd ever go back for another listen.

Jamais écouté avant.

Premier album de jazz de la liste. Pas désagréable à écouter en arrière-plan, et parfois on se laisse prendre par le groove. Mais l'album semble très long quand on y connaît rien...

Top : Inner Crisis
Flop : Unhome

The playing on this album is so ridiculously clean it killed every single germ in my body. Gave me immunodeficiency, but it was worth it!!!

I just don’t really know how to consume jazz as anything other than background music. It’s a genre that has never really connected with me. I like some of the grooves of main ideas here, and it all sounds well-played. But nothing got me excited enough to give it a high rating.

Best of luck to anyone whos gonna take an hour out of their day to listen to this

For the 25th time or something, I'm not a huge fan of jazz. It's fine. Not great, not bad, not entertaining to me really. I don't like when his trumpet or whatever makes that squeaking sound. Other than that, sure it's fine. Probably better than most jazz on this list so far.

Don't really know what it is, but I'm not feeling this one a ton.
It's got a little too much of that "70's city" feel when I normally look for 60's cocktail club vibe from my jazz. Like the first song could 100% be used in a scene of a character running through the city, doing chores/tasks while montaged to this music.

It's very good, don't get me wrong. But it has a clean-ness to it that I'm not really vibing with.

Pretty nice piano jazz.