Yasmina,
a Black Woman is a jazz album by Archie Shepp, recorded in 1969 in Paris for
BYG Actuel records. It features musicians from the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The
initial track, giving its title to the album, is a long free jazz piece by an
eleven-piece orchestra; in it, the indication to Africa that Shepp had tried
out with only a few weeks earlier in Algiers are to be found in the use of
African percussion instruments, or the African incantations sung by Shepp
himself at the start of the track.
The other two pieces, a homage to Sonny
Rollins written by trombonist Grachan Moncur III and a standard, played by a
more traditional quintet and quartet respectively, are more reminiscent of the
hard bop genre, even though the fiery playing of the musicians, notably Shepp
himself, gives them a specific avant-garde edge. It was formerly issued on CD
by Affinity (paired with "Poem For Malcolm") mastered from a very
noisy vinyl source and later reissued by Charly (also paired with "Poem
For Malcolm") from the novel master tapes.
