1989 · Album
Procession of the Great Ancestry
Recorded 1983 · Chief (licensed by Nessa Records) · Produced by Not documented
Smith's Ancestors Speak Across All Borders
Smith's expansive vision included all forms of Black music — jazz, blues, reggae, African folk, even R&B groove.
Recorded in 1983 but not released until 1989, Procession of the Great Ancestry (1989) arrived as a statement of purpose from Wadada Leo Smith — a declaration that jazz need not stay in its lane. Smith had spent years developing a singular approach to the trumpet, one rooted in careful listening and compositional thought rather than flash. This album captures him at a point where he was ready to acknowledge that his musical ancestry stretched far beyond the New York loft scene or even the jazz tradition itself. The session reflects that breadth. Smith assembled musicians and chose material that let him move freely between idioms — bebop language, blues feeling, African rhythmic sensibility, reggae pulse, folk melody. Nothing here feels borrowed or costume-like. Instead, each piece builds outward from the trumpet, with Smith's tone always the anchor, dry and intentional, never pretty.
AllMusic reviewer Thom Jurek called it "among Wadada Leo Smith's most obscure, but ultimately most satisfying recordings," and that judgment holds. This is not a crowd-pleaser or a showpiece. It asks listeners to follow Smith's thinking rather than sit back and be impressed. The Penguin Guide to Jazz praised it as "a wonderful record," though it noted the occasional lapse into overwrought language — a fair critique of Smith's liner notes and some of his track titles, which do veer poetic. But the music itself stays grounded. What matters is that Smith made space for multiple traditions to coexist without hierarchy, and he played with enough conviction that you believe in every one of them.
