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Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the second album by Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, The Malcolm X Memorial (A Tribute in Music), had been reissued on CD by a new Hyde Park indie called Katalyst Entertainment. The album, recorded live in 1968 at the Affro-Arts Theater, was released sometime in the early 70s on Cohran’s Zulu Record imprint. It’s very rare. In 2001 former Chicagoan Jamie Hodge reissued the group’s excellent, eponymous debut (often called On the Beach, after one of its tracks) on his Aestuarium label, and while the second album doesn’t match the singular brilliance of that debut — where Cohran leads his group through gorgeously hypnotic jazz-funk originals distinguished by his electric kalimba lines — it’s still a special document.
