‘Space Jungle Luv’: When avant-garde jazz collided with African funk
Bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin, alcohol and kebabs: there are some combinations in life that go together beautifully. Within the world of music, jazz and funk is one such unstoppable combination. When the innately danceable, groovy sounds of funk are blended together with the improvisation and unpredictability of jazz, some kind of musical magic occurs. Now, imagine that flawless blend and add-in styles of Afrobeat and avant-garde, and you are one step closer to envisioning the sound of Oneness of Juju.
Spearheaded by jazz saxophonist Plunky Nkabinde, Oneness of Juju was originally formed in the avant-garde haven of San Francisco as Juju in 1971. Over the years, the group would be driven by a constant need for innovation and evolution. By 1975, the group had moved to Richmond, Virginia, and rebranded as Oneness of Juju. It was under this moniker that the band would release their greatest work. Essentially, the group adopted a sound that saw avant-garde jazz blended with African funk rhythms to create something entirely original and endlessly infectious.
Although Oneness of Juju always remained a fairly obscure group, they amassed a dedicated cult audience for their innovative blend of African percussion with American avant-garde jazz. This audience found particular joy in the band’s 1970s albums, African Rhythms and Space Jungle Luv. The latter, in particular, is among one of the most interesting and underrated jazz records of the decade, breaking down genre barriers and spearheading an entirely new sound.
Released to a largely indifferent audience in 1976 via Jimmy Gray’s Black Fire Records, Space Jungle Luv is, loosely, a spiritual jazz record. According to Nkabinde himself, “With Space Jungle Luv, I was making a Pharaoh [Sanders] kind of record.” While the influences of musicians like Sanders or Sun Ra are clear on the record, Oneness of Juju extends that kind of spiritual, otherworldly jazz sound to its most extreme lengths.
“I wanted to deliver a spiritually uplifting message,” Nkabinde attested, expanding, “Artists like George Clinton and Sun Ra had explored the theme of space, and people were looking towards the future and new technology. We were also describing the album – space music, jungle music, love songs.”
Like all the greatest artists throughout history, Oneness of Juju were years ahead of their time with Space Jungle Luv. Ultimately, mainstream audiences were never going to be hugely receptive to a record that blended the already obscure genres of experimental African percussion and spiritual space jazz. However, in the years that followed the album’s initial release during the 1970s, the record amassed a great deal of appreciation from music and jazz obsessives.
As a byproduct of that cult success, original copies of the 1976 album can set you back as much as £750 on the second-hand vinyl market. Fear not, though, because a modern reappraisal of the ahead-of-its-time release has inspired reissues by the likes of Strut Records in the United Kingdom.
It took over three decades for the pioneering avant-garde album to receive the kind of praise it so richly deserved, a testament to Nkabinde’s uncompromising artistic vision and the idea that Oneness of Juju was among the most interesting American jazz outfits within the pretty oversaturated scene of the 1970s.
