Tauhid (album)

Tauhid
Sanders holding a saxophone and wearing an elaborate headdress
Studio album by
ReleasedOctober 1967[1]
RecordedNovember 15, 1966 (1966-11-15)
StudioVan Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
GenreAvant-garde jazz
Length34:40
LabelImpulse!
ProducerBob Thiele
Pharoah Sanders chronology
Pharoah's First
(1965)
Tauhid
(1967)
Karma
(1969)

Tauhid is a jazz album by saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. It was the second album released under his name, and his first album on the Impulse! label. It was recorded on November 15, 1966 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ,[2] four days after the concert heard on the John Coltrane album Offering: Live at Temple University,[2] and was released in 1967, after the death of Coltrane, with whom Sanders had played since 1965. Tauhid was reissued in 2017 on Anthology Recordings. The album marks guitarist Sonny Sharrock's first appearance on a record, as well as one of pianist Dave Burrell's earliest recordings.

In the album liner notes, Sanders wrote: "I don't really see the horn anymore. I'm trying to see myself. And similarly, as to the sounds I get, it's not that I'm trying to scream on my horn, I'm just trying to put all my feelings into the horn. And when you do that, the notes go away... Why [do] I want clusters [of notes]? So that I [can] get more feeling, more of me, into every note I play. You see, everything you do has to mean something, has to be more than just notes. That's behind everything I do – trying to get more ways of getting feeling out."[3]

  1. ^ "Billboard". October 21, 1967.
  2. ^ a b Porter, Lewis; DeVito, Chris; Fujioka, Yasuhiro; Wild, David; Schmaler, Wolf (2008). The John Coltrane Reference. Routledge. p. 354.
  3. ^ Sanders, Pharoah (1967). Tauhid (liner notes). Pharoah Sanders. Impulse! Records. AS-9138.