Music of the World for the Caverns of Your Mind

Kirk performing in 1972. Photograph Source: Heinrich Klaffs – CC BY-SA 2.0

The first time I heard Rahsaan Roland Kirk was in the winter of 1972. A friend was playing his newly-released record titled Blacknuss. It was a revelation. As I listened, I realized that the world was on that record, if not all of it then certainly much of it. The beautiful and the ugly; the transcendent and the mundane. His band’s take on songs then current renewed them in ways I had never conceived of before my introduction to Kirk.