Black Artists Group (BAG) was a pivotal assemblage of African-American musicians that rose to prominence in St Louis in the late 1960s; in its advocacy of independence and artistic freedom, struck a clear parallel with AACM in Chicago.

Trumpeter Lester Bowie was a link between the two, being born in the first city and relocating to the second, and it was he who suggested his trombonist brother Joseph and other BAG-men (Oliver Lake, Baikida Carrroll and Floyd Leflore) head to Paris as he had done with the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. The advice was taken, and this scintillating Paris concert shows that the band had an ability to make a kind of unique access-all-areas form of black music.

It is ingeniously, fluidly informed by blues, R&B, soul, funk and avant-garde, showing continuity rather than disparity between these many languages. The result is a suite that veers organically from meditative stillness to up tempo dance, brilliantly helmed by Charles Bobo Shaw’s on and offbeat trickery, though additional layers of percussion lend a roundly African character that suggests an open, rural space while the horns are as austere as they are festive. Shaw, Lake, Carroll and Bowie, with the mighty Defunkt, would go on to make excellent music in the 1970s and 80s, but this set has the feel of a foundational mothership connection for that host of great satellites.