Poet and jazz critic LeRoi Jones – later known as Amiri Baraka – was a pioneer of fusing poetry and jazz. In the mid-1960s, that took the form of avant-garde recordings with the likes of Sunny Murray, but he also went on to explore more accessible contexts, as on his 1972 album It’s Nation Time, featuring Gary Bartz and Lonnie Smith.

That’s the tradition referenced in this hour-long live suite by a sprawling collective of younger US heavyweights including bassist Luke Stewart and tenor man James Brandon Lewis (who, together with poet Thomas Sayer Ellis, wrote all the tracks). Baraka’s presence is invoked throughout, with his poem titles sprinkled liberally and Ellis dropping in personal anecdotes of hanging with the elder. The music veers from wailing free-for-alls to funk grooves with a hint of the loose insouciance of the late Greg Tate’s equally diffuse ensemble, Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber.

At times, however, it feels like there’s just a little too much going on, with the vocal recitations drowned out by a surfeit of enthusiasm – and the whole project suffers by comparison with William Parker’s truly epic funk-to-free masterpiece I Plan To Stay a Believer, which featured impassioned readings by Baraka himself.