The vast discography that Smith has built over some four decades has myriad strands. African and oriental-inflected compositions that often tend to ambient music; micro-tonal sound collages; spontaneous improvisation, and last but not least, heavy, brawny funk in which lengthy vamps set up impassioned solos. Despite the distinctions between these approaches they are not incompatible and certainly on recent recordings such as ‘Tabligh’ they have intermingled to good effect. This grandiose 2-CD set stands as something of a synthesis of Smith’s many vocabularies with the trumpeter leading a large aggregation of players through a programme that moves seamlessly from introspective, contemplative tone poem to snapping backbeat-led grooves that are not totally dissimilar to the Electric Miles tributes that he has recorded with guitarist Henry Kaiser over the years. Although these arrangements could be classed as part of the “fusion” tradition, they resolutely go deeper into a R&B vocabulary than most other exponents of the F word. Smith’s ability to compose phrases that rework the perennially gripping earthiness of a pentatonic scale or wring immense feeling from a fraught, edgy riff that darts through bluesy thirds, fifths or octaves while leaving the drums tight on the beat, is superb.

The music is enigmatic but eminently soulful, nostalgic but not anachronistic. Indeed, at its core is Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf and so on, but their spirits are renewed by Smith’s range of cliché-free timbral nuances and his band’s opaque rather than transparent references to the aforesaid sources, above all, the grainy guitar riffs that evoke the rough-hewn harmonicas or throaty hollers that made Chicago black music a wellspring for modern popular music. With that in mind a faint echo of Archie Shepp’s collaborations with the likes of Julio Finn can be heard, but Smith’s idiosyncrasies are easy enough to discern. His full, broad tone and tendency to blend economic, if not sparse lines with more florid phrases has great dramatic power, and like many of the significant figures in jazz, he has reached that point where he can stamp his personality as a storyteller, his emotional being as much as his improvising, on most of the recordings he makes.