Top 10 jazz albums of the year, top 5 Latin albums: 2021 Jazz Critics Poll
Completing the top 10 were Ches Smith (leading a battalion of horns and fellow percussionists on the voodoo-inspired Path of Seven Colors); Artifacts, a lithe chamber group (Nicole Mitchell, flute; Tomeka Reid, cello; Mike Reed, drums) unafraid to fall into a groove now and then, on … And Then There’s This; Sons of Kemet, London’s counterpart to Los Angeles’s West Coast Get Down (with Shabaka Hutchings their Kamasi Washington), on their Black to the Future; and William Parker’s Mayan Space Station, featuring the bordering-on-heavy-metal guitarist Ava Mendoza.
