Writer Hua Hsu is a self-proclaimed inveterate collector of books, movies, relics, memories and music, a topic he has explored many times for The New Yorker over the years. He recently reviewed André 3000’s first LP in 17 years, New Blue Sun, and analyzed the authorized autobiography of the late-rapper Tupac Shakur. In late 2022, he evaluated his “most memorable listenings” of that year.
Hsu won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for his memoir Stay True, which details a youthful friendship with someone who challenged Hsu’s notions of taste and identity. Hsu admits that he was searching for music that reflected a “specific mood” when he happened to come across Sanders’ 1969 jazz album Jewels of Thought at Amoeba Records in Berkeley. He considers Sanders’ song “Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah
More: New Yorker writer Hua Hsu reflects on memoir ‘Stay True’
This segment has been edited for length and clarity.
I first discovered the music of Pharaoh Sanders in my late twenties. I used to go in search of specific moods. If I was feeling down, I would go looking for records that would take me further down or in the opposite direction. But I would always browse, judging things by their covers, looking up recommendations. I was always really just shopping for different emotions more so than I was interested in genre, per se.
I had heard the name Pharoah Sanders. Great saxophonist. Played with John Coltrane up there with Albert Ayler. But I had never really listened to his music. I came across a $3 copy of his album Jewels of Thought at Amoeba Records in Berkeley. I took it home, listened to it, and there's a song, “Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah
It was really stormy and chaotic at moments. There were all these bells and instruments that I had never heard in jazz composition. Sanders himself, his saxophone, there's this sort of serrated quality to it. It can sound really violent and anarchic one moment, and then like the most blissful thing ever [the] next moment. It's an album and particularly a track that I listened to obsessively for that week, but also for years to come. And I became a really big fan of his.
Pharoah Sanders plays at the 2013 Deutsches Jazz Festival in Frankfurt, Germany. Photo by Oliver Abels / CC 3.0
I think what I realized is that his music is able to sound very ecstatic and joyful, but also a bit mournful and troubled at the same time. And his music, much like the writing of Maxine Hong Kingston, was important to me because it showed me that we can hold these different emotions at the same time. That you can start a song out, and it can be kind of dense and furious, anxious and chaotic, and there'll be stretches of peace and joy and transcendence, and maybe it'll get chaotic again. But ultimately, these are the forces that shape us and these are the forces that we have to contend with and reckon with.
Pharaoh Sanders [is] really one of a kind, [a] lodestar [for] how I see writing, and music, and art, and the things that I seek out, but also just someone whose life and example is one that I've admired for quite a while.