1968 was a great year in music, to be sure, great enough that in addition to all of the uncontested masterpieces, it coughed up its fair share of noteworthy oddities, including, among others, Sagittarius’ Present Tense, Dr. John’s Gris-Gris, God Bless Tiny Tim, The Monkees’ Head, and the first LPs by both Os Mutantes and the Silver Apples.

It was a rich and resonant year, so much so that a record as great and unusual as Dorothy Ashby’s incredible jazz-funk harp masterpiece Afro-Harping almost gets lost in the shuffle.

Almost.

Its title proudly emblazoned in futuristic 120-point Amelia (a typeface most often associated with Alvin Toffler), Afro-Harping is a landmark in jazz music, a truly funky album with the harp as the primary focus. Ashby already had several albums to her name but this remarkable project came about as a collaboration between herself and a producer named Richard Evans, whose biggest successes for Cadet Records to that point had been two albums by the Soulful Strings, 1966’s Paint It Black and 1967’s Groovin’ with the Soulful Strings. Evans had the brilliant idea of adding flute and theremin (!) as well as an enticing syncopated beat to make the album’s first track, “Soul Vibrations” an unforgettable piece of music. (It recently popped up in the opening credits of an episode of Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series Master of None.)

Here it is:
 

 
Born in 1930, Ashby was from Detroit, the daughter of noted jazz guitarist Wiley Thompson. Thompson used to invite his jazz buddies over to play, and Ashby (née Thompson, natch) would join in on the piano. She attended Cass Technical High School and Wayne State University, and somewhere along the way she drifted from the piano to the harp.
 

Dorothy Ashby
 
Roslyn Rensch in the volume Harps and Harpists writes:
 

In the 1950s she toured with her own jazz trio of harp, string bass, and drums. The small size of the ensemble made it possible to feature the jazz harp player as soloist and as leading musician. The principle theme (riff) of the piece could be stated by the harp and all three instruments could alternate with solo verses and choruses. Blues, bebop, swing, and the “cool” jazz of Miles Davis all inspired Dorothy Ashby’s style. She was known for her pedal-slides which created “blue-notes” and her “spacious” melodic improvisations.

 
I love the idea of a harp “riff”!

It’s actually difficult to find out much about Afro-Harping. Much of the album has a distinctive Henry Mancini feel, the perfect spice to any swinging party, but there’s not much on it that feels very “Afro” (aside from the smooth funk, of course). It features a cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look of Love” and a composition by Freddie Hubbard as well as the theme music to Valley of the Dolls by André and Dory Previn.

The challenges of making harp the centerpiece of an ensemble were not minor in nature. As Rensch observes,
 

When it became evident that the harp was not easily heard, even in so small an ensemble, early attempts at amplification began. ... Ashby’s husband placed two large microphones on the soundboard of her harp and put another one inside the instrument’s soundbox. To further enhance the acoustics, the harp’s inner body was carpeted and Dorothy played with small pieces of carpet glued to her shoes. Such ingenuity might have presented some difficulties to a player, but Dorothy Ashby’s smooth interpretations gave no indication of this.

 
Sadly, unsung pioneers like Ashby are always sorely in need of greater recognition.  You can hear her harp on classic songs by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, and Bobby Womack and she’s been sampled by Common, The Pharcyde, J Dilla, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Pete Rock, The GZA, Phife Dawg, Flying Lotus, Madlib, Jurassic 5, Angie Stone and Ghostface Killah. Belle and Sebastian did their part by placing “Soul Vibrations” onto their 2012 compilation Late Night Tales, Vol. II. Putting the song into your own mix matrix will make you the coolest cat on your block, no doubt.