Rob Ferrier says: "As Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp hearkened back to field hollers and very basic folk forms, musicians like Clifford Thornton went in the opposite direction, building on the music of the sophisticates and expanding the possibilities for jazz."

Thornton was invited with Shepp to perform in Algiers for the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival of the Organization of African Unity. This visit had an important impact on his developing political