11. JD Allen Americana Vol. 2 (Savant)

It’s all there in JD Allen’s profound opening salvo on “Up South.” His tenor saxophone sound, as chiseled as John Henry, moans with the cry of the blues: the manifestation of a sweeping aesthetic, contemporary yet rooted in the jazz tradition and the cultural memory of the Great Migration that brought Allen’s family to Detroit. Charlie Hunter, Gregg August, and Rudy Royston lay down sturdy grooves. Allen communes with the ancestors, the blues their common language. MARK STRYKER