A new compilation from Spiritual Jazz shows the genre's predisposition to thrive despite heavy political oppression, with underworld eminents euphonating their radical music despite a hard immuring behind the Iron Curtain, which represented the gash between East and West during the Cold War. Contemporary jazz and European folk collide on the first of a two-parter record here, reflecting muted but reassuring sonic utterances sounding against oppression, a somewhat unspeakable sentiment whipping across the Eastern Bloc of the 50s and 60s. Vagif Mustafa Zade, an Azerbaijani pianist, and the Manfred Ludwig Sextett, from the same era, are only two such featured artists; they helped push the embrace hard bop and modal, and the boundaries of what was permissible under the regime.