This compilation is, in a sense, the soundtrack to the exhibition "Soul Of A Nation: Art In The Age Of Black Power," on view in 2017 at both London's Tate Gallery and New York's Brooklyn Museum

In the process, the compilation traces the influences that the civil rights movement and black nationalism in the wake of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party had on radical African-American musical designs in the U.S. toward the end of the 1960s.

Among the artists featured by Soul Jazz are icons such as Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Ayers, Don Cherry, Oneness of Juju, Sarah Webster Fabio, Horace Tapscott and Phil Ranelin. Their works illustrate how political issues led to the development of "conscious black music," which culminated various popular Afrocentric styles of this time of upheaval - the radical spirituality of John Coltrane, the radical avant-gardism of a Sun Ra, James Brown funk, the soul of Aretha Franklin, and urban proto-rap poetry of the metropolises .

As is typical for soul jazz, the whole thing comes opulently equipped with comprehensive accompanying texts and exclusive photographs.