Ami Taf Ra: The Prophet and the Madman (digital outlets)

As Elsewhere readers would know, we are very comfortable with a wide range of genres and artists. Jazz (of all kinds) and world music (ditto) are certainly covered in these pages.

So this debut album by a Moroccan-born, LA-based singer is something we'd gravitate to fondly.

The rolling, ecstatic trance sound of Moroccan music – especially that of Sufi players in the Rif Mountains -- has seduced everyone from Rolling Stone Brian Jones to jazz musician Ornette Coleman: Jones recorded the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Coleman performed with them over the decades.

We've heard those recordings and been lucky enough to see Coleman with Moroccan players, as well as hearing the music in situ.

Other threads of gnawa music have influenced Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the late saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and Peter Gabriel.

These days, of course, some traffic flows the other way.

Moroccan artists have been influenced by pop, hip-hop, reggae, jazz and rock (Hendrix visited Marrakech and coastal Essaouira in 1968, a brief visit much mythologised locally).

Women have rarely been visible performers but the striking Ami Taf Ra immediately comes to attention with this debut produced by Kamasi Washington with collaborators including trombonist Ryan Porter, bassist Miles Mosley, multi-instrumentalist Brandon Coleman and other hip West Coast jazz artists.

Inspired by Khalil Gibran's spiritual and philosophical book The Prophet, here are her soaring vocals atop tumbling rhythms, rolling piano and funk guitars on the busy, seven minute How I Became a Madman, indulging in high drama on Love with Porter which swerves into an MOR soundtrack ballad and the majestic, lyrically dense nine minute jazz-fusion ballad The Prophet.

Also here are her whispery God where she competes with furious jazz-rock guitar and bass, the 1970s soul-funk of My Friend and the soundscape-cum-gospel of the impressive Khalil with choral backing.

But overall, this isn't the ascending, spiritual jazz album some might wish for from this source when searching beyond Alice and John Coltrane.

More an extravagant, sometimes musically overactive collection with familiar, quite mainstream jazz vocals.

And once more, Washington's all-in, kitchen sing approach frequently overwhelms the singer.

High expectation, mid-level disappointment.

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You can hear this album at Spotify here