The room › Artists › Ahmad Jamal
Where to start with Ahmad Jamal
Start with A Gal In Calico — Poinciana, 1963. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 28 Ahmad Jamal tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 14,971 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 28 Ahmad Jamal tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 28 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The mood knob swings 59 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
A Gal In Calico — Poinciana, 1963. Of the 28 Ahmad Jamal tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the melancholy end
Swahililand — Crystal, 1987. The lowest mood reading of any Ahmad Jamal track in the room (6 out of 100). This is as far towards melancholy as the collection goes.
If you want the euphoric end
The Awakening — The Awakening. The highest mood reading here, at 65 out of 100 — a 59-point swing across the collection towards euphoric.
Where Ahmad Jamal sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Ahmad Jamal's average coordinates and the range they cover.
| Knob | Average | Range | Low → high |
|---|---|---|---|
| mood | 56 | 6–65 | melancholy → euphoric |
| energy | 42 | 27–55 | ambient → driving |
| density | 44 | 31–45 | sparse → wall |
| head · body | 51 | 31–52 | cerebral → groove |
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Poinciana | 1963 | 12 |
| At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 | 8 |
| The Awakening | 1970 | 7 |
| Crystal | 1987 | 1 |
Every Ahmad Jamal track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| But Not For Me - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| Moonlight In Vermont - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| Music, Music, Music - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| No Greater Love - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| Poinciana - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| Surrey With The Fringe On The Top - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| What's New - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| Wood'yn You - Live At The Pershing, Chicago, 1958 | At the Pershing: But Not for Me | 1958 |
| A Gal In Calico | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Ahmad's Blues | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Aki And Ukthay | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Billy Boy | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Crazy He Calls Me | Poinciana | 1963 |
| It's Easy To Remember | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Old Devil Moon | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Pavanne | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Poinciana | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Slaughter on 10th Avenue | Poinciana | 1963 |
| The Surrey With The Fringe On Top | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Will You Still Be Mine | Poinciana | 1963 |
| Dolphin Dance | The Awakening | 1970 |
| I Love Music | The Awakening | 1970 |
| Patterns | The Awakening | 1970 |
| Stolen Moments | The Awakening | 1970 |
| Wave | The Awakening | 1970 |
| You're My Everything | The Awakening | 1970 |
| Swahililand | Crystal | 1987 |
| The Awakening | The Awakening | — |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Ahmad Jamal's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Thelonious Monk — jazz, 23 tracks
- Where to start with Pat Metheny — jazz, 17 tracks
- Where to start with Jack DeJohnette — jazz, 10 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Ahmad Jamal as a solo artist, from Pittsburgh, the United States and born in 1930. Its contributors tag the artist jazz, post-bop, hard bop and cool jazz. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Ahmad Jamal tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 28, across 4 albums. 27 of them carry a date, running from 1958 to 1987. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 28 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 28 of these 28 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.