Dustar Jazz Band's Black River

From discogs:

Real name: 
Дуҫтар» джаз-ансамбле / Джаз-ансамбль «Дустар» / The «Dustar» Jazz Band
Profile:
Dustar was a Soviet jazz/prog-fusion band, founded in 1978 by saxophonist Marat Yuldybaev in Ufa, Bashkir ASSR. They toured around the Soviet Union, participating in youth festivals in Yaroslavl, Leningrad, Erevan, Moscow, Ufa, Tbilisi and other cities. Initially, Dustar was mostly acting as a backing instrumental ensemble for various Bashkir composers and folk singers. In later years, they also gave concerts in the USA.   In 1982, the band recorded Carousel – a collection of groovy pop-dance tracks. But musicians were always primarily interested in jazz, so in 1988, they released a much more mature second album Black River, featuring Miles Davis' E.S.P. (entitled Energy of Thought) and Yuldybaev's original jazz compositions. 


More fabulous Soviet fusionary compositions, this album is from the surprisingly late year of 1988, but as we know the Eastern sectors of Europe/Asia lagged far behind the West, though today of course as we well know they are far ahead of us in the realm of political authoritarianism.

The title track, with its lovely groove:





The third track, the Dance of the Bees might be familiar to you because it was included in the Soviet Rare Grooves compilation, and it's truly a wonderful composition with the exciting interchange from minor to major in the middle under soprano sax, Muffins-style, wailing above:





It's so common for Russian music to have that folk song influence, we saw that throughout our posts, as in the Anor (which apparently coincidentally was shared twice digitally i.e. in two separate rips although I thought I was the first) and Sunkar.  Of course, Russian composers going back to before Tchaikovsky used folk music for inspiration.