“The men who placed themselves above the rest of society through guile, fortuitous outcome of circumstance and sheer brutality have developed two principal institutions to deal with any and all serious disobedience – the prison and institutionalized racism.”
So wrote the activist and revolutionary theorist George Jackson from the confines of San Quentin Prison, in the manuscript to his second book which would be completed just days before his death. Implicated in the armed robbery of a gas station in 1960 for the princely sum of $71, the nineteen-year-old Jackson was handed an indeterminate prison sentence stretching anywhere between one year to life behind bars. As he lingered in San Quentin he began to study political economy, from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong. Between long spells in solitary confinement, he founded the Black Guerrilla Family and was made a field marshal of the Black Panther Party, steadily gaining a reputation as one of the foremost intellectuals among the movers and shakers of a fledgling reform movement.
Switched from San Quentin to Soledad Prison, in January of 1970 a corrections officer shot and killed the Black Guerrilla Family co-founder W. L. Nolen and two other black prisoners during a yard riot with members of the Aryan Brotherhood. Four days later, Jackson and two other prisoners were accused of taking their retaliation by throwing another officer to his death after beating and dragging him up three flights of stairs. The three defendants were moved back to San Quentin where they faced the prospect of execution by way of the gas chamber, and as they awaited trial amid escalating prison violence and racial rancour they came to be known as the Soledad Brothers, which would provide the title for Jackson’s first book, a collection of his prison letters which were published later that year.
In August 1971, days before the commencement of his murder trial, Jackson met with his attorney and somehow managed to procure a gun. As he was being escorted back to his cell he pulled out the pistol and in an apparent reference to a poem by Ho Chi Minh proclaimed ‘The dragon has come!’. He ordered the corrections officer to open the cells, and initiated a prison escape which culminated in his own death when he was shot from the gun tower after venturing out into the yard. Five of the hostages taken during the foiled escape, including two prisoners and three guards, had been shot and stabbed and left for dead in Jackson’s cell. His second book, a collection of letters and essays titled Blood in My Eye, would be published the following year.
This week Bashi Rose, Show Azar, and Jamal Moore unite for their debut album as Konjur Collective, inspired by radical Black politics and the throbbing pulse of their home city of Baltimore. The fiery heart of Blood In My Eye (A Soul Insurgent Guide) traces a day in the life of Jonathan Jackson, who on 7 August 1970 launched an armed invasion of the Marin County Civic Center where Superior Court Judge Harold Haley was presiding over the trial of the San Quentin inmate James McClain. The younger Jackson took five people hostage in an attempt to secure the release of George and the Soledad Brothers, with four men including Jackson and Judge Haley killed in the ensuing shootout with police.
Blood In My Eye (A Soul Insurgent Guide) is the first release on the Astral Spirits imprint cow: Music, part of the Creative Outlets and Works programme which aims to curate music, publishing, performance, and the visual arts through a Black lens. Sans Soleil II by Chris Williams and Patrick Shiroishi also lands on the imprint this week, while Chris Pitsiokos, Luke Stewart, and Jason Nazary collide gracefully as BI BA DOOM on the Austin free jazz signature. Theon Cross takes wing on a single which embraces new directions in life, while from the Trey Anastasio Band and stints behind Ravi Coltrane, Louis Hayes, and Pharoah Sanders to his recent outings on International Anthem alongside Makaya McCraven and Brandee Younger, the double bassist Dezron Douglas harnesses rocket ships and straps in for a sweet ride on the opener and title track of Atalaya.
On the heels of ebullient and rhapsodic takes on the legacy of the minimalist composer Julius Eastman by experimental groups like Sō Percussion and Wild Up, now Loraine James offers more muted meditations on Black musicianship and identity as she vaporizes the piece ‘Crazy Nigger’ with its sweeping cascades and lapping shores. Vicky Chow interprets the first book of piano etudes by Philip Glass, the Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti plots something great with the aid of vintage synths and the intimacy of Earthworks microphones, while Joe Andrews, Tom Halstead, and the percussionist Valentina Magaletti unspool the scuzziest threads of eighties and nineties alternative guitar music on their second long play as Moin.
Diaristic with a heuristic approach to genre, conceived as a radio broadcast over the course of three years and 112 songs, where intellectualism gives way to bristling minutiae and eerie expressionism, the duo of Noa Kurzweil and Levi Lanser issue missives with the crackle of old modems and leased telephone lines on the first digital-only offering from Stroom. Through the scraping and soaring of her amplified cello Lori Goldston pays tribute to Geneviève Castrée, the celestial vocalisations of Antonina Nowacka languor over the lush ambient soundscapes of Sofie Birch, and Bruno Bavota and Chantal Acda curb the twin spectres of disaffection and distance, as tracks by Sana Nagano, Eden Samara, Wiki, and Subjxct 5 complete the roundup.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Loraine James – ‘The Perception of Me (Crazy Nigger)’
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Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka – ‘Geor Lu’
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Mabe Fratti – ‘Algo Grandioso’
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Lori Goldston – ‘We Miss You and Wish You Well’
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Konjur Collective – ‘Jonathan Jackson’
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Bruno Bavota & Chantal Acda – ‘Days Like These’
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