Partially inspired by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s seminal 1959 documentary The Cry of Jazz, which intersperses performances by Sun Ra and a series of conversations on the nature of jazz by a group of intellectuals in a club with scenes of life from black neighbourhoods in Chicago, this week the composer and clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid orchestrates a requiem with operatic thrust and a cosmic bent, adding interludes and post-production to a project that premiered in 2019 at Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Taking its cue from one of the most contentious lines from the film, which asserts that ‘jazz is merely the Negro’s cry of joy and suffering’, for the performance which became Requiem for Jazz the conductor was joined by a fifteen-piece musical ensemble, dancers, visual artists, and a four-strong choir, plus special guests in the form of the saxophonists Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra, manifesting the triumph of spirit over crushing restraints while carrying black classical traditions into contemporary settings.
Rekindling the fires of jazz while laying the template for a future rag, elevating the wide intervals and dazzling harmonics of the great trumpeter Woody Shaw, or opening up chasms in the rap game alongside justmadnice and AKAI SOLO, now for the deluxe edition of Jazz Codes the time splitter and code shredder Moor Mother is joined by Kyle Kidd, Keir Neuringer, and Aquiles Navarro as she contemplates the capitalistic structures which shape popular forms, speaking about the whitewashing of poetry and jazz and asking whence lies room for innovation. Recombining after a spontaneous performance in their adopted hometown of New York City back in 2018, the trio of Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily share six iridescent odes to the anxiety of separation and unrequited love, as Aftab’s ravishing Urdu glides like a silvery moon over pools of piano and earthy bass, shiver-swooning and glacially melting.
Running with a glass egg, Björk and Shygirl showed a steady pair of hands earlier this year on the remix to the Fossora single ‘Ovule’, where the South London singer added digitized squibs and soft-lipped blissed-out vocals to the fanfare of retreating horns and processed timpani drums, over Sega Bodega’s sweeping production. Now the Icelandic artist returns the favour with a thoroughgoing remix of ‘Woe’ from Shygirl’s debut album Nymph, reaching for the sublime and scurrilously seeing things from both sides in a paean to desiring and not-getting buoyed by plosive beats and supple spines.
Quenched by a couple of cover albums in the form of her acclaimed 2018 effort Ventriloquism which ran the gamut of eighties and nineties classics in the vein of freestyle, quiet storm, and new jack swing, plus an appearance on last month’s COOKUP by Sam Gendel which offered a unique take on fin-de-siècle R&B, now Meshell Ndegeocello preps her Blue Note debut The Omnichord Real Book as the Grammy Award-winning neo-soul artist embraces jazz and roots alongside a stellar cast of collaborators including Brandee Younger, Ambrose Akinmusire, Jeff Parker, Joel Ross, Josh Johnson, Thandiswa, and Julius Rodriguez.
The composer Molly Joyce, choreographer and dancer Jerron Herman, writer Max Greyson, and director Austin Regan unite to examine historical myths of left and right, exploring the sinister and cursed left hand side of the body in contrast to the right side long held aloft as healing and beneficent. Developed from field recordings, interviews, and observations collected in the villages of Podolínec, Lomnička, Levočské Vrchy, and Kolačkov, areas of northern and eastern Slovakia with significant Romani enclaves, the team of Marika Smreková, Elia Moretti, Anna Khvyl, and John-Robin Bold question the way we listen to the surrounding world through the preservation and sublimation of crackling leaves and children at play, traditional modes of storytelling, hesitation, gesture, murmuration, and silence.
Embracing the piano as her primary instrument in collusion with her startling voice, recorded from a cafe snugly nestled within an ancient Japanese forest, the Boredoms and OOIOO leader YoshimiO collaborates with IzumikiYoshi on modular synths, blending wild tendrils and the windswept, ramshackle blues into cascades of brightly coloured waves and dotted sound constellations. Laura Cannell emanates from inside an empty shipping container in a Norfolk cattle field on violin and overbowed violin, Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro announce their engagement with a kiss on their joint extended play, and Cécile McLorin Salvant opens windows onto the Mélusine myth through Haitian Vodou and the frolic of French chanson. Bruiser Wolf keeps hustling, rapt with love on the deluxe edition of Magik by dream beach, Dj.Mc cuts a vaporous trail of Chicago footwork, and Yaya Bey ascends the North Star on the closer to the latest roundup of best new music.
* * *
* * *
Angel Bat Dawid – ‘INTROIT- Joy n’ Suff’rin’
* * *
Shygirl – ‘Woe (I See It From Your Side)’ (Björk Remix)
* * *
ROSALÍA & Rauw Alejandro – ‘BESO’
* * *
Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily – ‘Haseen Thi’
* * *
Cécile McLorin Salvant – ‘Fenestra’
* * *
Moor Mother – ‘WE GOT THE JAZZ’ (feat. Kyle Kidd, Keir Neuringer, and Aquiles Navarro)
* * *
Laura Cannell – ‘Swarm Intelligence’
* * *
dream beach – ‘Mendoza’ (feat. Bruiser Wolf)
* * *
* * *
YoshimiOizumikiYoshiduO – ‘mini yO’
* * *
Symposium Musicum – ‘Anonymous’
* * *
* * *
