Inspired by her mentor Ran Blake upon her arrival from Mumbai at the end of the seventies, the vocalist Christine Correa with Sam Newsome on soprano saxophone, Andrew Boudreau on piano, Kim Cass on bass, and Michael Sarin on drums takes up the clarion calls and defiant tones of Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, and Oscar Brown Jr. who at the turn of the sixties bore civil rights into the heart of the avant-garde. With an eye towards the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and a cover which references the sit-in movement which spread from Greensboro across the southern United States, the drummer Max Roach and lyricist Oscar Brown began to compose a vocal suite for a pianoless ensemble full of blaring horns and roiling percussion, blazoned with the voice of Abbey Lincoln and released in 1960 as We Insist! with the subtitle Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite. Defining the moment, in 2022 the album was added to the National Recording Registry for cultural, historic, and aesthetic significance, while Correa bolsters her fiery and cadenced rendition with a couple of songs from Percussion Bitter Sweet by Roach and Straight Ahead by Lincoln plus a setting of the Maya Angelou poem ‘Caged Bird’.
Going strong for 35 years, the saxophonist Christoph Gallio’s trio project Day & Taxi offer an interim report by way of a live recording from the Swiss spa town of Baden, Mette Rasmussen, Paul Flaherty, Zach Rowden, and Chris Corsano engage in an assaultive slow dash on saxophones and assorted objects, contrabass, and drums, while Cécile McLorin Salvant follows up her Grammy-nominated debut Nonesuch album Ghost Song with a mix of originals and interpretations dating as far back as the twelfth century, spun around the European folk spirit Mélusine and sung mostly in French with smatterings of Occitan, English, and Haitian Creole. Through the tumult of a long period of physical illness, the Kenyan composer Nyokabi Kariuki offers a final paean to healing, while Molly Joyce holds hands with the Open Arms Dance Project in Boise, interviewing disabled dancers on the concepts of care, strength, and interdependence in a companion piece to Perspective which was one of Culturedarm’s favourite records of last year.
On the latest outpouring from his upcoming album Being, the Senegalese fusion pioneer Baaba Maal collaborates with the Hoddu master and griot storyteller Barou Sall, whose instrument is a kind of lute central to the Fulani oral tradition. For Shelter Press, the Ina GRM director Kassel Jaeger employs musique concrète practices through field recordings, micro-editing, and asynchronous looping to explore the shifting signs and subterranean crevices of life as it slips inside a dream. The Bruiser Brigade wild card ZelooperZ pays skewed homage to Clipse and Pharrell Williams, as Bruiser Wolf adds his inimitable aphorisms and rejoinders to Planet Unfaithful by Fatboi Sharif and Roper Williams. The creative partnership of Anders Jormin and Lena Willemark flourishes again on Pasado en claro, with urgent aid from the late Gangsta Boo, Midwife, and Lane Shi Otayonii the noise duo of Lee Buford and Dylan Walker are in lockstep as Sightless Pit, as Crosslegged gets automated, James Bangura bears witness, and Richard Dawson bites down hard on a frosty bit.
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Kassel Jaeger – ‘Shifted in Dreams’
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Sightless Pit – ‘Calcified Glass’ (feat. YoshimiO & Gangsta Boo)
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Molly Joyce – ‘Care (Open Arms)’
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Christine Correa – ‘When Malindy Sings’
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Cécile McLorin Salvant – ‘D’un feu secret’
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Richard Dawson – ‘Horse and Rider’
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Mette Rasmussen, Paul Flaherty, Zach Rowden, and Chris Corsano – ‘Industrial Sabotage Friday’
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Anders Jormin Quartet – ‘Blue Lamp’
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Fatboi Sharif & Roper Williams – ‘Po Pimping Do or Die’ (feat. Bruiser Wolf)
