Angel Bat Dawid - Requiem for Jazz (2023) [Official Digital Download]

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid weaves together a variety of musical strands to create a powerful, ritual-like statement in her twelve-movement suite, Requiem for Jazz. It's a sweeping, emotional portrait of collective African American joy, struggle, and creativity. The composition takes up the entirety of this 2023 release which features Dawid leading a large instrumental ensemble and a small mixed vocal group. Additionally, Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott appear on one track. (A live performance that this recording draws from also included dancers, set design, and visuals.)

Requiem for Jazz brings to mind Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues and The Cry of My People, Kurt Weill's theater music, and much more. The suite's lyrics include material from two very different sources: the dialogue of The Cry of Jazz, a philosophical documentary (the film also includes dramatic sections) by Edward O. Bland, which was released in 1959; and parts of the Roman Catholic requiem liturgy. This pairing reflects Dawid's general aesthetic, one that integrates numerous styles to make her own distinctive Afrofuturist art.

Bland's film asserts that jazz must evolve; the true liberation of African Americans requires new forms, new sounds. At one point, a character says, "Jazz is dead because the Negro needs more room to tell his story," and then adds words that also appear in Dawid's suite: "The jazz body is dead, but the spirit of jazz is alive." The film includes performance footage of Sun Ra and his group and suggests that the great bandleader's innovations point a way forward. Requiem for Jazz can be seen as another example of the forward-looking music that Bland might have had in mind. At one point in the piece, singing evocative of spirituals soars over lush strings before deep-toned bass and finger snaps straight out of hip-hop appear. Elsewhere, a mysterious psychedelic loop precedes a plaintive unaccompanied trumpet. One cut looks to both late 20th century pop and early jazz sounds. Again and again, Dawid successfully combines disparate elements in this borderless and ambitious work.

TRACKLIST

1. Angel Bat Dawid - Jazz is merely the Negroes cry of Joy & Suffering
2. Angel Bat Dawid - INTROIT- Joy n’ Suff’rin
3. Angel Bat Dawid - Jazz is the musical expression of the triumph of the Negroes Spirit
4. Angel Bat Dawid - KYRIE ELEISON- Lawd Hav’ Merci
5. Angel Bat Dawid - This endless repetition is like a Chain around the Spirit. And is a reflection of the denial of a future to the Negro in the American way of life
6. Angel Bat Dawid - DIAS IRE- Chain Around the Spirit
7. Angel Bat Dawid - Another restraining factor in Jazz are the changes
8. Angel Bat Dawid - TUBA MIRUM- The Changes
9. Angel Bat Dawid - The Negro experiences the endless daily humiliation of American life which bequeaths him a Futureless Future
10. Angel Bat Dawid - REX TREMENDAE –Futureless Future
11. Angel Bat Dawid - The Negro transforms America’s image of him into a transport of Joy!
12. Angel Bat Dawid - RECORDARE-Recall the Joy
13. Angel Bat Dawid - Jazz reflects the improvised life thrust upon the Negro
14. Angel Bat Dawid - CONFUTATIS-Repression
15. Angel Bat Dawid - Through Spirituals, through the Blues, then through Jazz we made a memory of our past and a promise of all to come
16. Angel Bat Dawid - LACRIMOSA- Weeping our Lady of Sorrow
17. Angel Bat Dawid - Because Jazz is the one element in American life where whites must be humble to the Negro
18. Angel Bat Dawid - OFFERTURIUM-HOSTIAS-Humility
19. Angel Bat Dawid - Only when whites have paid the price in suffering to be the Negroes equal
20. Angel Bat Dawid - SANCTUS- Holy, Holy, Holy
21. Angel Bat Dawid - The Jazz body is dead but the Spirit of Jazz is Alive
22. Angel Bat Dawid - AGNUS DEI-Jazz is Dead!
23. Angel Bat Dawid - LUX AETERNA – Eternal Light (Angel Bat Dawid) / My Rhapsody (Severson-Leist) feat. Marshall Allen & Knoel Scott
24. Angel Bat Dawid - Long Tone for Rayna Golding (A Binti Zawadi our Future)



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