IMRC0061

Angel Bat Dawid
Requiem for Jazz

Released March 24, 2023
Available on LP/CD/Digital via our Bandcamp page

Today, composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz, out March 24th on International Anthem. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators. The lead single “RECORDARE-Recall the Joy” is available today and accompanied by a video by Cyrus Moussavi.

Itself an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, The Cry of Jazz draws formal comparisons between the structure of jazz music and the African American experience - as one of freedom and restraint, of joy and suffering - that manifests in the triumph of spirit over the crushing prejudice of daily life.

Cutting together archive reel from Black neighborhoods in Chicago with live performance footage from Sun Ra and his Arkestra among others, the film remains a radical and prescient evocation of Black pride and its roots in the history of jazz, from spirituals to blues and beyond.

As South African writer Nombuso Mathibela captures in the album’s liner notes:

[Music is our weapon of struggle]
that radiantly holds our positive aspiration, group pride and determination as Black people. Sonics! our beautiful fire that gave light to the world.
And a world that gave us blues. The blues that gave us Black in jazz

Drawing a through line to today’s vibrant avant-garde, Angel Bat Dawid’s Requiem For Jazz picks up the liberation work laid out by Bland’s film, taking the message of joy and suffering within the Black classical tradition into a contemporary setting.

Music from the project was originally premiered at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago in 2019, where Angel conducted a multigenerational fifteen-piece instrumental ensemble of Black musicians from across Chicago’s creative community, alongside a four-person choir (featuring singers from Black Monument Ensemble) as well as dancers and visual artists.

Recordings from the performance were then mixed and post-produced by Angel, who added interludes, vocals and additional sounds. As well as transcribing a piece from the film, Requiem For Jazz also alludes to The Cry of Jazz through contributions from the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott on the album’s final movement, which were recorded remotely at the historic Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra in Philadelphia in late 2020.

Featuring artwork by frequent collaborator (and Black Monument Ensemble lead) Damon Locks, Requiem For Jazz is presented as a deluxe, heavyweight gatefold 2xLP, that also includes a fold-out poster designed by Jeremiah Chiu and poetry written by Angel Bat Dawid in dedication to all of her collaborators on the project.

Born in Atlanta, Angel Bat Dawid has established herself as a crucial and inspiring figure on the Chicago jazz scene, releasing three albums on International Anthem: her widely-acclaimed 2019 debut The Oracle; a live album with her septet Tha Brothahood in 2020; and 2021’s Hush Harbor Volume 1 cassette mixtape.

“I want us to have this very wonderful conversation that Ed Bland started over 50 years ago and I want to continue the conversation; because this is a loving conversation that we need to have with each other” - Angel Bat Dawid