Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood: Live

10

Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood: Live

By

View read count
Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood: Live
When the Chicago-based clarinetist, vocalist, composer, poet and spiritual-jazz shaman Angel Bat Dawid performed with Tha Brothahood at the London Jazz Festival in November 2019, she was riding high on the critical acclaim surrounding her recently released debut album, The Oracle (International Anthem). A cosmic lightning bolt of free jazz, mutant funk, electronica and spoken word with an impact on a par with Samuel L. Jackson's reading of Ezekiel 25:17 in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, The Oracle confronts the ugliness of white racism in the US and, by extension, anywhere else in the world. It sounds like The Last Poets might once have sounded fueled by Sun Ra's Arkestra, the spirit of Roland Kirk, and either George Clinton 's Parliament / Funkadelic or a truckload of mescaline.

Live is a concert recording of The Oracle, made at JazzFest Berlin, where the Chicagoans' 2019 European tour began. It was not an auspicious start. The gig was preceded by a series of racist incidents Dawid and the band suffered during their short stay in Berlin, shamefully including one from JazzFest staff and another from staff at The Ellington Hotel (so named because it stands on the site of the historic Badewanne Jazz Club, which hosted Duke Ellington in the 1950s).

The upside of these incidents was that they replaced any jet lag Dawid and Tha Brothahood may have been feeling with a shot of galvanising fury. If the performances on The Oracle blaze with passion, those on Live are even more intense. Most of the material is from the earlier album, an overdubbed solo set which Dawid assembled herself and most of which she wrote. The only pieces not wholly composed by Dawid are "Destination," whose topline was written by Yusef Lateef, and "What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black," which has lyrics by the late Chicago poet and African American activist Margaret Burroughs.

Of the Berlin show, Dawid says, "It was very deep, and really helped me to process all the rage, and uncomfortable things I was feeling. It made me think of all the artists of the past who endured way more than I ever will with this music industry. It was a very freeing and beautiful show. We played our ass off." They certainly did.

Track Listing

Enlightenment; Destination; Capetown; Black Family; What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black; London; We Hearby Declare the African Look; We Are Starzz; VIKTORious Return; Tha Wicked Shall Not Prevail; Melo Deez From Heab'N; Dr. Wattz n' em; HELL.

Personnel

Deacon Otis Cooke
synthesizer
Xristian Espinoza
saxophone, tenor
Norman W. Long
electronics
Adam Zanolini
multi-instrumentalist
Isaiah Collier
saxophone
Additional Instrumentation

Angel Bat Dawid: clarinet, vocals; Deacon Otis Cooke: vocals, synthesizer; Viktor Le Givens: vocals, auxiliary instruments; Xristian Espinoza: tenor saxophone, percussion; Norman W. Long: electronics, synthesizer; Dr. Adam Zanolini: double bass, bass guitar, soprano saxophone, percussion; Isaiah Collier: drums; Asher Simiso: Gameddze drums.

Album information

Title: Live | Year Released: 2020 | Record Label: International Anthem Recording Company

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.