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Seamus Blake: Compared to What
Here's their terrific take on "Compared to What," a tune forever linked to Harris through Swiss Movement—the wildly successful 1969 live album he recorded with Les McCann at the Montreux Jazz Festival. In Seamus Blake's hands, the Eugene McDaniels composition sounds strikingly modern, reminding us that protest songs never fade away because the world never quite catches up with their message. Songs like "Compared to What"—just like "What's Going On," "Strange Fruit," or "Imagine," among dozens more—become classics because history keeps giving them encores. After all, social injustice is never really created or destroyed—just endlessly transformed, more or less as described by the law of conservation of mass... (injustices).
Blake and company breathe fresh life into the tune while preserving Harris's adventurous spirit, with the song's message remaining front and center in the capable hands of special guest vocalist Dawn Pemberton.
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