Jazz Politics

Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. 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.

Sahib Shihab - Sahib Shihab & The Danish Radio Jazz Group (1965) {Oktav Music OKCD 1111 rel 2008}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 275 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 90 Mb
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© 1965, 2011 Oktav Music | OKCD 1111
Jazz / Bop / Hard Bop / Big Band / Saxophone / Flute

Shihab toured Europe with Quincy Jones in 1959 after getting fed up with racial politics in USA and ultimately settled in Scandinavia. In 1961, he joined The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band and remained a key figure in the band for the 12 years it ran. Needless to say, he became a very influencial figure in the Scandinavian jazz scene. The present album features Shihab's own compositions and arrangements for the Danish Radio Jazz group, of which he had been a member since 1963. The brilliant group includes such Danish jazz stars as Bent Jaedig (tenor sax), Bent Axen (piano), Alex Riel (drums) and the young Niels Henning Ørsted Pederson on bass!

The Black Art Jazz Collective's mission statement celebrates African-American cultural and political icons. At the core is a modernism that conjures up the classic bands of Art Blakey and acoustic Miles Davis. But with the contemporary soul-fueled solos and locked-in rhythm the band is more likely to launch into a counterpoint riff or the spacious funk of hip-hop than the svelte lines of a classic walking bass. The Black Art Jazz Collective delivers strong original tunes and purposeful, form-hugging improvisation that keeps things looking forward rather than back. And with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt on ebullient form, and saxophonist Wayne Escoffery's muscularity contrasting with the tenderness of James Burton III's trombone, the focus never becomes diffuse or wavers.

This album is one of several available collections focusing on the type of jazz that was created right under the noses of the Nazis during the second World War. Swing Tanzen Verboten! Swing in Belgium and France is a lengthy Proper Box collection that covers much of the same ground, although in much more detail. The subject is more than just engaging on several different levels. Purely musically speaking, there are many good things to be found in the sounds of groups such as the Orchestre Musette and Eddie Barclay, although listeners without the ears for the vintage years will no doubt toss around words such as "quaint" and "dated"…