Chicago-based composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid and the International Anthem label have recently released a powerful new recording, Requiem for Jazz, that explores the strong interconnections between the foundations of jazz and the African American experience.

The source material was taken from a live performance during the 2019 Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago, and featured a 15-piece instrumental ensemble of black Chicago-based musicians, a 4-person choir (featuring singers from Black Monument Ensemble), dancers, and visual artists, and then was later edited, remixed and reworked during post-production. The brilliant 24-track opus fuses together spirituals, the blues, cosmic jazz, drum machines, and beyond to create a thought-provoking work inspired by Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz.

Another strong influence that can be felt throughout this recording is the Sun Ra Arkestra and Afrofuturism, with current leader of the Arkestra, Marshall Allen and longtime member Knoel Scott appearing at the end of the recording.

Requiem for Jazz is a remarkable musical statement that should be listen to its entirety to be fully appreciated, celebrating jazz as black music, rooted in the black experience that looks ahead to a hopeful future of endless creative expression.

Angel Bat Dawid — ‘Requiem for Jazz’
(International Anthem Recording Co.)

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

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• Cosmic
• Jazz
• Spiritual Jazz