October 1999

Roscoe Mitchell
In Walked Buckner
Delmark Records

By Amiri Baraka

Mitchell's music is an eloquent paradigm for Du Bois' "double consciousness," the Afro-American "twoness," the contradiction, between being American or black, though they are both. This record swings between warmly acrid, bebopish grooves, and a pastiche of Berg, Webern. "Off Shore" is a few kilometers out. In Walked Buckner straightahead, tuneful... Roscoe's baritone, lovely...the music too. "Squeaky," back off-shore, contemplating.