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 … Read More “Roscoe Mitchell: In Walked Buckner”

Free Jazz, Freedom Now, Freedom Suite reflected attempts to break out of the Tin Pan Alley penitentiary where creativity is imprisoned by money. Trane, Archie, Ayler, Cecil, Ornette, Sun Ra, Pharaoh, Milford, Graves, Pullen were some of the best known escapees, their music authentic departure and resistance. The academic tip here is ubiquitous, except for … Read More “Von Freeman/Ed Petersen: Von & Ed”

Blue Boye Hemphill produced on Mbari. Ditto, “Dogon AD”, which struck a definite note of freshness, thoughtfulness, most impressive for the subtlety of its variations and inventive compositional logic. Hemphill’s sparkled with The World Saxophone Quartet (David Murray, Oliver Lake and Hamiett Bluiett), a post ’60s watershed. Hemphill’s playing, self-consciously cerebral, sometimes to a fault, … Read More “Julius Hemphill: Blue Boye”