Angel Bat Dawid - The Oracle
The Guardian 80
(International Anthem Co)
Informed by opera and jazz, the clarinettist and composer’s first release has a futuristic, spectral quality
Describing herself as a clarinettist, composer and “spiritual jazz soothsayer”, Angel Bat Dawid is clearly a busy woman. She runs a record store in Chicago’s South Side, organises interdisciplinary events with the Participatory Music Coalition and often sits in with assorted musicians across Chicago’s music venues. She even wrote an opera last year inspired by the Song of Solomon, featuring dancers, puppeteers and dense orchestrations performed by her own Cosmic Love Arkestra.
The music she records under her own name, however, tends to be much more introspective and hymnal, multitracked on clarinet, piano, percussion and vocals. The Oracle, her first proper release (out on 9 February), was built up from fragments recorded on her phone, often backstage before gigs or while touring the world. Instead of sounding like clunky, lo-fi demos, the finished article resembles a series of spectral, reverb-drenched messages from the afterlife, passed through the dub chamber.
Continue reading... Fri Feb 01 10:00:47 GMT 2019Pitchfork 80
The debut from the Chicago-based composer and clarinetist serves as a vibrant, spiritual, free-jazz document of black life as it stands today.
Thu Feb 07 06:00:00 GMT 2019The Free Jazz Collective 80
By Lee Rice Epstein
Independent record company International Anthem has become an incubator for philosophical, political, and visionary creative artists like Ben LaMar Gay, Makaya McCraven, Jaimie Branch, and the Irreversible Entanglements collective of Keir Neuringer, Moor Mother, Luke Stewart, Aquiles Navarro and Tcheser Holmes. Each has approached universalism from a different perspective and tuned their thrilling music to an often biting frequency. Add to that list Angel Bat Dawid. As a fairly recent convert from 9–5 clock-puncher to full-time artist (as detailed in a fantastic Chicago Reader feature by Leor Gali l ), it hasn’t taken long for her reputation to grow: In addition to her own groups, Dawid has performed with LaMar Gay, Branch, Matthew Lux, and Roscoe Mitchell. For her debut, The Oracle, she took a Mitchell-esque approach towards performance that stretches beyond a simple solo album and presents a holistic concept of Dawid as a singular artist.
On “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black? (Dr. Margaret Burroughs),” Dawid sings lines from Burroughs’s essential 1963 poem, "What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black? (Reflections of an African-American Mother)."A decade later, Burroughs revisited the poem with a look at the violence of capitalism, oppression, and faith. "What Shall We Tell Our Children? An Addenda, 1973" features something of a guiding principle for Dawid’s music (and, perhaps, International Anthem as a whole):
We shall tell them
To keep the belief that the purpose of life
Is to continue to grow and create
And to contribute to growth and create
And to contribute to growth and
Creativity toward a better life
For people now and for generations to come
Throughout The Oracle, Dawid circles back to themes of growth and creation. Tasking herself with performing, recording, and mixing, Dawid began many of these as sketches for her main group, Tha Brotherhood. Recording at Radcliffe Hunter mansion and in London and Cape Town, Dawid’s songs communicate musical ideas, as well as states of time and place. Both “Capetown” and “London” catch her in improvisatory contexts, capturing the state of a mind in transit. On “Capetown,” Dawid is joined by drummer Asher Simiso Gamedze, and their duet is lengthy and relaxed. The shining center of the album, “We Are Starzz,” is an incredible melange of voice and clarinet, expertly intertwined and luminescent. The Oracle runs the gamut from cosmic to brittle, but it’s Dawid’s sincerity and dynamic performance that make it so memorable.
The Oracle by Angel Bat Dawid Tue Oct 08 04:00:00 GMT 2019