Angel Bat Dawid announces new album ‘Requiem For Jazz,’ shares “RECORDARE – Recall the Joy”
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and educator Angel Bat Dawid has announced a new album, Requiem For Jazz, is coming on March 24 via International Anthem (pre-order). Requiem For Jazz is a suite in 12 movements, largely inspired by Edward O. Bland's 1959 film The Cry Of Jazz. Like the film, the composition aims to uplift Black musical traditions, "[picking] up the liberation work laid out by Bland’s film, taking the message of joy and suffering within the Black classical tradition into a contemporary setting," per Bandcamp.
"I want us to have this very wonderful conversation that Ed Bland started over 50 years ago and I want to continue the conversation; because this is a loving conversation that we need to have with each other," Angel said.
Requiem For Jazz originally premiered at Chicago's Hyde Park Jazz Festival in 2019; for the album, Angel Bat Dawid added interludes, vocals, and additional sounds to recordings of the performance. Angel composed, arranged, conducted, mixed, and produced the album in its entirety. The first glimpse at its sound is "RECORDARE - Recall the Joy," the suite's sixth movement. It opens with striking acapella vocals, giving way to a swell of frenetic brass, clarinet, piano, and drums. Listen to "RECORDARE - Recall the Joy," and check out the artwork and tracklist for Requiem For Jazz below.
Requiem For Jazz Tracklist
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 02:06
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)