#avant garde african

[moonfirebrides]

E-MERGING: Damsel Elysium is the artist searching for deeper connection

[aiartwerk]

Sexy Afro-Futuristic, Cyber Women Art 1. By AI_ART_WERK

[irungu]

WHEN I CAME TO EARTH, 23. 

2023 collection by Kepha Maina.  📸 @irungu_ Production and styling- Bryan Emry @missadhar  @nyakuar_john_

[psychedelic-candy]

Sunlit Ancient African Avant-Garde Sculpture

[dustedmagazine]

Matana Roberts — Coin Coin, Chapter Five: In the Garden (Constellation)

Photo by Anna Niedermeier

This is the fifth album of a projected 12 in Matana Roberts’s Coin Coin series, named after a slave, later activist, Marie Thérèse Coincoin. As with previous volumes, Coincoin’s biography intermingles with folk tales, slave stories and songs, and discussions of the rich, often tragic, history of African Americans. Another element of the Coin Coin series is the relationship between past and present. In this case, the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the present mirrors the story of an illegal and fatal abortion conducted on one of Roberts’s ancestors. In the notes, she says,"I wanted to talk about this issue, but in a way where she gets some sense of liberation.” Rather than being shamed, as so many women currently are in the wake of the SCOTUS decision, in the lyrics Robert’s relative is described as, “electric, alive, spirited, fire, and free.”

Roberts is a versatile artist, a saxophonist and composer who not only works in musical contexts but in theater, fine arts, and poetry. The spoken word portions of Coin, Coin Chapter Five are performed by Roberts and poet Gitnajali Jain. The balance of spoken word and music is well-conceived. The music itself is performed by a host of prominent musicians and produced by Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio). Roberts covers a number of instruments in addition to saxophone, Darius Jones plays alto saxophone, Matt Lavelle, clarinet and trumpet, Mazz Swift, violin, Stuart Bogie, clarinet and bass clarinet, and Mike Pride and Ryan Sawyer play drums and percussion. Pretty much all the performers play tin whistles and sing.

Free jazz is an important component of Robert’s music-making, and it is here in abundance on “Different Rings,” “Shake My Bones,”  and “Predestined Confessions.” The arrangements of these complex pieces are well wrought throughout. “A Caged Dance,” trades a gorgeous post-bop solo with dissonant interjections, providing a polystylistic framework. This is not unique to “A Caged Dance.” A number of pieces combine different idioms. Malone’s synthesizer and Pride and Sawyer’s rockist drumming move the piece outside the jazz tradition. The chorused vocals that sing rounds and the children’s folk song, “All the Pretty Horses,” create some of the most memorable music on the album.

The closing track, “Ain’t I … Your mystery is our history,” with its plethora of tin whistles and jangly percussion, recalls both avant-classical and African music. It is significant that Roberts returns to a bespoke instrumentation and non-Western sound world to send the piece home. Less than halfway through, the Coin Coin series is engaging and ever new. Seven more installments: one is eager to hear what is next.

Christian Carey

[clemsfilmdiary]

Putney Swope (1969, Robert Downey Sr.)

4/7/23

[historybetweenthepages]

Bill Dixon in his studio at Bennington College

Early 1970s

[mywifeleftme]

335: Areski and Fontaine // L'Incendie

L'Incendie Areski and Fontaine 1973, BYG

The late ‘60s and early ‘70s were when the past half-century of avant-garde developments in theatre, literature, film, and art music began to break through into pop. The results of these early flirtations have a sense of discovery and possibility that has continued to captivate generations of new listeners to this day. Brigitte Fontaine and Areski Belkacem’s L’Incendie should absolutely be considered one of the towering classics of the era (and, among the Francophonie, it probably is), but I only came across it for the first time early last year. It reminds me of something from the Velvet Underground / John Cale / Nico universe, simultaneously emblematic of its time and so ahead of it as to sound anachronistic.

On “Les murailles,” tape of Fontaine’s exhalations and what sounds like a kalimba are snipped up and looped to create a tinkling, twitching soundscape that presages the Books or Boards of Canada; the track that follows, “L’engourdie,” layers howling wah-drenched electric guitar behind a pretty acoustic folk pop number that would fit right in on a Brigitte Bardot record; next, the stark “Nous avons tant parlé” could be a theatrical elegy set in a dilapidated seaside church. Every song feels stylistically distinct, but Areski and Fontaine’s creative vision remains consistent; I hear post-punk and Björk and Sonic Youth, and I hear French early music and Berber folk and the ‘50s sound poetry of Henri Chopin in the same measure.

It’s always a challenge reviewing non-English language records because you’re stuck speaking to its purely sonic characteristics, which increases the likelihood you’ll hilariously misread it—call a song a soothing folk idyll when it’s actually about smashing international Jewry or something. With political, lyric-forward stuff like L’Incendie, it also means failing to engage with its message, flattening it as an artwork. (Unfortunately, there is nothing I as a person of French ancestry living in a majority-French city could do or could have done in the past to better interpret this record.) I asked French-language correspondent and girlfriend of the podcast Mea for one of her classic vibe checks, but she told me the reams of notes she took while listening were too dotty to share, so I can only assume hearing and understanding Fontaine’s words in their original tongue unchains some celestial horror.

Few of the lyrics can be easily found online, which forces me to rely on Le Gendre’s analysis, but critic Kevin Le Gendre’s helpful liner notes paint a portrait of a wide-ranging album that engages with recent post-colonialist bloodshed (Jordan’s Black September civil war with PLO forces on “Le 6 septembre”); the medicalization of psychic distress (“Ragilia”); intimacy and coupledom; and much more besides. What I was able to find of Fontaine’s lyrics online have a spiky surrealist poetry to them. From “Après la guerre” (“After the War”):

“Happiness blows The eyelids lie gently The sexes glow The eyes, by moving, make you cum The men returned from the war And on their heads, the grass grows back.”

335/365

[maciejbaranowski]

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2aJelnmYmvEa9SrAyl7987?si=bd1143fb03f447fa

[twistedsoulmusic]

Album of the Week: Accra Quartet - Gb​ɛ​fal​ɔ​i (Travelers) (FPE Records)

Discovering the debut album from Ghanaian-American jazz collective Accra Quartet feels like unearthing a hidden gem. Now, I'm usually shy with hyperbole, but this album is nothing short of phenomenal.

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Video: Nite Bjuti Shares Woozy Contemplation of Black Girlhood and Womanhood

New Video: Nite Bjuti Shares Woozy Contemplation of Black Girlhood and Womanhood @candicehoyes @Val_Inc @WhirlwindRecord @MoraMayAgency @mimijonesmusic

Nite Bjuti (pronounced as Night Beauty) — Candice Hoyes, Val Jeanty, and Mimi Jones — is an an acclaimed trio of Afro Caribbean improvisational artists, who use electronics, vocalism, bass, Haitian rhythms, sampling and spoken word to cultivate their narrative journey. The trio draw inspiration from a a centuries’ old Hatian folk tale called “Night Beauty,” about a girl whose bones begin to sing…

[heaven4d]

(Pan African Music)

[thegtw]

[psychedelic-candy]

Sunlit Ancient African Avant-Garde Sculpture

[evilthotiana]

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