Composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer and pedagogue Bat Angel David announced a new album, Requiem for Jazzarrives March 24 via International Anthem (Pre-order). Requiem for Jazz is a 12-movement sequel, largely inspired by Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The cry of jazz. Like the film, the composition aims to elevate black musical traditions,”[picking] the work of liberation presented by Bland’s film, taking the message of joy and suffering in the classic black tradition into a contemporary setting,” by Bandcamp.
“I want us to have this wonderful conversation that Ed Bland started over 50 years ago and I want to continue the conversation, because it’s a loving conversation that we need to have with each other,” said Angel.
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 of his sound is “RECORDARE – Recall the Joy”, the sixth movement of the suite. It opens with a gripping acapella voice, giving way to a swell of frenetic brass, clarinet, piano and drums. Listen to “RECORDARE – Recall the Joy” and check out the artwork and track listing for Requiem for Jazz below.
Requiem for Jazz Track list
1. Jazz is just the nigger cry of joy and pain
2.INTROIT- Joy and suffering
3.Jazz is the musical expression of the triumph of the Negro spirit
4.KYRIE ELEISON – Lawd Hav’ Thanks
5. This endless repetition is like a Chain around the Spirit. And is a reflection of the negro’s denial of a future in the American way of life
6.DIAS IRE – Chain around the mind
7. Another limiting factor in jazz is the changes
8. TUBA MIRUM – Changes
9. The Negro lives the endless daily humiliation of American life which bequeaths him a future without a future
10.REX TREMENDAE – Future without future
11. The negro transforms the image that America has of him into a transport of joy!
12.RECORDARE-Recall the Joy 02:06
13. Jazz reflects the improvised life imposed on the Negro
14. Confusion-Repression
15. Through Spirituals, through Blues, then through Jazz we made a memory of our past and a promise of all to come
16.LACRIMOSA- Crying Our Lady of Sorrows
17.Because jazz is the only part of American life where white people have to be humble to the nigger
18. OFFERING – HUMILITY
19. Only when Whites have paid the price of suffering to be equal Negroes
20. SANCTUS – Holy, Holy, Holy
21. The body of jazz 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 and Knoel Scott
24.Long Tone for Rayna Golding (A Binti Zawadi our future)