A Re-evaluation

The blue note was likely born out of a moment of intensity. Intensity is the convergence of knowing a thing exists and feeling it. And then really knowing it.

Lines of intensity in between spaces of lament. This is what I heard in my latest journey with Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. There are lines to be worried in our times. Times which are filled with a continuing pain of the quotidian modernity we have been experienced, but which now seem to be shot through with a particular kind of intensity.

Awakening us or perhaps alerting us to the necessity of sitting through the meaning of all this is a trumpet and flugelhorn, djembe and congas. Two sets of instruments, together with a rhythm section that are configured in such a making and unmaking of what we have come to call “jazz,” or as Christian reminds us, a West African form he calls “creative improvised music.”  This is "now" music.

And in the intensity of that horn and in the persistence of that rhythm, we are not called to be entertained or impressed. This is not a question of western artistic flourish.

The lines have to be worried again. In his music, Christian is calling us to feel this place where we are, so that we may know it. It is not about escape or avoidance. It is a Blues that we all have to stay within. It is a lament we must feel. The lines have to be worried.

In announcing the set, he declared that what we will experience is a “re-evaluation.” What is it that must be re-evaluated? It is our relationship to this ancient form represented to us in new instruments, given to us in such a time as this. What will be our relationship to those messages felt in that note that calls us to intensely feel for each other? Can these rituals of lamentations produce the human connections that the Blues anticipates? This remains our challenge. Lines must be worried.

Personnel:

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (trumpet, flugelhorn,tambourine, percussion)

Weedie Braimah (percussion)

Joe Dyson (drums)

Lawrence Fields (Fender Rhodes, keyboard)

Kris Funn (bass)

Logan Richardson (alto saxophone)

Set 1:

"I Own the Night"

"Songs She Never Heard"

"West of the West"

"Eye of the Hurricane"

"The Last Chieftain"

Set 2:

"I Own the Night"

"Songs She Never Heard"

"Blue Monk" (with special guests)

"The Walk" (featuring Javier Starks)

"West of the West"

"The Last Chieftain"

City Winery

Washington, DC

July 14, 2019