Jazz violinists. Yes, they do exist.If you get a chance to see Billy Bang live, I suggest you take advantage of it. I caught him last year with Kahil El’Zabar, and it was a hell of a show.
A Vietnam combat veteran, Billy Bang has explored that experience in his music – most recently on his 2005 CD “Vietnam: Reflections.” (Available through iTunes and eMusic.) You can download a FREE MP3 off that album (“Doi Moi”) by following this link to Firehouse 12, the New Haven performance venue. (Look under “Music Samples.”)
But I want to play you a different track. Click here to hear “Reflections” on my Vox blog. It also showcases John Hicks on piano, Henry Threadgill on flute and Ted Daniel on trumpet.
Tomorrow being the final day of summer, it’ll also be the end of my cavalcade of free-MP3 links. Hope y’all enjoyed it as much as I did.
Aw man, you're really starting to stretch on the artists. I likes, I likes. Billy Bang is REAL baad. I really love that Black Nationalist jazz from the mid- to late 60s (Art Ensemble, Pharoah Sanders, John Carter and Bobby Bradford, Archie Shepp, Randy Weston) that evolved into a real fertile period in the 70s (WSQ, Music, Inc., Henry Threadgill, David Murray, Horace Tapscott, Billy Bang) into the electric 80s (Prime Time, Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, Blood Ulmer, Very Very Circus/Make A Move, and Sonny Sharrock) into the 90s Jean-Paul Bourelly and the 00s with some of James Carter's more adventurous stuff. Love this kind of sound.
ReplyDeleteYou should check out Billy Bang with William Parker and Hamid Drake on "Scrapbook". Funky, folky and freaky all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteHere's the emusic link;
http://www.emusic.com/album/William-Parker-Scrapbook-MP3-Download/10860970.html
Thanx Dacks. Will do.
ReplyDeleteDacks: Downloading as we speak.
ReplyDeleteDeAngelo: I love how you draw that straight line through 40 years of cultural history.
The thing is, some of it can get into, some of it I can't (yet). I love WSQ, David Murray, Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy... but could never get my head around the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Shepp's "out" stuff.
The closer they bring it to the funk, the better I can handle it.