Live is a truly evocative album from one of the many mythic-level troubadours of jazz who call Chicago home. Only, unlike other flights of fancy that persist and spread between the ears and mouths of folks in the windy city (Mrs. O'Leary's Cow and her culpability in the Chicago fire, the Mayor reigning in TIF giveaways, sightings of The Great Lakes Mothman [the last one might actually be real]) Angel is not only a concrete reality, but a manifestation of intent and love, whose presence elevates all other aspects of her surroundings. Her debut album for International Anthem, the Oracle, was one of the more intimate and versatile records I had the pleasure of encountering in 2019. Listening to that record felt like solving a riddle with a friend. A lyrical mystery written on a shred of cloth tucked behind the wallpaper of an old house. The poetry of its message leading you to the revelation of its conclusion. Her new album Live is just as intimate and moving, but instead of a game you share, it's an intervention. There is something you've got to hear and you're probably not going to like it when that thing Angel has inside of her slips out.
Live captures a performance given by Angel during the Berlin Jazzfest in November of 2019. On stage that night she was backed by Tha Brotherhood, an adopted family of musicians that includes Deacon Otis Cooke on synth, Xristian Espinoza on tenor sax and percussion, Norman W. Long who provides additional synths and electronic accompaniments, Dr. Adam Zanolini on bass (and double bass) and soprano saxophone, drummers Isaiah Collier and Asher Simiso Gamedze, and Viktor Le Givens, filling in with additional instrumentation and accompaniments. An array of talent on par with any Arkestra assembled by the great galaxy mover Sun Ra.
Live doesn't begin with the song "London" but it's where our discussion will begin. The song opens with the clarion current of Angel's clarinet, its smooth cylindrical tone and melody guiding you into its warm interior, like it was beckoning to you from the hearth of a great study, in a sturdily built but drafty manor. Once inside you will be greeted by the rippling massage of a Zanolini's bass and told tales of restless spirits and dark thoughts allowed to slip from the mind and into the world, to drift up like clouds to kiss the moon and fill the sky with a crowded affliction. The song goes through an imperceptible, transmogrifying threshold after a point, transitioning from a lightly maudlin Coltrane like spiritual jazz-font to a psychedelic, free jazz freak-out and subconscious invading, excavation undertaken with the finesse of a beat-poet driving an augur through the trough of your brain. The reason this is a good place to begin discussing the album is because of the strong spiritual jazz and post-bop sensibilities that thread it's reticulated intersections and which continue to wind their way through the remainder of the album, knitting it together into a cohesive whole. What you will find is that all of these threads carry with them a dusty, bitter resin and that sticks to the skin like ash, singing and discoloring it with a patina of chalky film, as if it were the still-smoldering remains of burnt offering. Many of the elements of "London," the leading clarinet solos, elastic-thump of the bass, and irrepressible, expressive vocal melodies, frictionlessly passing through an inexhaustible evolution- all are ripely exhibited on the sky-fire spotlighted, soul-bearing declaration of "We Are Starzz," and the barefooted, rain-baiting swirl and liberated tilt of "Melo Deez From Heab'N." However, even a comprehensive description of these tracks and parsing of their emotional content cannot entirely do justice to the context of this record. For that, you need to look to "Black Family."
The lyrics of "Black Family" are few, but each is heavy enough to pin a ship's belly to the sea bed and prevent it from leaving the harbor. Few they may be, but powerful none the less. Swept along by blue and deeply broody bass tones, the blushing-snap of a breakbeat, and the melancholy leap of a slightly off-key piano riff, it demands your attention and recognition in ways that are unexpected, compelling, and to an extent, exhausting. It insists on audience validation in a manner that affirms the fact that such validation is not the source of the performers' strength and resilience, and that anticipates residence from its audience in its a simple prayer. The song cuts through these barriers as if they were mere spoke with a truth that is set loose like an arrow into the night air, soaring beyond the horizon to reach a new day. An eruption of emotion barely contained by the robust talent of Angel and her band, concentrated into a theatrical lament that speaks to a profound sadness. A hole in her heart where if you were to throw a stone, it may fall forever. "Black Family" is both the point where the album stops, and where it begins in earnest. All other sentiments and sounds flow through it or are manifest in its shadow. Including, the tear-choaked unfurling and uneasy, creeping calm of "What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black." Through the lens of "Black Family" you can see the struggle expressed through this album. A battle to be seen. A battle to be heard. A fight against a kind of psychic-death. A single theater of engagement in a war raged for the right to remain alive, documented on tape.
There is context to Live beyond the daily struggle for life and equity that black people are engaged in the United States. In fact, it is a bouquet of subtly villainous particulars. As the band was preparing to leave for Berlin, Le Givens somehow ended up passed out on the streets of Chicago and woke up in a hospital bed after having been robbed. Being unconscious and alone, in the open air of a large city like Chicago is dangerous enough of a situation for one to find themselves in, even if they're not black. Let alone in November. Winter comes early in this part of the Great Lakes and it is a miracle that Le Givens didn't die of exposure before he could be rescued by emergency workers. Before Le Givens was found safe though, the band was forced to inform their contact with the festival in Berlin that one of their members had gone missing. They were informed by the representative that if they did not find a suitable substitute for Le Givens, then their pay for the performance would be reduced. This set the tone for the rest of their trip, where Angel and the band would encounter prescription as to where they could travel and other smaller, incidents of aggression that would build until a point of rupture. That being a confrontation with the staff at the Duke Ellington Hotel over whether Angel could perform at the piano in their lobby. The audio from the highly charged interaction is captured in the opening track "Enlightenment," which ends with an overdub of one of her bandmates telling Angel that it is time to go, a subtle variant on the phrase "it's not worth it." Live is the staking of Angel's and her bandmate's claim on the performance they gave in Berlin. While they were made to feel like outsiders and oddities while in Berlin, releasing the performance as an album on International Anthem feels like a way of bringing it home. A way of saying that it was always theirs. They will share their gifts with you of course, provided that you realize is not yours for the taking. It is more than just a commodity. It's emotions more than just fuel to be consumed. Live is a conversation, not a transaction. And beyond that, a conversation where you're going to be doing most of the listening.
