After they met at a Musicians Against Police Brutality event in 2015, Keir Neuringer, Camae Ayewa, Luke Stewart, Aquiles Navarro and Tcheser Holmes founded the project Irreversible Entanglements to revitalize the dormant political Free Jazz in the USA, which was already impressively successful with the self-titled debut in 2017. Not a day too soon, as minorities in Uncle Sam’s fantasyland are still harassed, discriminated against and often killed by racist parts of the executive, in almost all cases without expecting consistent criminal prosecution. George Floyd is just the latest example of a never-ending series of perverse abuses of power in the supposed Land Of The Free, where around 80% of all people now live from paycheck to paycheck, while a neoliberal oligarchy from Wall Street to Silicon Valley earns hundreds of billions in profits every year. The fact that large parts of the strata of society that have been left behind have had enough of it should therefore be obvious to anyone with a spark of political maturity. If not, “Who Sent You?” could do the job with its rightly fucked-up basic tenor, the improvised outbursts of bass, drums, alto sax and trumpet as well as the lyrical-subversive lyrics of Camae Ayewas (aka Rap-Reformer Moor Mother). »At what point do we stand up?!« A question that hasn’t just been asked since Donald Trump, but was already of great topicality during the terms of Obama, Bush, Clinton or Reagan. At least. And yet: with all the anger in their stomachs, the five pieces obey a witty dialectic of jazz poetry, avant-garde mysticism and spiritual nuances, which is already audibly incredibly interesting. »Who Sent You?« – the answer is provided by the second work by Shabaka And The Ancestors, »We Are Sent Here By History«, which was published just a week earlier and is also dedicated to contemporary Afrofuturism. There is no doubt that jazz will not become more historically relevant this year.
Bennie Maupin
The Jewel In The Lotus
ECM