Angel Bat Dawid - Requiem For Jazz (2LP)

Requiem for Jazz is a 12-movement suite composed and arranged by Angel Bat Dawid, inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film “The Cry of Jazz.” The original form of the music was premiered at the 2019 edition of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago, where Angel conducted a multigenerational fifteen-piece instrumental ensemble (all Black musicians from Chicago’s creative music community) alongside a four- person choir (featuring singers from Black Monument Ensemble), dancers, and visual artists in performance.

1. Jazz is merely the Negroes cry of Joy & Suffering

2. INTROIT- Joy n’ Suff’rin

3. Jazz is the musical expression of the triumph of the Negroes Spirit

4. KYRIE ELEISON- Lawd Hav’ Merci

5. This endless repetition is like a Chain around the Spirit. And is a reflection of the denial of a future to the Negro in the American way of life

6. DIAS IRE- Chain Around the Spirit

7. Another restraining factor in Jazz are the changes

8. TUBA MIRUM- The Changes

9. The Negro experiences the endless daily humiliation of American life which bequeaths him a Futureless Future

10. REX TREMENDAE –Futureless Future

11. The Negro transforms America’s image of him into a transport of Joy!

12. RECORDARE-Recall the Joy

13. Jazz reflects the improvised life thrust upon the Negro

14. CONFUTATIS-Repression

15. Through Spirituals, through the Blues, then through Jazz we made a memory of our past and a promise of all to come

16. LACRIMOSA- Weeping our Lady of Sorrow

17. Because Jazz is the one element in American life where whites must be humble to the Negro 18. OFFERTURIUM-HOSTIAS-Humility

19. Only when whites have paid the price in suffering to be the Negroes equal

20. SANCTUS- Holy, Holy, Holy

21. The Jazz body is dead but the Spirit of Jazz is Alive

22. AGNUS DEI-Jazz is Dead!

23. LUX AETERNA-Eternal Light (Angel Bat Dawid) -The Cry of Jazz (Sun Ra)

24. Long Tone for Rayna Golding (A Binti Zawadi our Future)