aja monet : the color of rain
Jazz poetry; few ingredients fuse together better. The winding, freeform rhythms of both synchronize in spiritual harmony; a fusion whose lineage (one of the great American artforms) dates from the jazz age through to the beat poets and hip-hop. In his book Digitopia Blues: Race, Technology And The American Voice, John Sobol eloquently framed jazz poetry in the context of African-American history: “deprived of a fully functional vocabulary, the oral imperatives that shaped African-American culture engendered a language whose external expression was musical, yet whose internal logic was that of oral poetry.”
There’s few more prolific contemporary practitioners of this storied art form than aja monet. The youngest poet to ever become the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam Champion at the age of 19, Monet is both an esteemed scholar (Sarah Lawrence graduate, winner of an NAACP Image Award) and a real deal activist who has visited Palestine and set up a Miami-based community-orientated arts community. Somehow, she also finds time to make music. Her second album the color of rain is exactly what you’d imagine from this brief bio of Monet; a loose, reflective collection of sometimes free-form, sometimes funky spiritual jazz (produced by Meshell Ndegeocello) that has all the intelligence, passion and occasional cliches of a slam poetry night at a downtown cafe.
In terms of the album’s musical bedrock, Monet displays impressive eclecticism. These 15 tracks range from gradually-emerging hip-hop rhythms (“melting clocks”) to ambient sound collages (“indigo”) to mellow free jazz (“skinfolk”). The music is subtle, calm and free of the volcanic outbursts the genre can sometimes utilize. The ambient tracks are actually the highlights, with “indigo” providing an especially heartfelt coda. In terms of Monet’s words, there’s no denying her ability to deliver these thoughtful poems with expert emotional intelligence. Her finest lines eschew direct attacks and get at the heart of humanity’s eternal angst, such as “for the Congo”’s impassioned query; “how do I survive this inability to stop the worst acts known to mankind?”
As with all jazz poetry, the odd bar might not always land, such as “you don’t serve time/time will serve you” (“melting clocks”) or “while the republico**s and democrazies argue the complexion of money” (the otherwise great “working class musicians”). These are minor, baked-in gripes, however. Broadly, the color of rain is a gripping, elegant and fiercely intelligent album full of musical diversions and humanistic insights.
Label: drink sum wtr
Year: 2026
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