Angel Bat Dawid announces new album, Requiem for Jazz

Angel Bat Dawid has announced a new album. On March 24, she’ll release Requiem for Jazz via International Anthem. The album is a 12-movement suite inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, which featured footage of neighborhoods in Chicago and performances from Sun Ra. The album likewise features contributions from Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott of Sun Ra Arkestra. The first track she’s shared from the album is “RECORDARE – Recall the Joy.” Hear it below, along with a video performance from the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago.

Dawid said in a press release, “I want us to have this very wonderful conversation that Ed Bland started over 50 years ago and I want to continue the conversation; because this is a loving conversation that we need to have with each other.” 

Angel Bat Dawid Requiem for Jazz tracklist:

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) / My Rhapsody (Severson-Leist) feat. Marshall Allen & Knoel Scott
24. Long Tone for Rayna Golding (A Binti Zawadi our Future