We’ve seen/heard the Tulsa, Oklahoma band, Jacob Fred Odyssey, three times at Rochester’s jazz fest. In 2006, 2010 and 2012 when they performed their Race Riot Suite. We bought the record and had them sign it. The band was so damn musical in a free wheeling boozy way. The back of the lp had a brief history of Tulsa’s Race Riot, enough to get me to read more about it. How come we weren’t taught about this in school?
We’ve been pitching in to help the Little Theatre by renting the movies they offer during the pandemic. The last is a threesome, three movies for twelve bucks! We started with the raw but powerful documentary on Ferguson. Six years on and Minneapolis has just unfolded as a video rewind of Ferguson. The Toni Morrison documentary was second up, a rich tribute to a clear headed, powerful voice. And then the great James Baldwin movie, “I Am Not Your Negro.” We had already seen this one when it played at the Little. We sat right next to total strangers without masks back then. The movie is so jam packed it deserves a least a second viewing.
Tonight we’re working our way through “15 Essential Black Liberation Jazz Tracks,” most from my favorite musical period, the early seventies, and many I have never heard before.
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