Gregg August: Dialogues on Race
Iacuessa Records

Now and then, a jazz recording arrives that, in tackling subject matter of immense import, timeliness, and gravitas, immediately identifies as a defining statement and a collection capable of making a profound mark. The double-CD Dialogues on Race, Volume One is such a release, a sweeping and wholly committed eighty-five-minute meditation on race relations by Brooklyn-based bassist Gregg August that has never been more relevant than right now. As timely as it is, its origins extend back more than a decade. His awareness of the race issues that have crippled the U.S. intensified when years ago he witnessed the Los Angeles riots from a distance while working in Europe and when he saw the 2005 documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. Such experiences were pivotal in convincing him to address the topic and create the work.

Commissioned by the Jerome Foundation and New York's Jazz Gallery, August's evening-length suite was premiered in April 2009. Amazingly, however, he reports that, after the premiere, he “shelved [the] piece, even forgetting about it to some degree.” That choice came from a growing suspicion that the advances the country had made in electing Barack Obama might prove fleeting and that rather than seeing advances continue, regression would set in. At the subsequent urging by musicians who premiered the piece and re-inspired by the poems he'd used in the work, August decided to record the piece, and how fortunate we are that it's with us to address changes so desperately needed.

No musician would seem to be better equipped to take on such a project than August, a versatile musician and composer comfortable within multiple milieus. Among those with whom he's performed are Ornette Coleman, Chick Corea, Steve Reich, Bang on a Can All Stars, and Arturo O'Farrill's Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, and August also has played with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, and American Composers Orchestra. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Eastman School of Music, he's a faculty member at New York University and the University of Connecticut. Dialogues on Race, Volume One is his fourth collection of original material on his Iacuessa Records label, the new one preceded by Four by Six eight years ago.

The scope of the project's thematic content is mirrored in the resources August marshaled for the recording. In assembling an eleven-member ensemble and augmenting it on selected tracks with strings (four violins, two violas, cello), three vocalists (Frank Lacy, Shelley Washington, Forest VanDyke), and a narrator (Wayne Smith), Dialogues on Race, Volume One assumes the ambitious character of a large-scale Duke Ellington or Charles Mingus opus. The result is riveting and thought-provoking, too, the latter bolstered by the texts August drew upon from Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Cornelius Eady, Marilyn Nelson, Francisco Alarcón, and Carolyn Kizer. Structurally the suite is polystylistic in mixing modern jazz instrumentals, classical-tinged settings, and vocal pieces; highly engaged soloing's abundantly supplied by the leader, JD Allen (tenor sax), John Bailey (trumpet, flugelhorn), John Ellis (soprano sax), Bruce Williams (alto sax), Ken Thomson (bass clarinet), Rafi Malkiel (trombone, euphonium), Marcus Rojas (tuba), and Luis Perdomo (piano), and animating it all is the thrust of Donald Edwards' drumming and Mauricio Herrera's percussion.

Following a dialogue-styled intro by Allen and August, the jazz-funk opener “Sherbet” turns explosive, an on-fire Edwards and the leader pushing the band through a series of stop-start episodes and intense solo spotlights that bode well for what's ahead. With Smith giving voice to Alarcón's impassioned words, “Letter to America” finds the band digging deeply into a blues-funk groove, the croak of Thomson's bass clarinet audible throughout. The melding of Allen's full-throated tenor and a meditative, rubato-treated backing gives “Sky” a pronounced Coltrane-esque flavour; as stirring is “I Sang in the Sun,” an intimate reverie Forest VanDyke elevates with a lovely vocal. Elsewhere, “Sweet Words on Race” adds robust Latin swing to the recording, Perdomo's piano and Herrera's congas prominently featured alongside rousing horns. And though “The Bird Leaps” is based on Angelou's poem “Caged Bird,” the feeling of the performance is anything but constrained; on the contrary, the swing the group gets up to, especially when buoyed by Williams' alto solo, invokes the freewheeling spirit of Charlie “Bird” Parker more than anything else.

The duet treatment that introduces “Sherbet” recurs throughout the album in different pairings, August clearly referencing and reinforcing the dialogue theme through the gesture. Also lending the work formal unity are three treatments of “Your Only Child,” two of them featuring vocals (Frank Lacy in the jazzy first, Shelley Washington in the strings-heavy second) and in the moving third the leader on solo arco bass. As critical as its contribution to the overall structure is the song's thematic material, its text from Nelson's “A Wreath for Emmitt Till” startling in its directness (“Your only child, a body thrown to bloat, surely you must have thought of suicide seeing his gray flesh, chains around his throat”). Mamie Till Mobley's voice even appears on the recording, woven as it is into “Mother Mamie's Reflections” where we hear her reflecting on her son's infamous 1955 lynching in Mississippi.

August is aware that some might question the idea of a white musician creating a work with Emmett Till as its thematic centre, but his heart is in the right place and his purpose sincere. Deeply engaged discussions with African-American friends and colleagues occurred throughout the project's development, and August gave himself wholly to the endeavour to ensure it would be handled with the seriousness and integrity it deserved. In addition, his position is that if one has “any kind of a platform, it's imperative to address the world as it is, particularly with the urgency of our political moment.” If Dialogues on Race, Volume One raises uncomfortable questions, recent events argue that the need to confront them has never been more necessary.

August 2020