Visionary composer and tenor
saxophonist James Brandon Lewis's bravest, yet most palpable artistic feat,
Days Of FreeMan, opens with a poignant and profound introductory monologue from
a maternal sage. She says: "The best thing of living is living who you
are. You can't be somebody else; you gotta be what God gave you to be and who
you are. You look in the mirror and see yourself and say 'I'm James Brandon
Lewis."' Next, bass and drums congeal around the sapphire melodic motif of
"Brother 1976," recalling one of those jazzy jewel-like hooks from a
1990s Native Tongue hip-hop jam. The effect is like 1990s hip-hop's fascination
with jazz being spit back by a prodigious jazz innovator. Welcome to Days Of
FreeMan (OKeh) available July 24, 2015.
For his
third album, James uses ideas from 1990s hip-hop to masterfully weave together
threads of cultural identity, cross-generational identity, and personal
reflection.
Days Of
FreeMan is imaginatively organized in chapters with classic hip-hop style
breaks and interludes functioning as chapter breathers. Like the cross cultural
and generational mosaic on Freeman Street proper, the album invites the
listener into many dialogues. It is a nod to 1990s hip-hop, and explores rhyme-scapes
and the musical conventions of that golden age of hip-hop in a revolutionary
way. The album also explores hip-hop as a culture through taking inspiration
from the original four pillars of hip-hop: dance, rapping, graffiti, and
DJ-ing.
The album
also loosely functions as a memoir with an underlay of nostalgia for the
carefree boyhood days of fly nicknames, basketball, and those first encounters
with the transformative power of music. Adding to the power and emotionality of
this thread on growing up, are pontifications on love, identity, and God
peppered throughout the album, culled from informal conversations James
recorded with his grandmother, Pearl Lewis.
James's
immersive creative process to realize his vision for Days Of FreeMan include pouring
over hip-hop documentaries for up to eight hours a day, and dissecting albums
by KRS-One, Digable Planets, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, A Tribe Called Quest,
Medeski, Martin & Wood, along with fearless jazz trumpeter Don Cherry's
1985 album Home Boy and Lauryn Hill's 1998 masterpiece the Miseducation Of
Lauryn Hill.
How all of
this preparation plays out musically is stunning. For years instrumentalists
held fast to the lofty notion of "singing through the instrument,"
but on Days Of FreeMan, James aspires to MC through his tenor. The album's
title track perfectly captures the clipped cadence of a master MC with
speech-like phrases and a long flowing solo that conjures up a blazing
freestyle battle rap session. "Black Ark" traces the legacy of
hip-hop from the balmy and pioneering dub explorations of Lee
"Scratch" Perry in Jamaica ("Black Ark" is the name of his
famed studio) to the burgeoning sounds of hip-hop blaring out in the
Bronx. On "Lament for JLew,"
in five vigorous minutes James ties together the dual lineages of classical
music to hip-hop and classical music to rock using original classical-flavored
motifs to illustrate the overlaps.
The second
to last track of Days Of FreeMan is the political and timely "Unarmed With
A Mic" and is a reminder of hip-hop's power as a form of protest music. On
this track, James plays with seething sentimentality. The album concludes with
"Epilogue," a reprise of the infectious melody of the opening track
"Brother 1976."
On the
album, James is accompanied by drummer Rudy Royston. Both took the weighty
undertaking of album deeply, researching 1990s hip-hop jams for inspiration and
vision. Their attention to the vocabulary of the era James sought to explore,
and their panoramic musicality and sympathetic musical skills, match James's
artistic ideal to authentically and thoroughly fuse genres and cultures without
pandering to trends in jazz-groove records. The record also features a guest
spot from the gifted freestyle rapper Supernatural on the track "Days Of
FreeMan."
Days of
FreeMan is one of James Brandon Lewis's most ambitious works and his most
accessible. Reflecting on this intriguing duality he says: "The artist is
charged with taking creative risks, but the universe lined up this time and I
was able to connect with my audience conversationally."
About James
Brandon Lewis
James
Brandon Lewis is one of the modern titans of the tenor sax. Hailed by Ebony
Magazine as one of "7 Young Players to Watch," James has shared
stages with such icons as Benny Golson, Geri Allen, Wallace Roney, Grammy®
Award-winning singer Dorinda Clark Cole, and the late "Queen of Gospel
Music," Albertina Walker. In bold contrast, James has also worked with
such intrepid artists as Weather Report bassist Alphonso Johnson, William
Parker, Gerald Cleaver, Charles Gayle, Ed Shuller, Kirk Knuffke, Jason Hwang,
Marilyn Crispell, Ken Filiano, Cooper Moore, Darius Jones, Eri Yamamoto,
Federico Ughi, Kenny Wessel, Marvin "Bugalu" Smith, and Sabir Mateen.
In addition, he has collaborated with the dance company CircuitDebris under the
direction of Mersiha Mesihovic. James attended Howard University and holds an
MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
Currently,
James resides in New York City where he actively gigs as a sideman and leads
his own ensembles. In NYC, he is a co-founder of "Heroes Are Gang
Leaders" with poet Thomas Sayers Ellis—a collective of poets and
musicians—and he is a member of the collective "Dark Matter," a
conceptual musical collaboration exploring that which is invisible but is
detected by it's gravitational effects. Outside NYC, James is an active
national and international touring artist. Some career highlights are playing
such esteemed festivals as Winter Jazz Festival/OKeh Records showcase with
William Parker and Gerald Cleaver; The Eric Dolphy Festival with an ensemble
featuring Grachan Moncur III, Richard Davis, Andrew Cyrille, Angelica Sanchez,
Ted Daniel, and Alfred Patterson; and Princeton University as part of Fred Ho's
"Journey to the West," an interdisciplinary dance and music project.
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