For his Roulette Commission, Rhythmanalyst DeForrest Brown, Jr. premieres a new hi-tech jazz orchestra titled Bombingham, dedicated to his late grandfather Isaiah Moore, Jr., his hometown of Birmingham, AL, and the pedagogical legacy of John T. ‘Fess’ Whatley, an early educator of free jazz bandleader Sun Ra in the 1930s, known as “the Dean of Birmingham Jazz” and “the maker of musicians.” Brown, Jr. seeks to reimagine the genre of techno as a live, impromptu home studio performance music informed by ‘Fess’ Whatley’s innovation of the ‘dance orchestra’ as it relates to Sun Ra’s Myth Scientific Arkestra, and by extension, Don Lewis’ proto-MIDI invention of the Live Electronic Orchestra. A technological optimization of centuries-old sacred and secular African American musical traditions, Bombingham is intended to be an afrofuturist exploration of a specific process of elevating and liberating Black consciousness into a stereophonic intelligence capable of coding and broadcasting emotions and affects, stimulating the senses toward a shared experience of multi-dimensional world systems and Black exodus strategy.
“DeForrest Brown, Jr. has waged what feels like a worldwide one-man guerrilla campaign, challenging the nature of globalized capital in the art and music industries through protest and presence.” –The Brooklyn Rail
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.