Jazz Codes

Released

This 2022 release is one of the most heartfelt and warm things Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, has ever released. Based on a collection of poems written in tribute to artistic heroes and friends, it includes tracks named for trumpeter Woody Shaw, pianists Amina Claudine Myers and Mary Lou Williams, and saxophonist Joe McPhee, and features guest appearances from flutist Nicole Mitchell, pianist Jason Moran, and members of Ayewa’s free-jazz agitprop quintet, Irreversible Entanglements, alongside a slew of MCs and singers. The music is a dense and ever-shifting collage of samples, synth noise, static and vinyl crackle, and patiently thumping beats. This is a sonic essay about through-lines, history extending from the 1940s to the 2020s and beyond, all blended together, jazz and hip-hop and R&B and noise all one.

Phil Freeman

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