Angel Bat Dawid
The Oracle
Now Available
Angel Bat Dawid - The Oracle
What people Are Saying
“This Chicago composer uses the clarinet, the piano and her own pleading voice to map out a new zone of the jazz cosmos — all in a way that feels profoundly personal and impossibly intimate.”
– Chris Richards, The Washington Post
“An extraordinary debut from a visionary new voice.”
“…a masterpiece, rich with dense improvisation and Afrocentric themes.”
“This is an intriguing album, futuristic in tone but hardwired to an ancient and deeply spiritual vision of what music can achieve.”
“…an entirely unique, enthralling listen.”
“…The Oracle is as much about the music it carries—free jazz, funk, gospel, hip-hop, and blues channeled through Dawid's looped and quilted voice, clarinet, electronic effects, and found sounds—as it is about imprinting the life force and struggles that inform it into a singular work of art. An ongoing ritual. A timeless history.”
Announcing IARC0023: Angel Bat Dawid - The Oracle
Released February 8, 2019
Available LP/CD/CASSETTE/DIGITAL via our Bandcamp page
Composer, clarinetist, singer & spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid descended on Chicago's jazz & improvised music scene just a few years ago. In very short time, the potency, prowess, spirit & charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing has taken her from relatively unknown improviser to borderline ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde. On any given night you can find Angel adding aura to ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, or Damon Locks, or Jaimie Branch, or Matthew Lux, or even, on a Summer night in 2018, onstage doing a woodwind duo with Roscoe Mitchell. For her recorded debut on International Anthem, The Oracle, we've chosen to release a batch of tracks that Angel created entirely alone – performing, overdubbing & mixing all instruments & voices by her self – recorded using only her cell phone in various locations, from London UK to Cape Town RSA, but primarily from her residence in the attic of the historic Radcliffe Hunter mansion in Bronzeville, Southside, Chicago.
Notes
All instruments & voices by Angel Bat Dawid
except drums on "Cape Town" by Asher Simiso Gamedze.
Recorded & Mixed by Angel Bat Dawid.
Mastered by David Allen.
Cover Photo by Grandpa Rev. AJ Elmore Sr.
All rights reserved
About Angel Bat Dawid
Born to missionaries in Atlanta, Angel Bat Dawid grew up moving as her parent’s ministry mandated. From Georgia to Kentucky and Kenya, the family finally settled in Chicago’s south suburbs where she would go on to study clarinet and music education. In 2014, Bat Dawid recommitted herself to a life in music. Giving up her day job, she followed in-roads through Chicago’s creative music community with touchstones like David Boykin’s Sonic Healing Ministries sessions and Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble. She soon formed her own improvisationally-focused collective, The Participatory Music Coalition, and developed a performance residency at Elastic Arts, dubbed the Mothership 9 Multimedia Series. Inspired by everything from the poetry of Margaret Burroughs to Yusef Lateef and even Mozart, Bat Dawid made her debut, The Oracle, with International Anthem in 2019. Eschewing conventional labels, she describes her work in no uncertain terms: "This is Black music.” On The Oracle, she echoes ancestral agonies through blues and spirituals, a conversion theory she attributes to the late Milford Graves. When asked what’s next, Bat Dawid is lucid. “I have really big artistic goals and hope to expand compositionally. I’ve always wanted to write a symphony and I’m really interested in film scoring.” A new voice has rumbled forth with clarity and intention from Chicago’s Southside, reminding us that the past is still present and the future is full of radical hope.