“IT’S POETRY THAT DRIVES THIS ALBUM – THE STORIES OF THESE ARTISTS AND COUNTLESS OTHERS NOT NAMED BUT FELT – IS THE LEADING MOTIVATION. I WANTED TO HONOR & GIVE OFFERINGS – HOLD THEM IN MY BODY DREAM WITH THEM – SEND SWEETNESS.” – CAMAE AYEWA
The composer, songwriter, vocalist and educator Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa is releasing Jazz Codes today, her second and latest album for Anti- and a companion to her celebrated 2021 release Black Encyclopedia of the Air. Jazz Codes uses free jazz as a starting point but the collection continues the recent turn in Moor Mother’s multifaceted catalog toward more melody, more singing voices, more choruses, more complexity.
To celebrate today’s release Ayewa has released a long form video featuring four songs from the record – “Wood Shaw,” “Barely Woke,” “Umanzi,” and “April 7”. Directed by Cyrus Moussavi, watch it below.
Long Form Video Feat. “Woody Shaw,” “Barely Woke,” “Umanzi,” and “April 7”: https://youtu.be/2WJQ5MTgios
Jazz Codes sprung from a book of poems by the same name, a collection of poems written in honor of jazz and blues icons like Woody Shaw, Amina Claudine Myers, and Mary Lou Williams. In a shift from the noise-inflected sound of her previous albums, she began writing songs with R&B sweetness, songs that asked for singers to accompany her raps and spoken word transmissions. She sought out a roster of far-flung collaborators to help them bloom.
Working virtually, Ayewa drew in instrumentalists, like flutist Nicole Mitchell and harpist Mary Lattimore, and vocalists, like Melanie Charles and AKAI SOLO, into the album’s growing space. On “ODE TO MARY,” Ayewa’s spoken poetry tangles with Orion Sun’s fluttering vocal ad-libs and Jason Moran’s dizzying piano lines. “SO SWEET AMINA” lets Aquiles Navarro’s trumpet cast its glow onto ripples of Wolf Weston’s searching voice. None of Ayewa’s collaborators heard each other’s takes before the songs were completed. She acted as the focusing point among them, finding affinities and synchronicities, braiding disparate pieces together into a reverberating whole.
“I’m trying to get rid of people’s timelines, to get rid of people’s doomsday calendars—this speeding through life and reality,” she says.
Order ’Jazz Codes’
1. UMZANSI (feat Black Quantum Futurism featuring Mary Lattimore)
2. APRIL 7th (feat Keir Neuringer)
3. GOLDEN LADY (feat Melanie Charles)
4. JOE MCPHEE NATION TIME INTRO (feat Keir Neuringer)
5. ODE TO MARY (feat Orion Sun & Jason Moran)
6. WOODY SHAW (feat Melanie Charles)
7. MEDITATION RAG (feat Aquiles Navarro & Alya Al Sultani)
8. SO SWEET AMINA (feat Justmadnice & Keir Neuringer)
9. DUST TOGETHER (feat Wolf Weston & Aquiles Navarro)
10. RAP JASM (feat AKAI SOLO & Justmadnice)
11. BLUES AWAY (feat Fatboi Sharif)
12. BLAME (feat Justmadnice)
13. ARMS SAVE (feat Nicole Mitchell)
14. REAL TRILL HOURS (feat Yung Morpheus)
15. EVENING (feat Wolf Weston)
16. BARELY WOKE (feat Wolf Weston)
17. NOISE JISM
18. THOMAS STANLEY JAZZCODES OUTRO (feat Irreversible Entanglements & Thomas Stanley)
19. BLACK HONEY (feat. Loijj & Honeychile) (bonus track)
20. WE GOT THE JAZZ (feat. Kyle Kidd, Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro) (bonus track)
21. BLACK DUST BLUES (feat. Elaine Mitchener) (bonus track)
