Saturday, May 15, 2010
by musicclipoftheday
replay: a clip too good for just one day
The world became a less interesting place the day Lester Bowie died.
Digable Planets (with Lester Bowie [trumpet], Joe Sample [keyboard], Melvin “Wah-Wah Watson” Ragin [guitar]), “Flying High in the Brooklyn Sky,” live
Want to hear more of Lester? Here.
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lagniappe
Part of the job of a musician is that of a messenger. If you ain’t ready to be a messenger, forget it. You need to get a job in the post office or somewhere. If you ain’t ready to travel, pack up your family, or pack up yourself and hit the road, you’re in the wrong business. Because that’s what music is about. It’s about spreading knowledge and education, and re-education. It’s about spreading. You have got to travel with it to spread the word. Like all the people in the past that have had to travel to spread the music.
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It’s life itself that this [music] is about.
—Lester Bowie (in George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music [2008])
(Originally posted 10/28/09.)
music clip of the day 
What a find — I didn’t know that Lester played with them. I was lucky to hear him several times with the Art Ensemble and once with his New York Hot Trumpet Repertory Company (with Olu Dara, Stanton Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and Malachi Thompson).
One of many fascinating — and inspiring — things about Lester was his range.
How many musicians play jazz (Art Ensemble of Chicago, et al.) and blues (Little Milton, Albert King, et al.) and Afrobeat (Fela) and reggae and gospel (I once saw him open for Shirley Caesar [with a group that included ex-wife Fontella Bass and her mother Martha]) and . . . ?