Name: Jaimeo Brown – Transcendence
Start: 2023-07-24T19:30:00
Location: Braun Music Center

Jaimeo Brown

Stanford University Department of Music

The biggest problem with the enduring but apocryphal story of jazz emerging from Storyville (the red-light district in New Orleans) is that it erases the essential role of the Black church, the music’s deepest source of power. Before blues and jazz, there were stately spirituals and ecstatic praise songs, and in drummer Jaimeo Brown’s Transcendence project he weaves a stunning musical tapestry by incorporating the sounds of Alabama’s Gee’s Bend quilters. On his visionary 2013 Motéma album, Transcendence, Brown not only sampled classic field recordings by Gee’s Bend singers performing traditional songs like “This World Is a Mean World” and “You Can’t Hide (Death’s Got a Warrant).” He draws on another deep and ancient spiritual tradition by incorporating Carnatic vocals by Mumbai-born, New York-based singer/songwriter Falu, composing music that elaborates on the various melodic themes and vocal cadences. The results are often stunning, as if Brown’s band was engaged in a real-time musical dialogue with the sampled artists