PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts presents a concert by Afrofuturist free jazz luminary Angel Bat Dawid and her eight-piece ensemble, Tha Brotherhood, on Friday, Feb. 18, at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 in advance at bit.ly/651-brotherhood, or $30 at the door. The screening is part of Next Stage's programming in honor of Black History Month.
“Music has the ability to serve as a passport. Angel's music transports the listener to the heart of the Black experience in America. Her honesty, truth, and power are undeniable,” Keith Marks, executive director of Next Stage Arts, said in a news release.
Marks described Dawid as “on the forefront of the nexus where modern jazz, Black justice, and Afro-futurism meet” and called the show “a must-see.”
Dawid, a composer, clarinetist, pianist, singer, and spiritual jazz soothsayer, exploded onto the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene in 2019 with her debut album The Oracle.
The album, released on International Anthem, was recorded, overdubbed, and arranged almost entirely by Angel herself on a smartphone app in various locations, from London to Cape Town, but primarily from her residency in the attic of the historic Radcliffe Hunter mansion in Bronzeville, on the South Side of Chicago.
In 2021, the Chicago Tribune declared her the city's jazz musician of the year; she was a featured artist in Pitchfork's 25 Next List: The Artists Shaping Where Music Will Go From Here; and she joined the lineup of critically acclaimed festivals.
As described in her publicity, “The potency, prowess, spirit, and charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing has taken her from relatively unknown improviser to borderline ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde.
“Angel's unexpected success speaks to her remarkable voice - she delivers raw and unfiltered emotion with flood-like energy and honesty. The Oracle echoes ancestral agonies and reinterprets them through blues and spirituals, with influences ranging from Yusef Lateef to Mozart to George Clinton, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Sun Ra.
“Now, at the helm of her eight-piece ensemble, Tha Brothahood, Angel sets out to map the Black experience in an ecstatic polyphonic performance that both liberates and exorcises.
“The daughter of missionaries, she grew up in Atlanta, Kentucky, and Kenya before settling in Chicago's South Suburbs. She was raised Baptist, but began coloring outside the lines of religious dogma in her teenage years.
“It's no surprise that she sees all Black Music as being inherently spiritual, and a concert as indistinguishable from church service.”