Tuesday, April 26, 2016

"Be So Glad" by Jaimeo Brown Transcendence

This transfixing video for jazz and hip-hop drummer Jaimeo Brown's song "Be So Glad" is as amazing as the music.

Post Panic, the production company responsible for the video says:
A meeting between musician Jaimeo Brown and the New York-based filmmaker Fons Schiedon found the two of them shared similar views on how they liked to work, particularly in creating room for improvisation and intuition. With a new release for Brown coming up, a collaboration on a promo was the obvious next step. It was clear that Schiedon and Brown wanted to combine and reference elements from different eras and genres. And they shared a preference in working quite organically, combining high end technology with tactile, DIY methods. It was important not to lose the humanity in production, whilst also maintaining a sense of 'imperfection' within the filmmaking. Schiedon explains, "The video applies that notion of imperfection, for instance, by using a partly practical, partly animated, approach to bring the skeleton dancer to life. There are smoother ways to do it, but none of them are this much fun."

On the track "Be So Glad," from Jaimeo Brown Transcendence's breakthrough sophomore album "Work Songs", Brown and Chris Sholar (the production team that comprises Jaimeo Brown Transcendence) sample inmates from the Parchman Farm Prison in Mississippi in 1959. "Be So Glad" is a prime example of common repetition in work songs creating a type of mantra that changes the feeling of labor--a vehicle to transport people from the high walls of despair to personal awakenings of freedom.




Here is a section from the Jaimeo Brown Transcendence Manifesto...it is worth posting and reading:

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTIVISM.

Transcendence seeks to enable a potentially self-sufficient community to use history, art and technology to inspire and advance culture.

Transcendence represents humanity through all time periods. We seek to highlight the ways people around the world have used creativity, ingenuity and available technology to create new models [of music, culture and education] for their community.

Transcendence is a mosaic of history, art, and technology.
Transcendence is cultural resistance; a struggle against hegemony and a response to contemporary systems of oppression.

Transcendence is about the ways in which people can overcome.

Transcendence is art, community, and a movement.

Transcendence is a breathing art form; it looks both forwards and back simultaneously; it weaves the present through the past and to the future.

Transcendence should feel confrontational and comforting, gut wrenching and peaceful, invoking dance and stillness, always spiritual.

Jazz has an indelible history of protest, and in a time of conflict and trouble, transcendence is recognition of the musician's role as philosopher, and the potential of art to ask questions, build ideas and contribute to meaningful social change.

If you want to know what is important to a people – listen to their music....


http://www.jaimeobrown.com/

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