Released this year on Juneteenth is Phil Venable's latest album Bringing the Light that is a free jazz exploration of the themes that Juneteenth memorializes. For this album Phil plays bass and Guitar and is joined on Saxophone by Crowmeat Bob, Ken Moshesh on Percussion and Tommy Jackson on Drums with North Carolina's poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green reciting Love Note To The Ancestors over The Climb and Jennifer Evans singing on The View.
This album slowly eases into life with The Valley a smoky stroll down a tree lined lane late at night as the Sax leads the way set against minimal percussion that's restrained never imposing itself too much as the Sax wends its way round a few bends in the lane.
The Climb (Featuring Jaki Shelton Green) opens as if it's a close relation of Harlem Nocturne, if it had been imbued with Elvin Jones sinuous drum patterns, as Crowmeat Bob's sax meanders in a magical way just before Jaki Shelton Green starts reciting her poem about The Ancestors, this deep poem about how our roots are our building blocks, how the abuse done to our foremothers color our present, especially if you have been descended from the enslaved, this poem is in a similar vein to the pieces on Jaki's The River Speaks Of Thirst album that came out in 2020, only this is more on the jazzy side with no hip hop element, as that sax riffs against her ever wise words hoping to find peace as the insistent bass marks out the metier, this builds to a musically cacophonous conclusion.
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The View (Featuring Jennifer Evans) opens with some shaken percussion and a squalling guitar line that seems to marry Albert Aylers Bells to Lou Reeds The Bells as Jennifer starts to hum and incantate No Justice, no Peace from the recent Black Lives Matter protests while channeling Alice Coltrane or the vocalists on Archie Shepps Things Have Got to Change making this a very powerful conclusion to this album.
Find out more at https://philvenable.bandcamp.com/album/bringing-the-light https://www.facebook.com/phil.venable
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