Transcripts

SPEAKER: When jazz drummer Davu Seru surveys the Twin Cities music scene, he sees spectacular artists from several branches of the Black American cultural tradition. He's asked some of his favorites to form The Mother of Masks, a group that blends spoken word, poetry, and improvised music in a blues-based fountain of Black creative consciousness. They perform tonight at the Bedlam Theater's new space in St. Paul. David Casarez reports.

DAVID CASAREZ: If you walk into a jazz club in downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul, you probably won't see many Black faces in the audience, even though the music is largely an African-American creation. That could give some the impression that jazz has ceased to be relevant to Black people. But for Davu Seru, it signals a need for artists to take action.

DAVU SERU: It might be that we're not taking the music to people and we're expecting them to come to us.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAVID CASAREZ: With that in mind Seru pulled together an all-star cast to explore the rich and evolving Black cultural tradition. Joining him in the group's debut performance will be poet Louis Alemayehu, vocalist Mankwe Ndosi, sax player Donald Washington, and bassist Anthony Cox, heard here on a recording with drummer Jay Epstein. "The Mother of Masks," Seru says, "opens the door to unique collaborations."

DAVU SERU: We've all been talking about playing, and this was an opportunity for me to get everybody in the same room. And it's not even often that you see all-Black ensembles in the jazz scene here. And so this was a special opportunity to do that as well, family affair.

DAVID CASAREZ: Much like the Association for the Advancement of creative musicians in Chicago, the artists aim to honor an expansive culture built on collective and individual expression from the blues and modern jazz to the stirring poetic activism and communal storytelling of Mankwe Ndosi, whose latest recording fuses hip hop, neo soul, and R&B.

[HARMONIZING]

[JAZZ MUSIC]

(SINGING) For my old frame.

DAVID CASAREZ: An avant garde drummer, Seru says the ensemble will show how the varied forms of Black expression-- from Louis Armstrong to hip hop-- are inextricably linked.

DAVU SERU: We're preoccupied these days with different communities. But coming together, I think, what we show is a sort of a Black mosaic, an umbrella that, again, ties us to that strain.

(SINGING) Singing to the staircase. Scare them all cop. Darkness over hurt gave me a shot.

DAVID CASAREZ: On stage, the musicians will break into smaller groups, performing compositions and improvisations and honoring the tradition of oral storytelling. Alemayehu has written a blues poem in honor of his late mother. Seru will accompany the poet on drums, and he envisions a New Orleans style bridge between sorrow and joy.

DAVU SERU: You're conjuring the blues in order to put it aside, right? You don't pass it so you can keep on living. It's solemn and low, and then the party starts.

DAVID CASAREZ: Seru says the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians offers a great example of how to celebrate a rich cultural heritage.

DAVU SERU: They just call it great Black music. They often don't use terms like jazz. It's all a part of the same stream, right? Great Black music ancient to the future.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAVID CASAREZ: He says The Mother of Masks will give its take on that tonight. David Casarez, Minnesota Public Radio News.

(SINGING) Don't give me no token. Don't give me no prize. Howling in just for winning. The love itself, it sees inside. Now I want to love another. But not--

SPEAKER: Here David Casarez, often on the Friday Roundtable with Carrie Miller, part of the Daily Circuit. Today at 9 o'clock on the Roundtable, we're talking about foreign policy challenges facing President Obama. Among the guests, Nick Hayes from Saint John's University, Robert Frey from the University of Minnesota's Institute for Global Studies, and Eric Schwartz, dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.