Disquiet

The Other Minds organization announced an upcoming performance in San Francisco of composer Daniel Bernard Roumain‘s A Civil Rights Reader, in which Roumain is to perform his work on electric violin along with the Del Sol String Quartet and turntablist DJ Scientific. Scientific’s role is to drop in beats and sampled recordings by four civil-rights leaders: Maya Angelou; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.; and Malcolm X. A quick web search yields a full recording of what appears to be the Angelou section of the work, at the Other Minds catalog at the Internet Archive (aka archive.org). At close to half an hour, it uses a blues-tinged score for the quartet as a foundation for Roumain’s solo. Scientific takes his time before making an appearance, unfolding echo-laden bits of speech that sound like they’re emanating from history, and eventually, as the piece’s momentum increases, matching the quartet’s rhythm with hip-hop beats. Definitely worth checking out. This link (FTP) should lead to the FTP server spot where various versions of the recording are saved, from low-fi to hi-fi. This link (MP3) should lead directly to the lo-fi version. If none of that works, just search for “Roumain” from the Internet Archive’s home page, at archive.org. More info on Other Minds at otherminds.org.

By Marc Weidenbaum