Heroes Are Gang Leaders In Conversation: The Freedom Reform Forms of Performance
Wednesday, September 30th, ISSUE is pleased to stream a performance from Heroes Are Gang Leaders, literary free jazz ensemble of writers, artists and musicians as a part of the 2020 Brooklyn Book Festival. Featuring an expansive fourteen member band, the performance features the full group’s line up as well as multiple embedded solos and ensemble formations of the group’s various members. Heroes Are Gang Leaders was founded in 2014 by poet, photographer and professor Thomas Sayers Ellis and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis as a tribute to the late poet, activist and Jazz Critic Amiri Baraka. For this stream, the ensemble includes Melanie Dyer, Luke Stewart, Randall Horton, Alexis Marcelo, Bonita Lee Penn, Nettie Chickering, Arin Maya Lawrence, Devin Brahja Waldman, Brandon Moses, Tcheser Holmes, and guests Patrick Holmes and Miriam Parker.
The performance will take place at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Theater and will be followed by a discussion moderated by Thomas Sayers Ellis featuring panelists: James Brandon Lewis, Melanie Dyer, Randall Horton, Bonita Lee Penn. The conversation titled "The Freedom Reform Forms of Performance" focuses on the ways in which the boundaries between units of sound and units of meaning are eliminated in order to create Improvisational Literature.
“Whatcha gonna do
when your Spin runs
out of fuel
and the fossils in your school
make you
dinosaur food
and the sky becomes a floor
and the floor
becomes a flood,
iAlien Dominoe,
Mama Santa owns
the Pole.”
The concert features solo performances, duets, trios, quartets, dance and poetry by the members of Heroes Are Gang Leaders, winners of the 2018 American Book Award for Oral Literature, culminating in a full band performance and celebration of the new CD, Artificial Happiness Button (Ropeadope Records 2020). Once described as “Parliament Funkadelic playing the Archie Shepp Songbook,” HAGL is a Literary Jazz Band comprised of poets, professors, musicians and artists known for recontextualizing the content of works by literary figures such as Amiri Baraka, Bob Kaufman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Etheridge Knight into original homages and performances that highlight the ever-growing possibilities within the literary work while infusing it with their own brand of patterned, wild, and Free Jazz.
“Even during difficult times such as these, Heroes Are Gang Leaders is committed to the continuance of community and believes that the creation of collaborative energies between performers and audience is a healing and enlightening force, one capable of unearthing new social and spiritual paradigms especially during times of Social Distancing. With an eye on the HAGL mission of the renewal of the lost aspects of the Oral Literary Tradition, HAGL wishes to produce hope as well as creatively empower those who might feel as if they have been stripped of their individual rights and natural freedoms. To this end HAGL would like to invite the viewers and listeners to "sing along" while not falling prey to believing everything we are taught to sing.” — Thomas Sayers Ellis / James Brandon Lewis
HAGL’s new CD is its most ambitious to date with the band finding itself in some pretty potent Race Music and literary company—creating updated exchanges with the themes of Billy Holiday’s immortal “Strange Fruit” while, simultaneously, calling into question the torchbearers of the American Southern Gothic Novel and exploring the geographical underground railroad of the mighty Mississippi River with lines like, “This be a tall, cold, glass of kiss my swinging Black ass!” HAGL has also established an international reputation, recently performing at the JazzFest Berlin, Sons d’Hiver (Paris), Jazz Em Agosto (Lisbon), Crossing Borders Festival (The Hague) and Jazz Jantar (Gdansk) to name a few. On Artificial Happiness Button, Piotr Orlov writes, “Their oeuvre is a musical wordplay cabaret of Blackness, representing every era, no era and The Era.” Realizing the world has been all-around worn by deception and -ism, HAGL is fearless in its call to us all to give the globe back––the spinning of information into Spin, get a refund, and not believe everything we sing unless we are willing to pay the price of group-sing along.
PERSONNEL:
Thomas Sayers Ellis / poet
James Brandon Lewis / tenor saxophone
Melanie Dyer / viola, vocals
Luke Stewart / bass
Randall Horton / poet
Alexis Marcelo / keyboards
Bonita Lee Penn / poet
Nettie Chickering / voice
Arin Maya Lawrence / vocals
Devin Brahja Waldman / alto saxophone, synthesizer
Brandon Moses / guitar
Patrick Holmes / clarinet
Tcheser Holmes / drums
Miriam Parker / dance
Heroes Are Gang Leaders was founded in 2014 by poet, photographer and professor Thomas Sayers Ellis and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis as a tribute to the late poet, activist and Jazz Critic Amiri Baraka. Ellis and Lewis opened for Baraka at the St Marks Church (The Poetry Project) in 2013. HAGL is a Literary Free Jazz Ensemble of writers, artists and musicians dedicated to the sound extensions of literary text and original composition. Between 2014 and 2019 HAGL recorded six projects: “The Amiri Baraka Sessions,” “The Avant-Age Garde I AMs of the Gal Luxury,” “Highest Engines Near / Near Higher Engineers,” “Flukum (Your Book Sucks)” and the yet to be released “POPschutz” (recorded in Berlin, Germany) during HAGL’s first European Tour. “Artificial Happiness Button” finds HAGL moving from tribute-mode into the wider realm of integrating and expanding, in meaning and mode, what it means to be a literary jazz band once described as “a version of Funkadelic playing the Archie Shepp song book.”
Poet, Photographer, Professor, Thomas Sayers Ellis is the bandleader and a co-founding member of HAGL. He is the author of The Maverick Room and Skin, Inc. Identity Repair Poems (Graywolf Press 2005 and 2010) and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, Tin House, Grand Street, and The Best American Poetry (1997, 2001, 2010, 2015) as well as in numerous anthologies. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, University of San Francisco, University of Montana, Howard University and in the Iowa Writers Workshop. He is the recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers Award and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry in 2015. Ellis is also a member of The Dead Lecturers, a trio comprised of HAGL members James Brandon Lewis and Melanie Dyer.
James Brandon Lewis is a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer. Lewis has received accolades from New York Times, Q Magazine and cultural tastemakers such as Ebony Magazine, who hailed him as one of the “7 Young Players to Watch On Today’s Scene.” Lewis has shared stages with Ken Filiano, Darius Jones, and Jason Hwang, William Parker, Hamiet Bluiett, Hamid Drake, Ravi Coltrane, Jimmy Heath, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Joe Lovano, Dave Douglas, Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman and many others. James Brandon Lewis has been endorsed by Jazz legend Saxophonist Sonny Rollins, “a promising young player with the potential to do great things having listened to the Elders.” – Jazz Magazine (France). The New York Times had this to say about Lewis " James Brandon Lewis, A Jazz Saxophonist in his 30's, Raw Toned But Measured, Doesn't sound steeped in current jazz academy values There's an Independence about him." James Brandon Lewis Leads numerous ensembles and is the Co- Founder of American Book Award winning Poetry Music Ensemble Heroes Are Gang Leaders Lewis attended Howard University and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
Randall Horton’s past honors include the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, and most recently GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction for Hook: A Memoir, published by Augury Books/ Brooklyn Art Press. His previous work include poetry collections: The Definition of Place, The Lingua France of Ninth Street, both with Main Street Rag and Pitch Dark Anarchy (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press). His latest collection of poetry {289-128} will be published by the University of Kentucky Press in 2020. Horton is a Professor of English at the University of New Haven.
New Hampshire native Nettie Chickering honed her craft at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She’s is a member of Hamlet Isn’t Dead’s Resident Acting Company. In 2019, she performed in M.Beth’s Scottish play, Fools & Kings’ Richard III, and she composed/sang a jazz score for Faire Shakespeare Company’s Romeo & Juliet. Nettie has performed with various organizations at La Mama ETC, The Rubin Museum of Art, and The Metropolitan Opera Club
Alexis Marcelo is a pianist who creates a soulful New York City sound. He instinctively delivers a sound representative of a wide range of influences. His training began at the Harlem School of the Arts learning from JD Parran (AACM) and continued at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he studied composition with Yusef Lateef. Alexis Marcelo benefitted greatly from growing up in New York City as a black Latino. He was exposed to Hip Hop, Rock, Salsa, Merengue, and Gospel music. His studies led him to the greats in African American music where he fell in love with Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Wayne Shorter. The unique sound of Alexis Marcelo comes from all of these influences and aims to capture the soulful expression of man. He’s performed overseas and domestically at various festivals and prestigious venues. They include the North Sea Jazz Festival (Holland-Yusef Lateef), the Detroit Jazz Festival (Yusef Lateef), Etnafest (Italy-Yusef Lateef), Mediawave Festival (Hungary-The Hub), Alice Tully Hall in New York City as well as multiple tours to Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and Denmark. He has also recorded multiple albums with former professor and mentor Yusef Lateef. He has just recorded his first album (coming out in 2019) and can be heard on current recordings with Adam Rudolph’s Go Orchestra & Moving Pictures, and a new recording with Malcolm Mooney (Can). Alexis Marcelo is a very unique pianist who looks to provide a soulful experience.
Devin Brahja Waldman is a New York saxophonist, drummer, synthesizer player and composer. Waldman performs in Heroes Are Gang Leaders, BRAHJA, MoE, Nadah El Shazly, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Notable Deaths, Land Of Kush and has accompanied his aunt, Anne Waldman, since the age of ten. He has also performed with Patti Smith, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Thurston Moore and Malcolm Mooney and the Eleventh Planet. As a youngster, he was taken under the wing of pianist Paul Bley. Waldman was nominated by The American Academy of Arts and Letters for an award in composition in 2018.
Luke Stewart is a DC/NYC-based musician and cultural organizer, with a presence in the national and international professional music community. His ensembles include Irreversible Entanglements featuring Moor Mother, Blacks' Myths, Heroes are Gang Leaders, and has performed in a myriad of other notable collaborations.
Arin Maya Lawrence is an inspirational singer, songwriter, sound healer and activist whose solo performances are said to be "healing" and "joyful." She's even described by Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Gregory Porter as having “a unique and ancient sound.” Though she's been called "the Mayor of Brooklyn," ArinMaya originally hails from Chicago’s South Side where her musical training and performance background began with studies in West African dance and rhythms, continued in numerous church and community choirs and was fostered by her parents’ diverse record collection. She has shared the stage with numerous icons, artists and activists, including Angelique Kidjo, Deva Mahal, Carly Simon, Bobby McFerrin, Maya Azucena, John Robinson, Akua Naru and Camille Trust, and is also a founding member, arranger and musical director with the Resistance Revival Chorus. She is committed to creating uplifting music for all ages across the genres of soul, jazz, hip-hop, and world music.
Brandon Moses is a guitarist more known for performing and writing in the historic DC punk scene. Playing shows with the likes of Ian Mackaye (Fugazi), Ted Leo, and RDGLDGRN. Brandon has been supporting and performing in any number of scenes from experimental harsh noise, ambient, to pop, hip hop, and R&B. Brandon also has releases as diverse. No matter what the type of music he’s playing he hopes to bring uniqueness and diversity to the stage.
Melanie Dyer is a composer-violist who performs in creative improvised and through-composed music spheres. Cited by Anthony Barnett in The Strad Magazine as "...an outstanding modernist violist," she founded the WeFreeStrings collective and is a member of Gwen Laster's New Muse 4tet. She also performs w the Sun Ra Arkestra, Tomeka Reid Stringtet, William Parker & Patricia Nicholson, Janice Lowe, Anne Waldman and Aruan Ortiz. She has played and/or recorded with Joe Bonner, Henry Grimes, Reggie Workman, Nona Hendryx, Ramsey Ameen, Kuumbaa Frank Lacy, Tyshawn Sorey and others. She was a side-musician for Salim Washington’s Roxbury Blues Aesthetic and Harlem Art Ensemble for 2 decades, and did a 7-year weekly stint at St. Nick’s Pub in Harlem with pianist Donald Smith. Dyer is also a member of The Dead Lecturers with HAGL members James Brandon Lewis and Thomas Sayers Ellis.
Tcheser Holmes is a drummer from NY who grew up submerged in Brooklyn's "Afro-centric" culture. Here he was introduced to an abundance of music (Rock, House, Hip-Hop etc). At an early age Tcheser played djembe with African Drum ensembles; this is where he was introduced to the drum-set and concepts pertaining to jazz. He is also a member of Irreversible Entanglements and DUO with Aquiles Navarro.
Bonita Lee Penn, poet, creative writing workshop facilitator and Managing Editor of the Soul Pitt Quarterly Magazine. She is the author of the poetry chapbook “Every Morning a Foot is Looking for my Neck” (Central Square Press); her work has appeared in Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, JOINT. Literary Magazine, Hot Metal Bridge Journal, The Massachusetts Review, The “Skinny” Poetry Journal, Women’s Studies Quarterly and numerous anthologies including the forthcoming Broadside Lotus Press anthology, 400 Years, the story of Black People in poems written from love 1619-2019. She is also curator of poetry events; co-curator, Common Threads: Faith, Activism, and the Art of Healing exhibit. She resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Guests
Miriam Parker is an artist who uses movement, paint, sound, video projection and sculpture/installation to create performance-based works. Her work has been influenced by her training as a professional dancer, her study of Buddhism and phenomenology, and her connection to the free jazz tradition. Parker has presented and performed her projects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Fridman Gallery, New York; at the Every Women Biennial, New York; Survey Dover Plains, NY; at Vision Festival through consecutive years; the Satellite Art Fair, in Miami, FL; Clement Soto Velez Cultural and Education Center, New York; Whitebox ArtCenter, New York; among others.
Patrick Holmes is originally from Austin, Texas. He began on electric bass when he was a teenager and switched over to the clarinet at age 24. He’s been in New York for more than twenty years, creating a style and clarinet voice that is original and continuously changing. He has studied with Connie Crothers and Sabir Mateen and performed with Ryan Sawyer, Daniel Carter, Masami Tomihisa, Axel Dorner and in William Parker’s Little Huey Ensemble.
