Music Monday: 60 Years

This weekend, I had some pretty tedious work to do and that always gives me time to listen to some music. 

I decided to listen to two relatively recent releases from two groups that have been producing music of over sixty years.

First, I listened to the new collection of unreleased gems from the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra titled 60 Years. It is an enjoyable romp through the history of the band founded by Horace Tapscott in 1961 and currently directed by Mekala Session. The New York Times offered a better review than I could write with a few nice tidbits about the Arkestra history in Los Angeles (including their performing on the back of a flatbed truck during the 1965 Watts Riots!).

Check out the opening track here:

I also listened to Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Sixth Decade: Paris to Paris (Live at Sons D’Hiver). As one might expect, it’s a fantastically diverse album enriched not only be the remarkable ensemble assembled for these concerts (still under the leadership of Roscoe Mitchell), but by Moor Mother’s vocals throughout. Of course, as they have for the last thirty or forty years, they feature a rollicking version of “Funky AECO” but “I Greet You With Open Arms” feels like it embodies the full range of what the current iteration of the Art Ensemble can do. 

Since there’s nothing from the new album up on YouTube, I’ll throw you back to the AECO when they were just a quartet (Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, and Malachi Favors). Their 1969 recording Tutankhamen is perhaps their finest from their early period in Europe and embodies the playfulness, experimentation, and “extreme tonality” that the Ensemble continues to champion even today. The title of the album evokes Tutankhamen as an icon of universal Black culture in much the same way that AECO sought to embody the full range of Black music.

Check it out here: