Weekly Music Roundup: Bobby Rush, Too Sad for The Public, and Beverly Glenn-Copeland

This week, Bobby Rush’s classic blues, Chief Adjuah’s new/old take on New Orleans and West African music, and an anthem from Beverly Glenn-Copeland.  

At 89, Bobby Rush Still Gets The Blues

Bobby Rush has won a couple of Grammys and a garage full of Blues Music Awards in his nearly 70 year career.  But he’s not resting on his 89-year-old laurels – not when there’s a woman who done left him and needs to know what she’s missing.  “You’re Gonna Need A Man Like Me” is a classic blues song: nothing you’ve not heard before, perhaps even from Rush himself, but done with an easy swing and a gleam in the eye. 

The single is from his next album, All My Love For You, due on August 18. 

Too Sad For The Public Remakes American Roots Music

The project called Too Sad For The Public was founded by composer/producer/arranger Dick Connette, who had previously worked with the late singer Sonya Cohen as Last Forever, a duo that totally recast traditional American songs.  The new album by Too Sad For The Public is called Yet And Still, and features a rotating cast of guests: Chaim Tannenbaum is the singer on this surprising version of “Railroad Bill,” which is actually presented in two parts.  This second half has the steadily pulsing sound of 1970s Minimalism, or perhaps krautrock, and the bass line, incongruously, is reminiscent of the one-hit wonders Primitive Radio God’s one hit, “Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand.”  That’s probably a coincidence, but what’s intentional here is Connette & company’s determination to reinvent this old “bad man ballad” (Railroad Bill was a real life 19th century train robber) for a 21st century public for whom, it seems, no music is too sad. 

“Global Warming” May Not Mean What You Think

Composer Michael Abels is best known for his film scores to the Jordan Peele films Get Out, Us, and Nope.  But he also shared this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Music with singer/songwriter Rhiannon Giddens, for their opera Omar, about an enslaved Muslim scholar’s life in the American South.  Now, the Sphinx Virtuosi have recorded Abels’ piece “Global Warming,” a title that may now have a different meaning from what Abels originally intended.  The work was written after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it has a spirited, folk-inflected quality that seems to be celebrating what we all hoped would be a thaw in East-West relations.  Now, of course, that title suggests something else, to the point that the Sphinx Virtuosi include the UN definition of climate change on the piece’s YouTube page.  The Sphinx Virtuosi is a string ensemble (there is some percussion here too) drawn from the ranks of the Sphinx Organization, which since 1996 has done essential work in opening up classical music to artists of color.  The group has played annually at Carnegie Hall, but their new album, Songs For Our Times, is their recording debut. 

A Long-Awaited Return For Beverly Glenn-Copeland

Beverly Glenn-Copeland has had a remarkable life.  He was one of the first Black students at McGill University in Montreal, a folk singer, an actor on a Canadian children’s TV show, and a pioneering keyboardist in the New Age movement of the 70s and 80s, all while living as Beverly Copeland.  It wasn’t until the 90s when he first heard the word transgender and began identifying as Beverly Glenn-Copeland.  In recent years, his early recordings have been reissued to great acclaim, and now, he’s finally released a new album, called The Ones Ahead, full of songs about caring for each other and the planet.  This song is called “Stand Anthem,” and it’s well named; the song calls on people to stand together to make a more just and sustainable world, and the chorus is about as anthemic a tune as Glenn-Copeland has ever written.

Chief Adjuah Creates A 21st Century New Orleans Tradition

The musician formerly known as Christian Scott has been on a journey of reclamation in recent years, reclaiming his family heritage in the Mardi Gras Indian tribes of New Orleans and his roots in West Africa.  Now performing under the name Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, he has put out an album called Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning.  As Christian Scott, he was a notable jazz trumpeter, and he had developed his own blend of jazz, electronics, and hip hop production called “stretch music.”  He also began developing his own family of instruments.  But now, Chief Adjuah has created a record that focuses on the sounds of singing and percussion – lots of percussion – as well as an instrument called Chief Adjuah’s Bow.  This bow seems to be inspired by the West African lute/harp known as kora, with its two rows of strings.  The record includes new arrangements or reworkings of traditional New Orleans faves like “Iko Iko” (here recast as “Xodokan Iko – Hu Na Ney”) and “Golden Crown,” as well as new songs like this one, “”Trouble That Mornin’.” This tribute to the Yoruba deities of West Africa and Native American mythologies has a timeless sound, as the deeply rooted singing and drumming are joined by the new bow and some subtle sound design. 

Broadcasts From An Imaginary Pirate Radio Station From Rob Mazurek & Damon Locks

One of the great surprises of this spring’s Big Ears Festival in Knoxville was stumbling upon a project called New Future City Radio.  It turned out to be a collaboration between two busy Chicago-based bandleaders, trumpeter Rob Mazurek (Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra) and vocalist/DJ/visual artist Damon Locks (Damon Locks’ Black Monument Ensemble).  Now, they’ve released a recorded version of this fascinating project, which imagines a pirate radio station from a near future where cutting off electricity looms as a way of controlling an urban population.  Inventive, abstract at times, and totally sui generis, the album also called New Future City Radio uses spoken word, radio sounds, Afrofuturism, snatches of jazz, soul, electronica, even a bit of reggae, to conjure a community that refuses to be silenced.  It’s impossible to find one track that represents the whole sound of this record (the radio station is pretty free form), but “Polaris Radio” will give you a taste of the pair’s sound world.