Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace, is U.S. Poet Laureate and musician Joy Harjo’s debut for Smithsonian Folkways. In the album’s liner booklet, she relates her initial inspiration for assembling music with poetry: Her mother sitting at the kitchen table writing songs on an Underwood typewriter. Her mom was “inspired by the poetry she heard in the two-room schoolhouse that she attended in rural Arkansas and the music she heard in Tulsa dance halls and on the radio.” She is this album’s Muse; Harjo offers tribute in a version of her mother’s song “My Guy,” that was discovered by Harjo’s sister. This recording was produced and arranged by bassist/ vocalist Esperanza Spalding. Harjo’s saxophones and flutes, are also accompanied by guitarist…
Tag Archive: Smithsonian Folkways
Glorious Mahalia is Kronos Quartet‘s third release for Smithsonian Folkways. It follows 2020’s Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger, and 2022’s Mỹ Lai. It’s an homage to gospel singer and activist Mahalia Jackson’s work, music, life, and friendships. The idea for the album appeared to Kronos founder David Harrington in 2013 after seeing Clarence Jones, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lawyer and speechwriter on TV discussing King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from the 1963 March on Washington. Jones provided King with written thoughts, about 15 paragraphs’ worth. As King spoke what he had been provided, Jackson, who had sung before him, was sitting near King and said, “Tell them about the dream. Tell them about the dream, Martin.”