In 2024, the year of their 20th anniversary, Stefon Harris & Blackout experienced grief and loss with the sudden death of founding saxophonist, vocoder-assisted singer, and aerophonist (an electronic wind instrument) Casey Benjamin. He was, in addition to a bandmate and creative partner, a close friend whose artistic life was deeply intertwined with Harris’. The space he left was enormous.
Legacy Dances is the band’s unconventional memorial and tribute to his memory and includes Benjamin’s playing on all but one track. Harris’s idea for Blackout has always been centered on the idea of jazz as empathy in action, as a blueprint for empathy’s transformative power.
The finger-popping title-track set opener…