Folks, as it’s been awhile since you’ve heard from us, the BSAC Crew & Family hope this finds you and yours well and thriving, in spite of it all. With the one-year anniversary of our last live performance (at Harlem’s World Famous Apollo Theater) just passing, and with no live dates on the horizon, we’d like to let you know you can digitally “caramelize” yourself on Bandcamp. https://burntsugarthearkestrachamber.bandcamp.com/
We started a month ago with the long out-of-print trilogy … “That Depends On What You Know”.
Burning Ambulance’s Phil Freeman says “Black music has a mini-tradition of big, sprawling/splattering statement/manifesto albums: Prince’s Sign ‘O’ the Times; Funkadelic’s America Eats Its Young; Fishbone’s The Reality of My Surroundings; the Wu-Tang Clan’s Wu-Tang Forever; Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life; Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and perhaps even more aptly Get Up With It. This is the Interzone where Burnt Sugar chose to set up camp for That Depends On What You Know, a nearly three-and-a-half-hour journey through jazz, funk, rock, dub, blues, disco, house music, hip-hop, poetry, and sheer f**k-off noise. It’s a masterpiece, and 20 years later it still has the power to reshape your world.” https://burningambulance.com/2021/03/02/that-depends-20/
Back in the early 2000’s BSAC filled folks eardrums with a crew including Greg Tate, Matana Roberts, Kirk Douglas, Julia Kent, Vijay Iyer, Okkyung Lee, Mazz Swift, Lewis “Flip” Barnes, Satch Hoyt, Omega Moon, Jason Tobias DiMatteo, Shahad Ismaily, Tia Nicole Leak, Honeychild Coleman, Justice Dilla X, Lisala, Jeremiah Abiah and Jared Michael Nickerson to truly name a few.
With that crew in mind we’re releasing “live” performances recorded around the time of TDOWYK. “Not April In Paris” is from BSAC’s first appearance in France at The Banlieues Bleues Festival. “If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance, Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth” contains performances from Bordeaux France’s Musiques de Nuit and NYC’s Vision Festivals, along with jams from NYC’s Tonic and Jazzaldia in San Sebastián Spain. While the third live offering, “Live At Minnegiggle Falls”, is our first visit to Minneapolis presented by The Walker Art Center and performed at The Cedar Cultural Center under the “Walker Without Walls” banner. Mazz Swift opens the Minneapolis set with a riveting rendition of Peter St. John’s “Fields Of Athenry”. In the spirit of “That Depends On What You Know” please recognize that you can never know what to expect when the Burnt Sugar Arkestra hits the stage.