This song brought me back from the brink of suicidality today while walking in Glendoveer Park. I was floating in the electronic nimbus of songs suggested for me by SoundCloud after listening to PSA’s Ghost and this one came along.
I have always believed that John Coltrane’s Impulse! sessions provided the perfect soundtrack to the 20th Century and that the soundtrack to the 21st Century will be just as Jazz Shakespeare said, “Daddio, the rest is silence.”
But three years ago, Heroes Are Gang Leaders released this tune and it’s in contention for at least the soundtrack of the current malaise. This tune is “percussive” and the poetry singularly astonishes me.
The Paris Review describes the tune thusly:
From a forthcoming tribute to Amiri Baraka by Heroes Are Gang Leaders. Thomas Sayers Ellis’s poem “Polo Goes to the Moon” appears in The Paris Review No. 209, Summer 2014.
Thomas Sayers Ellis, Poet
James Brandon Lewis, Saxophone
Luke Stewart, Bass
Ryan Frazier, Trumpet
Janice Lowe, Piano
Warren “Trae” Crudup, Drums
The question “Vowels?” asked at the end by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
