MAY 18-21 | SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Soweto Kinch
May 20 - May 21, 2023
Miner Auditorium
The second two nights of Soweto Kinch’s Resident Artistic Director week present the world premiere of his work White Juju.
After George Floyd was murdered, a statue of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was taken down in Richmond, Va. In Bristol, England, a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled and thrown into the harbor. Such acts were like “the removal of a weight, the lifting of a spell,” says Soweto Kinch. He has a name for the spell cast across the centuries by systemic racism: White JuJu. It’s the title of his new extended work, premiering this week at SFJAZZ. It charts a musical pathway through the recent culture wars and racial upheavals, blending electronic hip-hop, West Indian folk music, and jazz -- and forging a link to European classical music. Kinch weaves audio samples from recent news clips into the heat of White JuJu; its subject matter is sobering. But the music is “healing. It’s a tonic. It’s danceable,” he says. “We’re spending so much time on our phones and our screens, disconnected from our hips – and we really want to dance. It’s almost like `White JuJu’ is the thing that breaks up the dance, breaks up the groove, and keeps us from recognizing our common bonds.”
The London-born saxophonist and rapper is seamlessly aligned with jazz and hip-hop. A progenitor and leader of the burgeoning British jazz scene, he is equal parts John Coltrane and Public Enemy. Kinch has “a commanding way of looking at jazz, at hip-hop, and at the whole performance situation” (The New York Times).
Kinch’s new extended work, premiering this week, charts a musical pathway through the recent culture wars and racial upheavals, blending hip-hop, West Indian folk, and jazz.
Jazz and hip-hop are seamlessly blended without Kinch ever compromising either style
BBC Music
Jazz and hip-hop are seamlessly blended without Kinch ever compromising either style
BBC Music
Personnel
Soweto Kinch tenor saxophone & MC
Gary Bartz saxophones
Kebbi Williams flute & tenor saxophone
Nicholas Payton trumpet
Eric Lewis piano
Marcus Shelby bass
Greg Hutchinson drums
In a creative decade of genre-vaulting, Soweto Kinch has hitched jazz finesse to some grittily streetwise spoken narratives
The Guardian
Personnel
Soweto Kinch tenor saxophone & MC
Gary Bartz saxophones
Kebbi Williams flute & tenor saxophone
Nicholas Payton trumpet
Eric Lewis piano
Marcus Shelby bass
Greg Hutchinson drums
In a creative decade of genre-vaulting, Soweto Kinch has hitched jazz finesse to some grittily streetwise spoken narratives
The Guardian
Watch & Listen
Soweto Kinch
Rinse & Spin
Soweto Kinch
The Anatomy of Hate
Soweto Kinch
Rinse & Spin
Soweto Kinch
The Anatomy of Hate