In this last event in a series of public programs held in conjunction with Ephraim Asili’s film installation Song for My Mother (2023), Ephraim and Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn are joined by improvisational electro-acoustic duo HxH for a seven-hour, all-vinyl deep listening session with a final live performance at 6pm.

In the Music Is Your History – Volume II centers jazz music as a form of Black independence and collectivity, taking its inspiration from Amiri Baraka’s 2012 lecture at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado:  

My English professor, Sterling Brown, was a great poet. I didn’t know it when I came there. He was just my English professor. But he’s the one who pulled my coat. Perhaps the greatest understanding of this country, when he took us to his house because me and another guy Avery Spellman thought we were so hip and we hadn’t heard Charlie Parker. He says, “Come to my house.” He shows us a wall full of records organized by time, genre, and person. He says “That’s your history. That is the music. That’s your history. You want to hear how these people were living? Study the music.” That is, in the music is your history. In the music is the history of the United States. If you listen to the music, you will hear the history of the United States, even the slave histories.

This is a drop-in event and audience members are encouraged to spend quiet time listening to the set, reading, writing, drawing, or any other quiet activity that does not compete with the music.