{"id":561,"date":"2019-03-27T21:03:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T20:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/?p=561"},"modified":"2022-06-07T22:52:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T21:52:10","slug":"angel-bat-dawid-is-het-orakel-van-chicago-alle-zwarte-muziek-is-spiritueel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fr-nt.nl\/en\/2019\/03\/27\/angel-bat-dawid-is-het-orakel-van-chicago-alle-zwarte-muziek-is-spiritueel\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel Bat Dawid is Chicago's oracle: \"All black music is spiritual\""},"content":{"rendered":"

Angel Bat Dawid grew up in a strict Christian, but musical family. She started playing the clarinet, but music always came second. When life was bothering her the most, she withdrew her savings from the bank. She traveled around for a year as a full-time musician and made one of the most idiosyncratic jazz records of the year - on her iPhone. Her debut The Oracle<\/em> is a tribute to the city of Chicago and spirituality in black music.<\/strong>
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Written by: <\/strong>Dirk Baart<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angel Elmore (aka Angel Bat Dawid) grows up with strict parents, but it\u2019s pretty much written in the stars that she'll develop an intense love for music. In fact, the fact that her parents don't allow her to play outside only plays into her hands. Because indoors, Dawid soaks up all the music her father plays. \u201cAnd that was the best of the best,\u201d she laughs, on the phone from Chicago. \u201cFunk, gospel, rap and rock, all from the sixties and seventies.\u201d As a result, Elmore listens to Funkadelic as a child and sees Sun Ra's film Space Is the Place<\/em> when she\u2019s only thirteen. \u201cI used to secretly take CDs from his room and forget to put them back. Then I\u2019d hear him yell, 'Where's my Stevie Wonder?'\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her father is also a pastor, just like his father before him. His friends and colleagues often come over to read the Bible and sing together. \u201cThe black pastor is quite different from the white one. \u201cYou know that scene in Blues Brothers<\/em><\/a> where James Brown leads a church service? That's pretty much how it was at our house. I thought my father's friends were celebrities. The Temptations or something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also her father who ensures that Angel wants to take matters into his own hands early on. At the age of five, he takes her to Amadeus<\/em>, the musical drama film about Mozart's life and death. \u201cIf you want to get to know Mozart, you should watch that film: all of his best work is in it. I even have the soundtrack on vinyl.\u201d The scene that particularly impresses her was one in which Mozart is blindfolded by his father and then plays the harpsichord flawlessly. The future star composer is about the same age as Angel in the cinema at the time. \u201cI didn't know that kids could make music too! Since that moment I wanted to know everything there is to know about music.\u201d Elmore starts on the clarinet, although she doesn't quite know why. The only example she has is fellow townsman Benny Goodman. \"But as a 12-year-old trying to be cool, being like a corny white dude isn't necessarily inspiring.\" Secretly, she much prefers to play the violin, as she has seen in Fiddler on the Roof<\/em>. In the end she finds a cassette in the library (\u201cthere was no YouTube yet\u201d) that makes her embrace the instrument: Mozart's clarinet concerto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt's actually quite ironic that I'm so influenced by the largely white world of classical music while being so militant about my own blackness,\u201d Elmore muses years later. \u201cWhen I started to progress in that world, I was suddenly the only black girl. I played music that black people usually don't play, which was quite a challenge. It often felt like I was too black for the white world and too white for the black world. In the US, the distinction between the two is still very sharp, while I was just someone who fell between the two. As a teenager, I listened to Nirvana, The Doors and Led Zeppelin, as well as Tupac, The Beatles and classical.\u201d Only jazz, that took quite a while. Elmore has only really understood it for about five years, she thinks. Sure, she'd heard of John Coltrane and his associates, but otherwise she found the genre rather intimidating up until recently. She only gets to know the real stuff when she starts working in a record store. \u201cI listened to albums from black jazz labels, five days a week, nine hours a day,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jazz takes Elmore to a new phase in her musical existence. She can already play and read every classical piece, but she is unable to write something herself. On a regular jazz evening, she is invited to play along and is given a tip about a software program to make music. It\u2019s the early 2000s, so it is not very extensive yet. But still: Elmore can get started with it. \u201cI listened to my favorite hip-hop songs and recorded their bass lines in the program, much like a classical composer would.\u201d Another strategy that Elmore often uses: play along with her favorite records until an original idea arises. She used to do it with Mozart, from then on with Coltrane and Sun Ra. \u201cAn album is like a library to me,\u201d she explains, \u201cwhere legends have left their lessons so that we can listen to them and learn from them. It is the best university imaginable. Why pay a lot of money to learn from someone who probably doesn't know nearly as much as John Coltrane?\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elmore initially attends classes at Roosevelt University in Chicago when life starts to get to her. She has to deal with a brain tumor that eventually has to be surgically removed. In order to pay the bills, she is forced to take a better-paying job in a chic lingerie store. Music comes second again. \u201cI had to spend all my time growing up,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was depressing. Everything I had invested in in my youth was suddenly pushed into the background. Relatives wondered if I was still making music at all.\u201d
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The turning point takes place in 2012, when Elmore joins a group of psychics in Chicago. With them, she takes a trip to Mexico. \u201cI had such a good time there and I found so much clarity. Maybe it was because I was out of the country for a while, but I thought: I can't come home and then continue in the same way. That is simply unacceptable.\u201d Back in the Windy City, jam sessions with a friend lift Elmore out of her depression. She decides to quit her job and to try to be a full-time musician for a year, with the money she has saved in a pension fund. She finds a small house on the shore of Lake Michigan, where her neighbours live so far away that she can make music all day without any problems. She immediately pays her rent for a year and begins working on what would eventually become The Oracle<\/em>. \u201cEverything was open again from that moment on. That's why I take every opportunity now to encourage everyone in the world: do what you love. Of course I sacrificed things too. When was the last time I went shopping? No idea, but it doesn't matter. When I had a good job, I was still unhappy. Now I have less stuff, but I can do what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Elmore also uses her savings that year to travel around. On The Oracle<\/em>, for example, she refers to trips to London \u2013 where the jazz scene is currently at least as vibrant as in Chicago \u2013 and Cape Town, where she improvises with South African drummer Asher Simiso Gamedze. \u201cI'm very used to being abroad,\u201d she says. \u201cMy father always took us on missionary work, so I was abroad a lot from a young age. If there\u2019s an opportunity to go somehwere, I've already packed my bags.\" Two hours after meeting Gamedze, Elmore is already at the drummer's house. Their fifteen-minute jam session ends up in full on her album as 'Cape Town'. \u201cI just recorded it with my iPhone, but that track just had to be on the record, that's how important that day felt to us. Shortly after we recorded that jam, Asher emailed me explaining why: we're two musicians who are outside the system, but who know there's something inside of us that we need to share with the world. Not in an arrogant way, but we just know that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI also wanted to put that jam on there to encourage people to get together with their friends and make music. You don't have to be a musician for that: you can just sing together, like we used to do when there was no television. Now that there is so much technology that makes us individualistic, we have to look much more specifically for moments of humanity.\u201d
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