After almost 2½ years of retirement, including two years of covid stay-at-home self-isolation, I was clearly out of shape. Overweight and under-exercised. Therefore, after performances of live music started again, part of my criteria for selecting sets to catch at the 2022 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville was the distance between venues. Unlike years past, I wasn't going to attempt marathon speed walks up and down Gay Street between sets, from, say, the Bijou up to The Mill & Mine, a distance of nearly a mile.
As previously documented, my first Big Ears set, as well as my first live show in over two years, was at The Standard for the band 75 Dollar Bill. Based on the festival schedule and my understanding of Knoxville urban geography, the next set I wanted to hear was Damon Locks' Black Monument Ensemble at the Tennessee Amphitheater on the old (1982) World's Fairgrounds. The Standard was on the northern side of the Big Ears map; and the Amphitheater was near the middle, although somewhat off to the west. As soon as 75 Dollar Bill wrapped up their set, I started to hoof it towards the fairgrounds.
It wasn't an easy walk, and the Google Maps app was deceptive. Because Henley Street, a limited-access road feeding onto highway I-40, crosses between The Standard and the Amphitheater, roads with pedestrian access on both sides tend to turn away from Henley, making what appears on a map to be a direct route from Point A to Point B relatively impassible. I wound up following a small group of people who looked like they might have been coming from the 75 Dollar Bill show and might have been heading to Damon Locks and presumably knew the way. If they were in fact heading home to supper, I would have had to change my plans and eat dinner at their place with them. We crossed roads at seemingly random spots, climbed up and over the traffic at several pedestrian walkways, and eventually the Sunsphere, Knoxville's phallic remnant of the World's Fair, came into view. I navigated toward the Sunsphere and from there I spotted the Amphitheater, and finally arrived with time to spare for Locks' set.
My legs were already sore, the walk tired me out, and I was not even halfway through the first day of the four-day festival.
What's more, the whole thing was a leap of faith: I didn't know the Damon Locks' Black Monument Ensemble - never heard them - although I had heard of some of the member musicians. Clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid is affiliated with the AACM and has performed with Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, another AACM affiliate, has performed with Joshua Abrams, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, and Tomeka Reid. So I knew to expect jazz, and free, avant-garde jazz at that. But mainly, the set filled the available time slot and was located roughly half-way between The Standard and St. John's Cathedral, the venue for the next set I wanted to see.
As the Ensemble took the stage, what I wasn't expecting to see were four vocalists taking center stage. I had assumed the band was an instrumental-based jazz ensemble, not a song-based vocal ensemble. But I set my predilections and biases aside and opened my mind to their set, and was completely captivated by what I heard.
Someone recorded part of the set and uploaded it to YouTube. Here they are, performing From A Spark To A Fire and Solar Power.
One note: absolutely no fault of the Black Monument Ensemble, but the quality of the Amphitheater sound system was atrocious. The Tennessee Amphitheater is run by the Knoxville Parks Department, and the PA system is apparently intended for speeches and public ceremonies, not for live music performances. All of the sound - the four singers, Locks' electronics, the drums, and Dawid and Gay's instruments, was all channeled into a single speaker, which poorly broadcast the sound to the audience. But despite this impediment, the Ensemble still put on a magnificent set, even using the limitations of the PA system to sonic effect. The sound you hear isn't limited by the recording and YouTube upload - it sounded that compressed live.
The gamut of my emotions: I went from I-don't-like-vocal-jazz-and-won't-enjoy-this-set, to this-isn't-too-bad to this-is-the-greatest-thing-I've-heard-in-years, despite the sound system. Angel Bat Dawid in particular was a joyous force of nature, both in her playing and her playful stage banter between songs. By the end of their set, I was up out of my seat and on my tired feet, clapping hands over my head, and swaying with the music, like most of the rest of the audience.
From what I understand, Damon Locks' Black Monument Ensemble have two albums out - 2019's Where Future Unfolds, which includes both songs above, and 2021's Now, which is arguably even better. Here's the title track from Now, subtitled Forever Momentary Space, powerfully realized with animation by Rob Shaw, footage by Brian Ashby, and art by Locks himself. The song is a masterpiece, from Dawid's Rahsaan-like opening lines through the Sun Ra-like vocals and beyond.
This is the beauty of the Big Ears Festival - you can go to a set about which you know nothing and can still pretty reliably have an astonishing experience. It's all good - what you know and what you haven't yet heard. You'd be hard-pressed to find a disappointing set.
At this point, I was halfway through the opening first day of the festival, and the shortest day at that, and had already heard an incredible set by an expanded version of a band I knew, the 75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band, and a revelatory set by a new-to-me group, Damon Locks' Black Monument Ensemble. I still had two more sets to go that night, plus three more days of the festival. I was off to a good start.
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