Wells whopost slaverybecame a journalist and educator. Lomax pays tribute to the Queen of the Mbundu people (now Angola) who led her people in a decades-long war against Portuguese colonization, and Ida B. Past and present figures from Afrika and America are honored for their contributions to self-determination and equality Lomax does not shy away from controversy with his inclusion of Angela Davis, the activist/educator/writer who had been a member of the Black Panthers, and the Communist Party for a time. The North was just as complicit as the South in that northern bankers financed southern slave owners, Afrikans were bought and sold on Wall St."įour Women and Blues in August paint portraits of pioneering personalities in the struggle for black rights. Lomax explains these "conversations" address a largely ignored fact of the American slave trade, writing that this particular movement "focuses on dispelling the myth that the North and South were distinct in their treatment of Afrikans in America and on the topic of slavery. The two tracks, "First Conversation" and "Second Conversation" are extended improvisations running about thirty-minutes each. Up South introduces Lomax's namesake trio with Edwin Bayard on saxophone and Dean Hulett on bass.
The first album concludes with "Talking Drums," bridging early drumming traditions from Afrika to the Afrikans in America. Like each of the six tracks in this movement, the trio applies grooves, patterns and harmony to brings an extraordinary musicality to drumming. The twelve albums begin with The First Ankhcestor, an all-percussion set that opens with the ten-minute "Ngoma Lungundu" performed by Lomax and Afrikan percussionists Baba Mehib and Baba Barago. While much of the background for 400: An Afrikan Epic is rooted in some of the bleakest events in human history, the music is more often exhilarating. The final suite, Afro-Futurism: The Return to Uhuru is a look toward the future of blacks in America, reveling in the endurance, power and imagination that allowed for survival. The last two albums in this suite Four Women and Blues In August acknowledge the women and men instrumental in the post-slavery healing process. Ma'afa is a Kiswahili term ("great disaster") that here refers to the millions of slaves who died during that the journeyknown as the Middle Passageand in captivity, and it is the central focus of the second suite Ma'afa: Great Tragedy. The first, Alkebulan: The Beginning of Us portrays the relevance of the drums, a West Afrikan spiritual culture, and the journey to the west. His 2010 The State of Black America (Inarhyme Records) moves further along in exploring the impact of a vanishing Civil Rights Movement.Įach of the three themed suites that comprise 400: An Afrikan Epic, consists of four albums. Tales of the Black Experience: A Suite In 10 Parts (BMR, 2001) is less sweeping in scope but across eleven tracks it takes listeners from the days of slave raids, to eventual emancipation. Much of Lomax's past work has served a prologue to 400: An Afrikan Epic. He has performed on stages from New Orleans to Prague and worked with Azar Lawrence, Bennie Maupin, Billy Harper, and Delfeayo Marsalis, arranged for symphonies and gospel choirs, and composed for string quartet. Lomax earned his Doctorate in Music Arts at Ohio State University and is an Artist Residency Award recipient at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The native of Columbus, Ohio remains a fixture in that geographic area but not without significant achievements inside and outside the immediate area.
Lomax should be better-known in the creative music world but his commitment to local communitiesphysical and ancestralhave limited his exposure to a larger market. In his extensive liner notes, Lomax also calls the project "an opportunity to celebrate the resilience, brilliance, strength, genius, and creativity of a people who continue to endure." The composer/drummer/educator takes on this ambitious project over the course of three original extended suites that tell this story through a variety of musical styles and group formations reflecting the diversity of the continent that gave us the essence of jazz.
Mark Lomax II chronicles the four-hundred-year history of Afrikan black people in America from the beginning of Jamestown slavery in 1619 to the current state of affairs in 2019, with the 12-CD digital box-set 400: An Afrikan Epic.
The colonizers from Portugal, Britain and France adulterated the spelling for uniformity to their own phonics beginning in the fifteenth century, as they launched the cultural marginalizing of tens of millions. The origins of the continent's name are not clear, but in the language of most of its inhabitants, the spelling is Afrika.