Volunteered Slavery

Sound DNA

• Jazz
• Bebop & Hard Bop

• clean
• urban
• swaggering

About

A mix of live recordings from 1968's Newport Jazz Festival and New York studio recordings made later that same month, <i>Volunteered Slavery</i> shows Rahsaan Roland Kirk being propelled by the energy of the late '60s toward a moment of ecstatic liberation. The title song epitomizes Kirk’s irrepressible personality. It starts as a funky vamp, while the band chants: “Volunteered slavery has got me on the run/Volunteered slavery has got me havin’ fun.” As the band picks up steam, Kirk hollers over it: “If you wanna know how it is to be free, you got to spend all day in bed with ME!” The song is testament to a musician who refused to believe in boundaries, whether physical, sexual, social, or musical. For perhaps the first time in his career, Kirk was working with a band that could match his swagger. As he says to the Newport audience in his introduction to “One Ton”: “It’s not gonna get any lighter.” This set returns Kirk to the meatiest, dirtiest roots of the blues, while advancing a philosophy of black liberation that (while analogous to his peers) belongs wholly to Kirk.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits