{"id":23671,"date":"2022-09-10T05:30:14","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23671"},"modified":"2022-09-06T12:49:13","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T16:49:13","slug":"album-review-keith-lamar-and-albert-marques-freedom-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/10\/album-review-keith-lamar-and-albert-marques-freedom-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Keith Lamar and Albert Marques \u2013 Freedom First"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-23672\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/keith_lamar_freedom_first.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/keith_lamar_freedom_first.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/keith_lamar_freedom_first-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/keith_lamar_freedom_first-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>A visceral, moving and thought-provoking project, <i>Freedom First<\/i> is unlike most anything else you\u2019re likely to hear in 2022. Against a varied backdrop of jazz improvisation (and sometimes more structured compositions, poet\/ writer\/spoken word artist Keith Lamar offers his ruminations on an array of weighty subjects. In that sense, the album is a musical cousin to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/12\/album-review-iceberg-slim-reflections\/\">Iceberg Slim\u2019s <i>Reflections<\/i><\/a>. But where Slim was reciting semi-autobiographical takes that had one foot in reality and another in creative license, Lamar is the real deal. He\u2019s incarcerated, an on Death Row.<\/p>\n<p>Lamar\u2019s vocal recitations were passionately declaimed down the phone line; the lo-fi character of those recordings seems wholly appropriate. And it\u2019s strikingly set again supremely high fidelity jazz ensemble pieces, led by pianist Albert Marques. The music isn\u2019t often easy (though it\u2019s sometimes quite tuneful), and that, too, seems completely apropos considering the circumstances under which the project was made.<\/p>\n<p>A representative track is \u201cAlabama.\u201d The instrumentation seems to meander freely, then the players lock into a soulful groove. As a listener, you might find yourself thinking, \u201cOkay, here we go.\u201d Then it goes off the rails without warning. Kinda like life, right?<\/p>\n<p>A project such as <i>Freedom First<\/i> truly requires documentation and contextualization. And the liner notes that accompany the disc provide that and more. It\u2019s a troubling, inspiring, musically and lyrically beautiful, <em>important<\/em> project that\u2019s both stark and finely-wrought. It\u2019s a thing of power, and it\u2019s worth your time.<\/p>\n<p>For more info, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.keithlamar.org\/\">Justice for Keith Lamar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A visceral, moving and thought-provoking project, Freedom First is unlike most anything else you\u2019re likely to hear in 2022. Against a varied backdrop of jazz improvisation (and sometimes more structured [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,49,65,71],"tags":[4930,4929],"class_list":["post-23671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","category-spoken-word","tag-albert-marques","tag-keith-lamar","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","cat-71-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23673,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23671\/revisions\/23673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}