Waded Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers
Richard Gehr on July 19, 2012
Cuneiform
Trumpeter Waded Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers is your basic masterpiece. It blends the lucidly elastic sound of Smith’s double-drummer Golden Quartet with the Southwestern Chamber Music classical group throughout four long CDs. Thirty-four years in the making, Smith’s sprawling instrumental recapitulation of the African-American experience begins with the 1857 Dred Scott decision and ends nineteen pieces later in Memphis, Tenn., with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Like a four-dimensional holographic map of the country, it’s an emotionally overdriven, ever-changing tapestry full of rewarding digressions.
Artist: Waded Leo Smith
Album: Ten Freedom Summers
