Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey - Race Riot Suite (2011)

For its 21st album, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey reaches into the dark annals of its hometown's history and emerges with the masterwork: Race Riot Suite. Written, arranged and orchestrated by the band's lap steel guitarist Chris Combs, the album is a long-form conceptual piece that tells the devastating story of the 1921 Tulsa race riot–a real estate-driven ethnocide occurring under the guise of citizen-dispensed justice. The oil-elite, civic government and local press colluded to take advantage of a racially tense climate in Jim Crow-era Oklahoma, resulting in the death of hundreds of black Tulsans and the destruction of the entire Greenwood city district. As the recording unfolds, JFJO finds light amid the darkness, offering a musical prayer for its city to never again repeat the tragic mistakes of its past. Race Riot Suite is the latest in a long lineage of jazz albums that have brought awareness to civil rights issues, including those by Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington and Max Roach.

Tracklist:

1. Prelude
2. Black Wall Street
3. The Burning
4. First Prayer
5. Mt. Zion
6. Lost In The Battle For Greenwood
7. Second Prayer
8. Grandfather’s Gun
9. Cover Up
10. Third Prayer
11. Eye Of The Dove
12. Last Prayer