We’re so proud to announce a spate of new releases from our imprint, The MusiQ Department. The first is an EP titled Jazz Nonstandards by Bridget Ramsey, which offers new and exciting twists on the jazz repertoire. The second is a layered and thoughtful single by Vince Anthony titled “Hurricane.” Third is a concept-EP from Anthony titled Black Child: A Song Cycle. All three are available on all major streaming and music services.
For the better part of the last few years, Bridget Ramsey’s work with her father, Dr. Guy, and the MusiQology band has involved respectfully rethinking the jazz songbook in live performance and in the studio, adding her own interpretations to the genealogical tradition of jazz performance. Now, though, that experience—along with her work with producer Vince Anthony—has led to a new outlook where her contributions reimagine rather than remake the work of those who came before.
This is most clearly represented in her interpretation of “The Very Thought of You,” which launched the idea of “trap jazz” into being, drawing on the sonics and textures of trap music to create a new emotional palette with which Ramsey’s vocal can paint. It’s the mark of an artist finding her voice and remaking the musical world to suit herself, rather than looking for a place within it.
Jazz Nonstandards’s other tracks are more traditional re-arrangements—of “Save Your Love for Me” and “Misty,” most famously sung by Nancy Wilson and Ella Fitzgerald respectfully—than the opener, though they, too, bear the musical, vocal, and production hallmarks of a group of artists breaking new creative ground. “Save Your Love,” which opens with a sumptuous guest reading by Ursula Rucker, is an expansive reading of the song and, pardon our bias, but Ramsey sings the hell out of it. “Misty,” which features a guest vocal from Anthony, is richly layered and provocative. Again, Ramsey’s vocal is the centerpiece, nimbly working around Dr. Guy’s piano and the MusiQology sound.
We’re biased about this one, too, but Vince Anthony is, to put it straightforwardly, a tour-de-force, a wellspring of creative ideas and production for our imprint. “Hurricane,” his first single for The MusiQ Department, is a tour-de-force of soul and sound, a spiritual meditation on peace in turbulent times. As it builds—and does it ever—Anthony’s emotional vocal grows and strengthens, with each turn through the chorus adding layers before the storm crashes against the shore.
And not to save the most grand for last, but we’ve waited long enough to talk about Black Child: A Song Cycle, the five-track coming-of-age EP from Anthony. The bildungsroman is an established literary genre, but Anthony’s focus on the particularities, meanings, experiences, and most importantly feelings of black childhood as it transitions into independence is a new and deeply powerful addition to the form.
The record’s power comes in the way Anthony so ably captures the earnestness of youth in these compositions. “Why am I so hungry?” he asks in “Innocence,” following that immediately with another question: “Why am I still laughing?” From the hand-clapped denouement of the opening track, “Father,” (“But I still learned to love/Guess I’m a black child/of late blooming”) to the whispered assurance (“You are loved”) from Domi Jo that closes the EP, Black Child is an honest, authentic exploration of feelings both specific to Anthony’s own young black manhood and broadly applicable to growing up. Even the smells of youth come in the form of Bath & Body Works, an olfactory fixture in the shopping malls of turn-of-the-century America, where the saccharine scents of the store are a mood setter for the third track, “Jasmine Vanilla.” Anthony locates himself in the affective experience of his life, bringing the listener along for the ride.
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