Howard Wiley & The Angola Project

The young San Francisco saxophonist Howard Wiley continues to explore the seminal significance of the Angola Prison Farm, the Louisiana prison camp where African Americans such as Leadbelly and other bluesmen and vernacular musicians were imprisoned. Wiley incorporates a long spoken-word passage by former prisoner Robert King, essentially a rumination on the black experience and the failed promise of America, but most of the tracks are inspired more indirectly by Angola’s importance to music. Much of Twelve Gates to the City draws from a place where spiritual traditions converge with jazz in a loose groove, where beautiful melodies offer ample space for self-expression but no tolerance for the showoff self-indulgence of much recent jazz. Twelve Gates reconnects jazz with an openhearted tradition, willing to embrace the public.