Javon Jackson with Nikki Giovanni and Nnenna Freelon
Friday, November 3, 2023, 7:30 PM
Moss Center Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia
Street and Davis Performance Hall, Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre
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“These songs are so important. They comforted people through times of slavery, and during recent years we needed them to comfort us again.”
— Nikki Giovanni
About The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni
Why would one of poetry’s most revered voices want to curate a jazz saxophonist’s album of gospel hymns and spirituals? “These songs are so important,” says Giovanni, one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 Living Legends and a Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award winner for 2017. “They comforted people through times of slavery, and during recent years we needed them to comfort us again. But a lot of the students today do not know about the history of these songs, and they should. So I’m out here putting water on the flowers, because they need a drink.”
“The spirituals have been around so long,” says the renowned poet, activist, and educator, who came to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s as a foundational member of the Black Arts movement following the publication of such early works as 1968 book of poetry Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgment and 1970’s Re:Creation.
“Some spirituals have been updated and stayed around and some have been lost over time,” Giovanni notes. “So for me, it’s just helping to keep something going. And I do it because there’s a need.”
Co-sponsored by the Black Cultural Center
A historic collaboration between renowned poet and Virginia Tech legend Nikki Giovanni and saxophonist-composer and former Jazz Messenger Javon Jackson has yielded The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni. For this intimate jazz performance, Jackson brings his bold-toned, Trane-inspired tenor lines to bear on a series of hymns, spirituals, and gospel numbers hand-picked by Giovanni. They are joined by celebrated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon.
For more information
https://artscenter.vt.edu/performances/jackson-giovanni-freelon.html
To hear her speak about the recording experience – Listen to an interview with Nikki on Artemis Speaks Podcast with Jeri Rogers
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1262438/10666985