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Tue Feb 23 2021
8:00 PM PST (Watch Online 48 hrs)
Jack London Revue – Livestream
529 SW 4th Ave., Portland, OR 97204

$5.00 – Become a MEMBER of PDX Jazz and watch 2021 Festival shows online for FREE!

The late Gil Scott-Heron is revered as one of the founding fathers of spoken word. Gil and his co-conspirator, Brian Jackson, developed a style that stands at the crossroads of jazz, soul, blues, and funk: deeply uplifting but unsettlingly current.

Between 1971 and 1979, Scott-Heron and keyboardist/flautist Brian Jackson together co-composed and co-produced nine albums. The duo’s 1974 “Winter in America” was lauded as “a masterwork of ghetto melancholia and stark political gravitas,” and included their most commercially successful song, “The Bottle.”

Brian brings of their best-known classics into context as he sings and plays, interweaving stories and anecdotes in the tradition of the African Griot including “It’s Your World, Lady Day & John Coltrane, Winter in America, Home is Where the Hatred Is, Guerilla” and more.

greaterkind is a local all-star project featuring some of the best young players in the PNW, all on a mission to spread a message of love and community through the medium of sound. Music to uplift the soul and move the booty. Ya dig?

Pete Knudsen – guitar / vox
Charlie Brown  – keys / synth / talkbox
Cory Limuaco – drums
Ian Linsday – bass

+ special guest
Allakoi Peete – percussion

You’ve never heard their music like this! Come and celebrate the music of Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson with the co-founder of this powerful musical movement!

Half of the power duo Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, Brian wrote, arranged and produced over 10 albums over an eight-year period. Time and time again that music has found its way onto over 100 cuts like Common’s “The People” (from “We Almost Lost Detroit”) and Kendrick Lamar’s “Poe Mans Dreams” (from “Peace Go With You, Brother”).

Almost 40 years later, Brian is still building with artists as diverse as Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (Midnight Hour, A Tribe Called Quest) vocalist Gregory Porter, Christopher “Puma” Smith, (The Archives, Thievery Corporation), jazz violinist Scott Tixier and legendary bassist Charnett Moffett.

​Brian looks to both the present and the past for inspiration in order to honor to the ancient tradition of the griot – the African troubadour of truth.

“This music isn’t really mine,” Brian asserts. “I learned it from those who came before me. It’s my job to pass on what I’ve learned. That’s the Tradition.”

​In the tradition of the African griot, Brian tells the stories of how  many of his best-loved pieces came to light.

2021 BIAMP PDX JAZZ FESTIVAL – FULL SCHEDULE