Sunday, June 25, 2017

Volunteered Slavery



We bring our all-too-brief series on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s music to a conclusion today—but it is a rousing conclusion!

This video shows Kirk in peak form, playing sax, a conch shell, a gong, police whistle, & eventually using a wood chair as a percussion instrument, destroying it in the process! The energy level is at maximum level, & also includes a great piano solo by Ron Burton, while Kirk wanders through the audience at the Montreaux Jazz Festival, led by his percussionist & sidekick, Joe Habao Texidor.

“Volunteered Slavery” is the title track of a 1969 Kirk album issued on Atlantic. He also played it as a coda to “The Old Rugged Cross” on his masterful 1972 release, Blacknuss (& I very much regret I wasn’t able to fit a cut from that album into this overview).

I hope you enjoyed these selections, & if you’re new to Kirk’s music, I hope this spurs you to explore his work further. Stay tuned next month for more Sunday music!




Image links to its source on Wiki Commons:
“Roland Kirk playing at Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry UK, January 1972.” Photo by Kentrethewey [link provided on Wiki Commons is empty], who makes it available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license

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