angel bat dawid’s “impepho” (video) has roots

As Chicago’s creative community continues to percolate in a variety of directions, Angel Bat Dawid has been tending to its musical- and history-minded roots, which she cultivates expertly. A Black power and myth-stery flows whenever she picks up one of her horns — best peeped on her debut album The Oracle, which is newly out on wax. And its wonderful to see these same qualities make an appearance on her very first video, for The Oracle track “Impepho.”

Directed by the Chicago artist and filmmaker, Amir George (of Black Radical Imagination fame), the video gives presence to the idea of artistic duality, with Angel playing a clarinet/bass clarinet duet with herself, and to the metaphor of Black culture as a mansion of many rooms. There is an under-lit beauty to the proceedings, almost as a test at the point of entry. But once respectfully inside the video and the composition, its beauty just flows and flows and flows. Recommended if you like: Chicago’s creative music, Black Arts Movement/AACM/Sun Ra, the good shit.