Bilal — Tonight at The Blue Note

These are exciting times in music; a return to purity, risk-taking and truth-telling. Yet it has been some time since we have seen the likes of Bilal Oliver. His prodigious debut album 1st Born Second, is a symbolic raising of the bar, worthy of critical examination.

Bilal emerged as part of the loose-knit Soulquarian collective, which included the likes of Erykah Badu, The Roots, Jill Scott, Common and Mos Def. His breakthrough 2001 release, 1st Born Second, melded hip-hop aesthetics with neo-soul vocals and clear jazz influences, winning him enormous praise and a spot on the Billboard top ten.

Bilal has since appeared on a number of new and important jazz recordings, including Robert Glasper’s Canvas and John Ellis’s Roots, Branches and Leaves. He has worked extensively with The Roots and Common and made a guest appearance on The Three Tenors of Soul release All the Way from Philadelphia.

To wit: 1st Born Second, a work of resounding superiority, recalls Donny’s soul and Mahaila’s sanctified. Like Nina Simone, Bilal is classically trained, in jazz and big band arrangements, and opera voice. This child of hip-hop seeks to approach swing and scat with the same expansion and technique as Ella Fitzgerald. He writes his music, lyrics and notes. Because of all these things – exquisite turns of phrase, embodiment of the feminine, and a rooted understanding of pitch, emotion and the note – that, if all goes as should in these, Bilal is surely one of the most significant artists of our changing times.

After twice appearing on Common’s Like Water For Chocolate, Guru’s Jazzmatazz Street Soul, and writing and producing with kin like Erykah Badu, it is understandable that 1st Born Second is ultimately about birth, elders, and order. 1st Born Second is at turns reverent and blasphemous. Ragtime and Rufus. Mardi Gras and baptisms, homecomings and homegoings. An amalgamation of field hollas and folktales, organs and weeping, brave bursts of song, heavenly choruses and truth, truth, truth.

Bilal Sayeed Oliver is named so because his mother is a devout Christian and his father, orthodox Muslim. His eventual classical training at New York City’s Mannes Music Conservatory, ensured he was able to sing opera in seven languages, as well as an extended musical vocabulary. Bilal is a young disciple of King Tubby and Jelly Roll Morton; music of the early twenties, that pitch and swing, the bass striding on all fours. From the first single “Soul Sista,” produced by Raphael Saddiq, to the haunting, maddening, deeper “Queen of Sanity,” to the I-Three meets LaBelle meets The Clark Sisters arrangement of “Home,” 1st Born Second is the masterpiece of a young genius.

*****

WHEN: Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Doors open at 6pm. Set times are 8pm and 10:30pm

COST: $30 @ table / $20 @ bar
(Click here to Purchase)

WHERE: The Blue Note; 131 W 3rd. Street

Tags: 1st Born Second, Bilal, Bilal Oliver, Bilal Sayeed Oliver, common, Erykah Badu, Hip Hop, Jazz, Jill Scott, John Ellis, Mos Def, Music, neo-soul, Robert Glasper, Soulquarian, Soulquarian collective, The Roots, Three Tenors of Soul

Category: * ALL EVENTS *, Music