As many of you know, we were thrilled and honored to have DJ 2-Tone Jones, join us to launch the Festival of the New Black Imagination. 2-Tone, along with his partner, Gerald Watson, are the brains behind the Shaolin Jazz project. One to the things they launched just prior to the Festival was this mini follow up, their tribute to the late Gil-Scott Heron.
Gerald writes:
. . .the story behind this one is that I’m a big Gil Scott fan (since my teens) and I normally don’t “feel” anything when most artists, celebs, pass but when Gil Scott passed I definitely “felt” a since of loss (perhaps it was the hours listening to his work, that D.C. energy from his music, going to college with his son, or seeing one his last shows in D.C. at Blues Alley) and I spoke to 2-Tone a day later about the idea of doing a SHAOLIN JAZZ – Gil Scott inspired track, and he was down.
What was originally supposed to be one track turned into three songs, as 2-Tone again caught that creative vibe, and so it was only right to also give the music a visual identity, so we reached out to Shamona [Stokes, the winner of the Shaolin Jazz cover art contest] to see if she’d be interested in creating a cover for the EP, which she straight-finessed…and, project complete.
Sound hot? Of course, it does! So get your download on right here.
