Kirk Whalum Channels Ethos of Civil Rights and
Global Harmony on New Album Release, Humanité
Out Now on Artistry Music/Mack Avenue Music Group
“Music is the language that communicates across borders. Music can break and enter into a person’s soul. The difference is a musician is not there to take, he or she is there to give, to leave something.” Kirk Whalum
Grammy® Award Winner and Global Recording Artist Kirk Whalum just released his new album Humanité on Artistry Music/Mack Avenue Music Group. Humanité is unlike any album Kirk has ever made – the sonic synergistic result of encounters made and relationships formed onstage and off with top emerging artists and Top 5 recording artists from around the world.
The album was produced by Kirk and his longtime friend and producer, the British jazz trumpeter and session musician James McMillan. Over a period of three months in 2018, Kirk and James recorded the soul-drenched, emotional and highly melodic tracks in locations ranging from studios in Jakarta, Tokyo, Paris, Nairobi, Johannesburg, to hotel rooms, office buildings and even Kirk’s living room in his hometown, Memphis, Tenn.
Collaborators on the album include Japan's jazz pianist Keiko Matsui; the young bass phenomenon Barry Likumahuwa, gifted singer/songwriter Grace Sahertian and global pop star singer/actor Afgan, all hailing from Indonesia; soulful singer/jazz guitarist Andréa Lisa from New Zealand; superstar vocalist/guitarist Zahara from South Africa; Kasiva Mutwa of Nairobi; bassist supreme Marcus Miller, and Liane Carroll, long considered by cognoscenti to be the UK’s premier female jazz voice.
“I kept bumping into these amazing artists from all over the world and I wanted to make some crazy music with them and prove this point – that we are all one,” says Kirk. “That’s the DNA of it. Like we say in the artwork, ‘With one voice, sometimes with words, we speak.’ This is the essential reality of being a world musician.”
Kirk was just nine years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis just blocks away from the Whalum family home. That shattering event shaped young Kirk’s worldview. But rather than turn him cynical, as he grew older his spiritual upbringing led him to embrace Dr. King’s vision of “The Beloved Community.” This message is the ethos of Humanité – the greater good inherent in all of global humanity will lead to a society based on justice, civil rights and love of one’s fellow humans, and an insatiable curiosity about the exquisitely unique musical offerings from each and every corner of our global common-unity.
Source: https://www.jazzcorner.com/
Source: https://www.jazzcorner.com/
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