Album Notes

The entire "Slavery Suite" was composed and recorded in a single day. Though broken into four separate parts, these parts are not intended to stand on their own. The Suite began as a sort of prequel to Sonny Rollins's "Freedom Suite." It was the presence of Oscar Pettiford on the Rollins date which initially inspired me to take this direction. (Pettiford remains my greatest influence, and it is a goal of mine to one day record an entire record interpreting his music.) The structure of Pt.I (Middle Passage [15:33]) is indeed very similar to Rollins's composition: five sections, with sections two and four being identical. It is intended to represent the journey from Africa to America-one shore to the next. It is thus highly symmetrical: the capture, the voyage, the arrival in a New World-all paint a picture of slavery's beginnings. Pt.II (Cat O' Nine [7:40]) is my musical interpretation of the cruelties and inhumanities slaves endured. An extremely monotonous section, it nevertheless retains a certain faith in something greater. Pt.III (Waltz Vodou [3:48]) is the conjuring: the awakening of the African consciousness in the New World, while Pt.IV (Oge [8:55]) is the musical biography of the great Vincent Oge of Haiti. It was Oge who led the first Haitian slave rebellion. Unlike L'Ouverture's, Oge's rebellion failed. Pt.IV is broken into three sections: 1)Oge's protest in accordance with the laws of France and its rejection, 2)the call of the drums and the rebellion uprising, and 3)the failure of the rebellion and the execution of Oge upon the wheel.
The entire Suite is rooted in the blues. For a bassist, it is in the most simplistic of keys: Pt.I is in A, Pt.s II and III are in D, and Pt.IV is in E. Simple. This simplicity is exactly what I was seeking. The blues, hip-hop, and jazz are the three palettes from which the Suite is constructed. The blues provides the Suite's structure. Hip-Hop-particularly the minimalism of its Golden Age-provides much of the rhythm. And finally, jazz (the Bass, Duke Ellington, and New Orleans) is where I draw my sound. This is, after all, a Jazz Bass record. To my number one influence, Oscar Pettiford, I cannot give enough thanks. To the others (Bill Johnson, Pops Foster, John Kirby, Milt Hinton, Red Callender, Jimmie Blanton, Israel Crosby, Sam Jones, Ron Carter, and Stanley Clarke), thank you-I am nothing without you.

from the CD's liner notes
Total Running Time--36:00