Melvin Gibbs / Harriet Tubman with Georgia Ann Muldrow
Jazz Road Creative Residencies Grant Recipient
Recipient Information
Location
Brooklyn, New York
Year of Award
2021
Grant or Fellowship
Jazz Road Creative Residencies Grant
Grant Amount
$40,000
About the Project
The Harriet Tubman band will write, perform and record new work with the Los Angeles-based hip-hop/jazz artist Georgia Anne Muldrow. The new music and process will be professionally recorded and documented.
Residency location
New York, NY Los Angeles, CA
About the Artist
Harriet Tubman is a musical collective formed in 1998 by guitarist/vocalist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer JT Lewis. Harriet Tubman was an African-American woman born into slavery in 1822 in the southern US state of Maryland. Tubman is renowned as a liberator of other African-American slaves who like she, chose to defy the system of Slavery and seek freedom by escaping to the North. She accomplished this with the help of a secret network of safe houses, or “stations” on what was known as “The Underground Railroad”.
As individuals, Ross, Gibbs and Lewis have individually performed with some of the most important musical innovators and visionaries of the last half of the 20th century: As individuals, Ross, Gibbs and Lewis have individually performed with some of the most important musical innovators and visionaries of the last half of the 20th century: Herbie Hancock, Henry Threadgill, Tony Williams, Don Pullen, Tina Turner, James Blood Ulmer, Sonny Sharrock, Leroy Jenkins, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Oliver Lake, Muhal Richard Abrams, Aretha Franklin, Lawrence Butch Morris, and many others.
As a group, Harriet Tubman's collaborators have included artists as diverse as DJ Logic, Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio,, Meshell Ndegocello, Cassandra Wilson, who collaborated with Tubman in the project ""Black Sun” and Wadada Leo Smith, who collaborated with them on the album “Araminta”.
The music of Harriet Tubman is both familiar and fresh, while allowing the listener to experience the music free from distracting labels of style or genre. Harriet Tubman uses ALL of their musical experiences to communicate a vision of musical freedom and invention.
Their most recent album, “The Terror End Of Beauty” landed on various “Best Of” lists, including those of Rolling Stone magazine and the New York Times in the year of its’ release, 2018. The band is equally renowned for their live performances, having been recognized by the New York Times as giving a “Best Jazz Performance” of 2017 as well as NPR, National Public Radio, who says they gave the “Best Jazz Performance” of 2019.
They are recipients of a Rockefeller Foundation MAP Grant, for their research project, “South”, which sought a connective procedural line from the music of Mississippi, the blues of the Delta and the Hill country, to musical concepts evident in their own organic musical practice