The Separatists Party

Description

Well before the Covid-19 pandemic, Chicago drummer, bandleader, and composer Mike Reed was thinking about isolation, haunted by a 2015 New York Times article about the death of a resident named George Bell. He was a recluse who died at home, his body going unnoticed for nearly a week. Authorities could not locate his relatives and struggled to piece together the fragments of his life, like so many other humans whose existence becomes ghostly, spending their days completely alone, even in a bustling city like New York—a kind of unofficial life. After a few years during which personal interactions were limited or even forbidden, Reed gathered a group of musicians in early January 2022 to shed light on his thoughts of forced isolation. He brought together some of the most creative figures in Chicago's experimental scene: cornetist Ben LaMar Gay and spoken word poet and artist Marvin Tate, alongside members of Bitchin Bajas (multi-instrumentalists Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan). He called the new group the Separatist Party, a name he had occasionally used for one-off live performances. It seemed to perfectly fit the context, echoing the solitary character that the six musicians sometimes convey. They collaborated and recorded new pieces over that week at Constellation, the renowned multi-arts venue in Chicago that Reed has owned and operated since 2013. The six musicians merged into an exciting new ensemble blending a wide range of styles and influences into a groove-oriented expression of communion in the face of paralyzing loneliness. The music draws on a multitude of influences, weaving together varied traditions and practices into a groove-oriented attack to forge something entirely new. One can glean traces of Don Cherry's Organic Music conception, the ecstatic fire of Pharoah Sanders, the cyclical minimalism of Terry Riley, the motoric rhythms of Krautrock, the exploratory sounds of Sun Ra, and the cut soul of vintage Ethiopian music.