Darius Jones' "Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)"

It's Darius Jones' time.

His 2023 album fLuXkit Vancouver (its suite but sacred) was a critical favorite, making several end of year best-of lists and landing him on the cover of The Wire. Recently appointed to the board of directors at NYC's Roulette Intermedium, he begins teaching at Wesleyan University -- where Tyshawn Sorey and Anthony Braxton have also instructed -- this fall. More to the point, Aum Fidelity just released Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye), the seventh in Jones' nine-album Man'ish Boy cycle, the eponymous first chapter of which the label released in 2009.

I played the album on the computer this morning while I was making breakfast and was struck by the cry of Jones' alto on "Another Kind of Forever" -- a sound as close to human lamentation as I'd heard since Ornette in his '60s trio days. Jones is as singularly focused a musician as one can imagine; you can hear the intelligence and intention that inform his note choices: no rote glossolalia here, even when he unleashes torrents of notes and keening multiphonics. His collaborators in this venture -- bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver -- back him to the hilt, always supportive, not obtrusive. 

[For those who tuned in late -- myself included -- the albums in the Man'ish Boy cycle are a varied lot. The first two are trios: with Cooper-Moore and Ra Kalam Bob Moses on Man'ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing), Adam Lane and Jason Nazary on Big Gurl (Smell My Dream). Book of Mae'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) features a quartet with NYC standbys Matt Mitchell, Trevor Dunn, and Ches Smith, while The Oversoul Manual uses no instruments at all; it's performed by the acapella Elizabeth-Caroline Unit. Le bebe de Brigitte (Lost in Translation) brings back Mitchell and Smith along with the dual basses of Sean Conly and Pascal Niggenkemper, and vocalist-pianist Emilie Lesbros. Raw Demon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) is, as its title implies, a solo venture.]

The compositions that make up Legend of e'Boi are concerned with Black mental health and healing from trauma, via therapy, community, and creative expression. Indeed, the project began with a prompt from Jones' therapist to "make a song for yourself." On album opener "Affirmation Needed," Jones states the sedately swinging theme, then subdivides time in a multiplicity of ways in his circuitous solo statement. "No More My Lord" is based on a 1948 Alan Lomax field recording of a prison song of transition ("I'll never turn back no more"), the rhythm section creating a static backing -- Lightcap's arco drone and Cleaver's drum clatter -- over which Jones testifies, then achieves transcendence. 

Jones employs a lot of negative space in "We Outside" as a way of depicting shattered humanity. Later in the piece, he hits on a note and worries it to death with staccato repetition before ascending to stratospheric heights. "We Inside Now" provides a gentle, lyrical respite. The album closes with "Motherfuckin Roosevelt," a pensive theme dedicated to the uncle who gave Jones his first saxophone. Here the rhythm section gets featured, with Cleaver backing a long Lightcap pizzicato solo, before Jones' meditative solo. This is powerful, emotionally resonant music that invites deep and repeated listening.