Event

Citizen X: Jean-Paul Bourelly
and Sadiq Bey

with guests David Boyce & Kevin Carnes

Recital Hall, Ann E. Pitzer Center

UC Davis Lecturer in Music Jean-Paul Bourelly, guitar
Sadiq Bey, vocals, electronics, with guests David Boyce, saxophone, and Kevin Carnes, drums

“It’s all about power in the darkest hour… ain’t no free ride if you want to glide on it” says Bey on the selection titled Sacred.

$12 Students and Children, $24 Adults (Open Seating)

An intersection of performance, poetry, beats and progressive improvisation, the UC Davis Department of Music will present “Citizen X,” an avant-garde collaboration between poet, vocalist and electronics performer Sadiq Bey and guitarist/composer Jean-Paul Bourelly on March 8 in the Ann E. Pitzer Center.

Bey’s union with Bourelly, who is a lecturer in the College of Letters and Science’s Department of Music, initially occurred around the former “no man’s land” area of Cold War Berlin in 1999; the two met there and agreed on a collaboration.

“Citizen X” features David Boyce, saxophone, and Kevin Carnes, drums, who frequently perform their own form of progressive jazz under the name Broun Fellinis in the Bay Area.

In the piece, the performers move through a landscape filled with a sense of spirituality and atmospheric sound bites, punctuated by waves of guitar motion and observant commentary on today’s tumultuous world. Bourelly said, “Cadillac Eldorados, Sun Ra’s Arkestra, and names like Amiri Baraka, Fred Hampton and Huey P. Newton come to mind in a blend of black-a-delic consciousness, bringing a sense of proximity to both endangerment and rarified beauty.”

“The performance moves towards the cinematic sense of music and the freedom to navigate beyond typical thematic and sonic boundaries commonly found in jazz today,” continued Bourelly. “Inspired by the revolutionary 1960s of Detroit, Chicago, Oakland and Los Angeles, marinated over time, ‘Citizen X’ finds a new voice in the theatre of today’s globalized one-world growing political consciousness of 2019.”

Sadiq Bey began his social investigation with performance and poetry in post-insurrection Detroit’s experimental music scene with artists like Faruq Z. Bey, Kenny Cox, poet Dudley Randall and drummer, Roy Brooks. Formerly the front man for Don Byron’s NuBlaxploitation, Tuskegee Experiments, The Othello Syndrome with pianist Uri Caine and his own project, Fire in Zeroland (a tribute to Sun Ra), Bey received the Berlin Studio Project Award for his electronic/acoustic recording Slow the Ear (Allzeit Musik) in 2008.

Jean-Paul Bourelly, an innovative guitarist composer, excels at blending and bending various musical genres into fresh cohesive expression. His music is informed by the migrant community of Haiti and the blues and innovative movements he found himself involved with in Chicago’s south side as a youth. His musical output (18 albums as a leader) spawns diverse variations of funky otherness.

“Citizen X” begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $24 for general admission, $12 for students/youth, and are available at the Mondavi Center Ticket Office in person or by calling 530-754-2787 during 12­-6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Tickets are also available online at mondaviarts.org.

Ann E. Pitzer Center, Davis, CA

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