TV Channel Qwest: Jazz and Beyond

Guest Curator - Adrian Younge | Qwest TV







See Adrian Younges full playlist here: https://bit.ly/3tnV0HW

A progressive with deep respect for tradition, Adrian Younge represents the next generation of soul musicians. It was in the late 90s that he transitioned from law to making music and since then he’s carved out a multifarious career covering film scoring, production and composition as well as founding his own label and collaborating with a broad spectrum of artists.

A true craftsman at heart, Younge has had a DIY relationship with music from the beginning. His first album, released under the moniker Venice Dawn, was entirely composed, arranged, played and recorded by Younge himself. He later broke into film scoring through his second full-length project, the soundtrack for the modern classic and blaxploitation masterpiece, 2009’s Black Dynamite (a film he also edited). This success brought more composition work, notably for a cartoon series on Adult Swim and CBS’s The Equalizer, which hit screens this year.

Beyond scoring, his music has quickly garnered respect in music circles, with 2009’s Something About April being sampled by Timbaland for Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail. His 2013 project, Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics, was released on Wax Poetics and co-written with William Hart while 12 Reasons to Die, also released in 2013, was produced and composed by Younge for Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah.

A truly prolific artist, Younge has released nearly fifty projects since the year 2000, including producing albums for Bilal and A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammed. His latest work, The American Negro, is a vast study of both the oppression and resilience written into the history of African Americans. Part album, part podcast and short film, the project sees Younge play twenty different instruments, conduct an orchestra and employ multimedia scope.

Younge’s Qwest TV playlist reflects this engaged, boundary-pushing sensibility: legends and voices of the Civil Rights Movement, like Nina Simone, James Brown and Gil Scott-Heron share the same stage with illuminating documentaries on The Last Poets (the poet revolutionaries of the same era), and on the cosmic power of Sun Ra, plus much more.

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