The Philadelphia, New York and Washington based Irreversible Entanglements cultivates the particular liberation technique of jazz and connects it with neighboring black music. The band formed in 2015 after a concert with Musicians Against Police Brutality and broke through in 2017 with the self-titled debut album and subsequent festival gigs in the US and in Europe.
Irreversible Entanglements consists of poet Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, a prolific, global standard bearer of Afro-Futurist music, art and activism. Luke Stewart is one of the most in-demand improvisational bass players of his generation, who brings his encyclopedic musical knowledge to the band from his work as a radio and concert presenter. Others in the band are saxophonist Keir Neuringer and trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes who, when they joined the band, had worked together for a long time as a duo.
Irreversible Entanglement’s goal is to marry the Moor Mother’s words with an unorthodox, improvised version of free jazz as a “means of black liberation”.
This is how The Nation wrote about the second album “Who Sent You?” from 2020:
“Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism.”
And Pitchfork added: “the jazz ensemble evokes our American topography, both physically and psychologically, by capturing what’s in the news and what’s underneath that surface.”
Irreversible Entanglements makes music that transcends genre boundaries, that both respects and defies tradition, that speaks to the present while also aiming for the future. And now the five-man band comes to Fasching.
Camae Ayewa – vocals
Keir Neuringer – saxophone
Aquiles Navarro – trumpet
Luke Stewart – bass
Tcheser Holmes – drums
