Sweet Tooth, the debut album from bassist, singer and composer Mali Obomsawin nodded to both the familiarly freeing legacy of Ornette Coleman’s mid-20th-century quartet and to lesser-known declarations of independence: the sounds, songs and ideas of Maine’s Wabanaki people. Obamsawin connects these histories with rare power and ingenuity. “My people have had to innovate endlessly to get our stories heard,” she has said.
Here, Obomsawin and her band will perform original music, followed by an in-depth conversation with series host Larry Blumenfeld, NJMH Executive Director and Co-chief Marten Band/Ramapo Munsee Lenape Nation Tracy Hyter-Suffern, and other panelists about connections between jazz and Indigenous cultures, and the issues surrounding Indigenous resistance movements.
