Omar Thomas: The Low-Down Brown Get-Down (2020)

Omar Thomas (b. 1984)
Described as "elegant, beautiful, sophisticated, intense, and crystal clear in emotional intent," the music of Omar Thomas continues to move listeners everywhere it is performed. Born to Guyanese parents in Brooklyn, New York in 1984, Omar moved to Boston in 2006 to pursue a Master of Music in Jazz Composition at the New England Conservatory of Music after studying Music Education at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is the protégé of lauded composers and educators Ken Schaphorst and Frank Carlberg, and has studied under multiple Grammy-winning composer and bandleader Maria Schneider.
It was while completing his Master of Music Degree that he was appointed the position of Assistant Professor of Harmony at Berklee College of Music at the surprisingly young age of 23. Following his Berklee tenure, he served on faculty of the Music Theory department at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Now a Yamaha Master Educator, he is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition and Jazz Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2012, Omar was named the Boston Music Award's "Jazz Artist of the Year." In 2019, he was awarded the National Bandmasters Association/Revelli Award for his wind composition “Come Sunday,” becoming the first Black composer awarded the honor in the contest’s 42-year history.
Omar's first album, "I AM," debuted at #1 on iTunes Jazz Charts and peaked at #13 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Albums Chart. His second release, " We Will Know: An LGBT Civil Rigths Piece in Four Movements," has been hailed by Grammy Award-wining drummer Terri Lyne Carrington as being a "thought provoking, multi-layered masterpiece" which has "put him in the esteemed category of great artists." "We Will Know" was awarded two OUTMusic Awards, including "Album of the Year." For this work, Omar was named the 2014 Lavender Rhino Award recipient by The History Project, acknowledging his work as an up-and-coming activist in the Boston LGBTQ community. Says Terri Lyne: "Omar Thomas will prove to be one of the more important composer/arrangers of his time."
The Low-Down Brown Get-Down (2020)
The end of the 60s into and through the 70s saw the era of the “blaxploitation” film - a genre of filmmaking aimed at African-Americanaudiences which put us in leading roles of stories that often followed antiestablishment plots. These films were often controversial due to their exaggerated bravado, hypersexuality, and violence. Noticing the lucrative potential of blaxploitation films, Hollywood began to market these films to a wider audience. Though low budget, they possessed an exciting, raw, soulful quality unlike any other genre up until that time, and from these films were born some of the most iconic characters (Shaft, Dolemite, Foxy Brown, and Cleopatra Jones, to name a few) and soundtracks ever created, written by some of the biggest names in African-American popular folk music of the day and since, including Issac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye.
The Low-Down Brown Get-Down is the soundtrack for a nonexistent blaxploitation film. It pulls from various sounds and styles of African-American folk music, such as funk, R&B, soul, early hip hop, the blues, and even film noir to stitch together its “scenes.” The title pulls from and is inspired by “post-jive” African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). The word “Brown” in the title, in addition to its reference to none other than the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, whose most-famous licks and bass lines pepper the intro and recur throughout the piece, also refers to the melanin of the people who created these sounds.
This piece unapologetically struts, bops, grooves, slides, shimmies, head bangs, and soul claps its way straight through its thrilling “chase scene” finale. It was my intention with the creation of this piece to go full steam ahead on bringing African-American folk music to the concert stage to take its place amongst all other types of folk music that have found a comfortable home in this arena. May this work push back against notions of “sophistication,” “appropriateness,” and “respectability” that have been codified in the concert music setting for a century and more.
- Program Note by composer
Instrumentation
For Wind Ensemble
Performer
The University of Texas Wind Ensemble
Conducted by Jerry Junkin
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[@msewell763]

bro PLEASE do caribana!!!!!!!!!!!

[@mrman12w]

Not sure if you take suggestions, but maybe do liminal by John Mackey? It’s one of his lesser known ones but I think it’s pretty cool