This is Derek Trucks and his band playing “I Wish I Knew” – recorded live at the 29th Detroit International Jazz Festival, September 1, 2008.
The full title of the song is “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”.
I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I could break all the chains holding me
I wish I could say all the things that I should say …
The song was written by Dr. Billy Taylor (along with Dick Dallas?) back in 1954. It was originally recorded by Nina Simone in 1967 on her Silk and Soul album. Billy Taylor also recorded his own instrumental version back in 1967. He said that he wrote the song (perhaps his best known composition) for his daughter Kim, describing it as a very spiritual song.
“I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” was used as a theme song on the BBC, a theme song for the 2004 Olympics, as music for a Coca-Cola commercial, and also served as an anthem for the civil-rights movement.
The video quality (on this youtube video) is not that great, but I think it’s the perfect way to close out this labor day weekend I Love Detroit series, and as Mike Mattison sings at the end of the video — Everyone Should Be Free!
It’s just like Donald Miller said in Blue Like Jazz: “jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery… it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul … It is a music birthed out of freedom.”
This is Derek Trucks and his band playing at the Detroit 2008 Jazz Festival with the Millender Center in the background. Derek first impressed the music industry playing guitar as an 11 year old child prodigy. By age 12 we was playing professionally and touring.
Here’s a video of Jean-Luc Ponty, playing a song called “Rhythms of Hope”, followed by another — simply called “Jig”.
My friend Mark Rehban (the Web 2.0 advertising genius) recommended that I check out Jean-Luc Ponty, since several of my children play violin, viola, and cello. So I found a few of Jean-Luc’s recordings and gave them a spin.
Ponty (born in France in 1942) is a virtuoso violinist and jazz composer. He studied violin under his father, and at the Paris Conservatory.
One can easily discern that Ponty studied classical music. However, by the mid-60s he had moved towards jazz. Influenced by Miles Davis’s and John Coltrane’s music, Ponty adopted the electric violin. Critic Joachim Berendt said “Since Ponty, the jazz violin has been a different instrument” and commends his “brilliance and fire”.
Ponty was among the first to combine the violin with MIDI, distortion boxes, and phase shifters. In 1967 he appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Ponty has worked with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, and played on many other recordings. His symphonic style — drifting towards jazz fusion — made him a popular jazz fusion artist of the 1970’s.
