Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: 'The black experience is American experience'

He invented his own form of notation, and spent decades composing a jazz history of the civil rights movement. Ben Beaumont-Thomas meets an extraordinary musical pioneerIshmael Wadada Leo Smith bows his trumpet down into the mic as if in an act of prayer. Drummers clatter behind him, their music held on the edge of orbit and then, afterwards, he pleads with the audience at Cafe Oto in London, to "knit your hearts together", to fight sexism and racism. This is not your average free-jazz perform...

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