Our guests don’t ask four questions, but one. "When do we get to eat?” We tell them to eat something before if they don't want to be hungry staring at a shank bone and parsley while we read for two hours. To make the matters worse, every year at our Passover seder, our Afro-Asian Jewish American daughter passionately sings “Go Down Moses” crescendoing into the part “Let my people go!” The song exemplifies the parallel between the Jewish people's enslavement and departure from Egypt and the African-American slave experience in the United States. The parallel that I only draw once a year on Passover. “ Exodus and Emancipation ” is one of the tracks from one of my new albums, a debut album by the NPO Trio ( Sam Newsome on sopranos saxophone, Jean-Michel Pilc on piano, and Meg Okura on the violin) to be released on March 15 from Chant Records, a newly established avant-garde, and world music label. I first met Jean-Michel Pilc almost 18 years ago when I used to play ...
Jazz composer and violinist Meg Okura her thoughts on religion, culture, race, motherhood and all that jazz from her immigrant, Jewish, woman, Japanese, ex-Evangelical, and black family perspectives.