The Discover Tab’s Album Club is a work-in-progress idea of mine where we will listen to a chosen album for one week, and then then return to discuss our thoughts and opinions on the record.
Hello! I’m going to try something out and see how the reaction goes. It’s The Discover Tab’s Album Club and it is exactly what you think. I’ve picked an album for the debut event - The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby (1970) - and in one week’s time I will start a Twitter thread for discussion. Did you like the album? What was your favourite and least favourite elements of the album? Will you check out some more jazz-harp stylings of the legendary Dorothy Ashby? Stuff like that.
Here’s some information about Dorothy via. Wikipedia:
Hailed as one of the most "unjustly under loved jazz greats of the 1950s" and the "most accomplished modern jazz harpist," Dorothy Ashby established the harp as an improvising jazz instrument, beyond earlier use as a novelty or background orchestral instrument, proving the harp could play bebop as adeptly as the instruments commonly associated with jazz, such as the saxophone or piano.
Ashby had to overcome many obstacles during the pursuit of her career. As an African American female musician in a male dominated industry, she was at a disadvantage. In a 1983 interview with W. Royal Stokes for his book Living the Jazz Life, she remarked of her career, "It's been maybe a triple burden in that not a lot of women are becoming known as jazz players. There is also the connection with black women. The audiences I was trying to reach were not interested in the harp, period—classical or otherwise—and they were certainly not interested in seeing a black woman playing the harp."
Ashby successfully navigated these disadvantages, and subsequently aided in the expansion of who was listening to harp music and what the harp was deemed capable of producing as an instrument.
Ashby's albums were of the jazz genre, but often moved into R&B, world music, and other styles, especially her 1970 album The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, where she demonstrates her talents on another instrument, the Japanese koto, successfully integrating it into jazz.
It will be fun! For now, all you have to do is listen to the record, and follow The Discover Tab on Twitter.
Listen now, on:
Spotify:
That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.