Photo: Conrad Louis-Charles
jazz, hip hop, and tap dance
Baltimore, Maryland
Describing their immersive, expansive, and evolving performance “Dizzy Spellz,” trumpeter Sean Jones and tap dancer/chanteuse Brinae Ali explain, “We’re looking at Dizzy Gillespie as this spirit guide, an ancestor that helped us along our journey, and can help us figure out our path as we heal ourselves from trauma as a people.” With jazz legend Gillespie as an avatar of perseverance and transcendence, “Dizzy Spellz” traces a spellbinding throughline woven through African American vernacular expression, connecting jazz and tap and hip hop as expressions of protest, healing, and hope.
Sean Jones’ first musical home was the gospel choir of St. James Church of God in Christ in his hometown of Warren, Ohio. Jones took up the trumpet in fifth grade, inspired by an exceptional teacher who gave him two Miles Davis recordings, by his grandmother’s stories about his grandfather playing the trumpet during World War II—and by the fact that the trumpet was so hard to play that none of his classmates wanted to touch it. That penchant for taking on big challenges defines Jones as an exceptional performer and educator; his many credits include longtime lead trumpet for Wynton Marsalis, director of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra’s jazz section, and in 2019 becoming Chair of the Jazz Studies Department at Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute.
Tap dance is a family legacy for Alexandria “Brinae Ali” Bradley. Her father, Bruce Bradley, founded Flint, Michigan’s Tapology Dance Company; Ali became a student at age 3 and continues to work with this community-focused school and their annual festival. Arriving in New York for college, her skills earned her a position in Savion Glover’s revered dance company. Brinae Ali has danced in Broadway productions and national tours (her credits include STOMP and Shuffle Along) and is also a choreographer, educator, award-winning playwright, and mesmerizing singer and spoken-word artist.
Through all her artistic explorations, Brinae Ali was inspired by the music and the story of Dizzy Gillespie. As their artists’ statement for “Dizzy Spellz” notes, “From his coming of age through racial and social dynamics in the Deep South, creating and curating the bebop movement in New York, to his spiritual journey to Africa and his delve into Afro Cuban music and the Baha’i Faith, Dizzy was very much ahead of his time.” When Ali met Jones, their shared belief in Gillespie’s importance began to take shape into a performance that explores Dizzy’s life, philosophy, and musical genius as a structure for understanding the African American experience, and the way that the tradition of making beauty out of the materials at hand, and willing a better future into existence, has created a visionary aesthetic now recognized as Afrofuturism.
“Dizzy Spellz” is a sonic manifesto for the message of hope that Gillespie’s Afrofuturist vision holds for all of humanity as we navigate challenging times. It is also a performance deeply rooted in the Black musical tradition and in the community Jones and Ali have found in Baltimore, where, among other efforts, they help anchor the Baltimore Jazz Collective, which is revitalizing live jazz in the city. The band who are their co-creators in “Dizzy Spellz” are all stars of the local scene in Baltimore and the DMV: Kris Funn on bass, Alex Brown on keys, CV Dashiell on drums, and the uncategorizable master instrumentalist and composer Wendel Patrick on turntables, beatbox, and more. Reflecting on the richness of their collaboration and their hometown, Jones asserts, “It’s an honor to tour this particular concept with folks who live up the street from me.”