Angel Bat Dawid working to change the music landscape for Black musicians

For the accomplished Chicago composer-clarinetist-pianist-vocalist Angel Bat Dawid, 2021 can best be summed up courtesy of Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times,” she said during a recent call from her home and studio in south suburban Matteson.

Dawid recalled how bleak things seemed just a year ago when she was recuperating from COVID-19 and also mourning the passing of her sister.

“I didn’t know how I was going to get through it,” she said. “But it was also the greatest year as far as music and the opportunities that I had. I am so grateful to still be here.”

Things really shifted in the latter half of 2021, with Dawid releasing a live album, a follow-up to her acclaimed 2019 debut “The Oracle,” as well as finding herself opening for the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra over the summer, and monopolizing her time during the pandemic to take on new commissioned works and participate in a number of virtual shows. It led to her being named the artist-in-residence at this year’s NYC Winter JazzFest. The virtual concert event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was the forum for the debut of her newest composition, entitled “Afro-Town Topics: A Mythological Afrofuturist Revue.”

If you’re in Chicago, you may want to head to Sleeping Village on Jan. 20 to hear Dawid as part of the multi-venue Tomorrow Never Knows multi-day concert series.

The daughter of Christian missionaries, Dawid spent a good part of her childhood in Kenya. Re-acclimating to the American way of life when she was 12 years old became a harrowing experience.

“Blackness was safe in Africa; we played outside and climbed trees all day and it was wonderful. I’d just play with my friends, there was no violence,” she recalled. “So, when we came back to America and I went into public school, I did not fit in. I was bullied and made fun of. That’s when music became an important part of my life.”

Damien Besançon Photo

Dawid first got the itch to play when her father took her and her siblings to see the 1984 film “Amadeus”; she was immediately hooked on the fact that Mozart was so into music as a child. Wanting to follow in that path, she enrolled in music lessons, a lifelong journey filled with ups — and downs. She recalls taking on the clarinet when it was the only instrument spot left in her school’s orchestra, and being scrutinized by her young peers for being a Black woman exploring classical music. While enrolled in music studies at Roosevelt University she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, forcing her to put school on hold while working in a high-end lingerie shop on Michigan Avenue to pay her medical bills. Eventually cashing out her 401k and using tax returns to buy gear, things picked up when Dawid found the avant-garde scene in Chicago.

“It’s Emerald City if you’re a music lover,” she says.

She attended regular jam sessions with Adam Zanolini, now executive director of Elastic Arts, who’s been supportive of Dawid throughout her career. The foundation led to her establishing the Participatory Music Coalition, inviting anyone to join on stage and play rather than just spectate. It was inspired by what Dawid uncovered learning about the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), first established in Chicago in 1965.

“We were doing nothing new — AACM was doing it back then. I was obsessed with that history and disappointed that in all my musical training no one brought up AACM. It was a treasure trove that was opened up to me.”

It’s one of the reasons why education has become so paramount to Dawid as she furthers her career.

“I’m a byproduct of music education,” she says. “I’m very passionate about it and know how important it is, especially when it comes to music education for Black people.” Her goal, she says, is to open a music school in the next 10 to 20 years, and she’s already started doing the legwork to make it happen. Dawid recently worked in a program with the Old Town School of Folk Music to offer an eight-week course on music to incarcerated juveniles.

And she’s been playing into her “vinyl addict” habits, collecting scores of records that will become part of her eventual school library — a habit she first picked up while working at Hyde Park Records and collecting more goods than she was selling, declaring, “Some of the best music libraries are in Black people’s houses.”

In all of her work, Dawid says it’s important for her to take on topics of racism and inequity head-on. Which is why she created her latest group, Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, to empower young Black female composers, noting there are many “powerhouses” in Chicago.

“I’m not trying to be a musician to be a celebrity,” Dawid says. “I want to have a different trajectory for my career to provide safe spaces for Black musicians. ... I want to create in a world where people are impacted by each other and can learn to understand one another.”