Ben Lamar Gay - Open Arms To Open Us (Limited Edition on Dawn Cherry Vinyl)

Prologue by Ben LaMar Gay:

Growing up, spending summers in Alabama, one of my favorite chores was feeding the pigs that were on my great Aunt Lola’s land. Sometimes while on the path to the feeding grounds, Aunt Lola and I would stand still and listen together. We would immediately become aware of winds approaching through wavering pines, quail songs and the chatter of distant cousins just up the road.

Once she told me that during a certain time of day she can hear her father hammering away in the field near the old house where she grew up. Even though her father was long deceased, she could clearly hear the rhythm and feel his presence.

This was my first conscious experience with thermodynamics and its first law that states energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transferred. The moment, environment, memory, and open listening of my great Aunt allowed a sound from the past to resonate in the present for my 7 year old ears.

The awareness of a moment, environment, memory, and open listening are also the makings of a great improviser. With the idea of freedom being a “dangling carrot” for most, my now mature and “forever learning” ears have realized that improvisation is the one freedom that we all have access to. I remember the clarity of my great grandfather’s hammer. The silence in between each strike was what drew Aunt Lola and me in, closer. From that moment on, I’ve carried my curiosity of the world inside my front pocket at all times.

This experience is at the root of this bundle of sound, Open Arms to Open Us.

Open Arms to Open Us is full of rhythm or information that will assist my young folk in dealing with the repetition of things that aim to harm them or stunt their holistic progression. The title is a suggestion of a body movement that is used in many spiritual practices and is also a gesture that represents a type of understanding that leads to touch or a hug. The music is for dancing, reflecting, celebrating, bellowing, bawling, stimulation, focus and deciphering messages from loved ones here and beyond. It was the space in between the sound of my great grandfather’s hammer that made me understand that, no matter what, We Gon Win.