The Rich are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives

The eighth album by British-Trinidadian Renaissance man Anthony Joseph takes its title from a line by legendary Trinidadian theorist CLR James, thus setting out its stall from the get-go. Giving voice to the voiceless, particularly those of the Caribbean and its diaspora, is crucial to Joseph’s oeuvre, with its award-winning works of fiction and poetry and a music career that has made him a star in France. Archie Shepp, an artist with whom Joseph closely identifies, was another champion of the oppressed and the iconic American jazzer’s stentorian delivery, interwoven with politics, pathos and moments of explosive urgency, finds strong parallels here.

Framed by the arrangements of saxophonist, composer and producer Jason Yarde and devoted to themes of memory, place and belonging, The Rich Are Only… is many things: bold, intimate, authentic, angry, poignant, empowering and magical. It is Joseph’s strongest recording yet. Not a lyric is wasted; with opener ‘Kamau’ an impressionistic paean to Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite and his black surrealist poetics, and the ten-minute ‘Language (Poem for Anthony McNeill)’ paying homage to the late Jamaican modernist poet, it’s as if the ancestors, literary and otherwise, keep watch over Joseph’s shoulder.

Aided by horn players Yarde, Denys Baptiste and Shabaka Hutchings, with Crispin Robinson on percussion and Rod Youngs on drums, musical conversations take cues from narratives like that in the evocative ‘Calling England Home’, a dancehall poem-song for the Windrush Generation, or ‘The Gift, a tender, majestic eulogy to Joseph’s late father. Elsewhere, as on ‘Swing Praxis’, even the spirits let loose.