In 1951, a psychiatry student by the name of Frantz Fanon submitted his doctoral dissertation to his university in Lyon, which was promptly rejected by the faculty for being too radical. Fanon, a black man raised under French colonial rule in Martinique, understood far too well the game being played and would go on to draft and submit a more conventional thesis (read: less divisive) to obtain his degree.
The following year, Fanon would return to the spurned manuscript and published it as Black Skin, White Masks, a searing account of the effect of racism and colonialism on the minds of those they seek to subjugate. In it Fanon writes, “Our history takes place in obscurity and the sun I carry with me must lighten every corner.”
Some seventy years later, London composer and producer Adam Scrimshire would take this line and use it as both the title and central concept for his eighth album, Bring Our Light To Every Corner. Central to the album’s sound is the devotional lineage of explorations pioneered by John and Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders in the 1960s, interwoven with the cinematic arrangements (and political consciousness) of jazzy-wall-of-sound architects like Charles Stepney and David Axelrod, and moments of restraint borrowed from acoustic folk and 90s trip hop.
Unlike the political fire of 2023’s Paroxysm – an auditory critique of the Bibby Stockholm and asylum seekers’ treatment in the UK – Bring Our Light To Every Corner leaves behind the statements of outrage and condemnation, focusing instead on a message of community and resilience. “I wanted to create somewhere people could stay for a while,” Scrimshire says in a recent interview. “A space that carries you gently through.”
The album opens with distant strings and the shimmering drone of Mark Zentai’s electric sitar on “My Land Is Your Land, Your Sky Is My Sky” before a soprano sax climbs over the arrangement and the music begins to take flight in new, unexpected directions. This is a pattern repeated, again and again, for the remainder of the album, building on layers of sound, some natural, some less expected. Either way, the result is always cohesive. Laraaji-esque soundscapes mesh into a dancefloor beat halfway through “Asleep, A Dream.” Amanda Whiting’s harp and Idris Rahman’s flute soar over an ecstatic chorus on “With Our Eternal Hope & Joy,” only to be stripped away mid-track to clear the stage for British-Nigerian poet Joshua Idehen’s stunning, syncopated, spoken-word breakdown about survival and hope in dark times. All of this coalesces into the one-two hit of “Your Heart Is My Heart, My Hand Is Your Hand,” a Rhodes meditation featuring Indian classical vocalist Mahesh Kale, and the 15-minute tone prayer, “Awake, A Dream.”
By the time the final composition exhales its last long tones, Fanon’s shadows have been pushed beyond the edges of the frame, the sound of many hands making light work. It’s only after that final note recedes and the needle lifts that Bring Our Light To Every Corner reveals its real brilliance. The voices have stopped chanting but the warmth still fills the room.