music

Roy Ayers is joined by Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad for an entire album of new material. Born out of the 'Jazz Is Dead' concert series, which has epitomized a vast demographic connection for years. In February 2018, Roy Ayers performed four sold out shows in Los Angeles as part of the Jazz Is Dead Black History Month series. It wasn’t until 2020 that fans of Ayers discovered that in addition to those shows, the legendary vibraphone player had also recorded an entire album of new material with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. The 8 tracks on this album testify to the love not only of a legendary musician’s legacy, but to the vitality & necessity of this music and these sounds in the present era, a thread that will likely run throughout all of the upcoming releases from Jazz Is Dead Records.

Where the first installment of Twelve Reasons To Die was based in 1960s Italy – detailing the machinations of the feared DeLuca crime family – Part II inhabits the grimy streets of mid-1970s New York City. Descendants of the DeLucas are running the city, but a powerful, younger crime syndicate is percolating, commanded by black gangster Lester Kane (personified by Raekwon).