Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble release “Keep Your Mind Free,” a new single from their forthcoming album, NOW, out April 9th digitally and July 9th physically on International Anthem. It’s the album’s second single, following “Now (Forever Momentary Space).”

“Keep Your Mind Free” is about our mental health individually and collectively during this difficult time. “Pretty soon the whole world…is gonna go crazy” warns a voice at the top of the track. An ominous sample loop from Locks shepherds in the Black Monument choir and later, Ben LaMar Gay’s wailing trumpet solo cuts through. The choir’s soaring voices sing about how/why to “Keep Your Mind”; if/when you are so NOT free in so many ways.

The initial idea behind ‘Keep Your Mind Free’ grew out of an image I created for an action to support the decarceration and furloughing of eligible people in prison to help save lives under the threat of COVID-19. The phrase was a message of encouragement to those locked up having to deal with the virus in a place where they cannot socially distance nor do most of the things the rest of us can do to avoid infection. As the pandemic raged on and the intensity of fear and isolation set in, it made sense to extend this same sentiment out to EVERYONE through song. It’s true that we all need illumination in dark days. In a time that hurts the heart and body, in a time that sequesters us from our loved ones, in a time where safety is not a given, in a locked-down world, to be liberated from restraint we have to keep our minds free. ~ Damon Locks

The track’s lead soloist, cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, also shares some words about working with Locks and Black Monument Ensemble:

Being inside the sound of the Black Monument Ensemble is a unified ascension, like when the subway train ascends from the ground and the sun reveals the natural details of the mobile community that you joined by boarding…all those voices, all that rhythm, all those stories.

Black Monument Ensemble was originally conceived as a medium for Chicago-based multimedia artist/activist Damon Locks’ sample-based sound collage work, but has evolved into a vibrant collective of artists, musicians, singers, and dancers, ages 9 to 52 from all facets of the diverse wellspring of Black artistic excellence in Chicago, making work with common goals of joy, compassion, and intention.

NOW is the follow-up to their debut album Where Future Unfolds, which boasted “uplifting activist jazz for tumultuous times” (Pitchfork). It was created in the final throes of summer 2020, following months of pandemic-induced fear and isolation, the explosion of social unrest, struggle and violence in the streets, and as the certain presence of a new reality had fully settled in. Set up safely in the garden behind Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, the music was recorded in only a few takes, capturing the first times members of BME had ever played or sang the tunes. As Locks describes it,

It was about offering a new thought. It was about resisting the darkness. It was about expressing possibility. It was about asking the question, ‘Since the future has unfolded and taken a new and dangerous shape…what happens NOW?’