This meeting of poet Fred Moten, professor of performance studies and comparative literature at New York University; and bassist Brandon Lopez, known for his own recordings as well as work with John Zorn, Gerald Cleaver and Tyshawn Sorey, stands in a long linage of spoken word-music collaborations that present African-American political-cultural expression with no concession to complexity of thought or feeling.

While the sounds created by Lopez, who uses the whole frame of his instrument as well as the strings, are full of percussive momentum and tonal colour, with his pinching harmonics like a discreet soprano chorus at times, Moten’s deeply commanding delivery is as impactful for form as well as content. When he exclaims provocative statements such as ‘Dissonance frees the rest’ or evokes ‘the black singing body’, or ‘the new Arethas in the mixing’ he is making reference to ciphers that can be identified with jazz, blues and soul, but equally searching for possible meanings to all this glorious art in a divided and exploitative world. After all, the honour of Ms Franklin appearing at the White House is open to all manner of interpretations, not all of which bid us lift every voice and sing.

Moten and Lopez offer balm as well as ballsy bravado and the moments where the former breaks into melody tightly framed by the lyrical riffs of the latter make this work as musical as it is confrontational. The spirits of Sekou Sundiata, Jean Breeze, Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka gather in what is very much a house of sacred praise and secular verse.