Akinmusire is an avant-garde jazz trumpeter from Oakland by way of the Manhattan School of Music, USC, and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in LA. This was his second album (first on Blue Note) with Walter Smith III on sax, Gerald Clayton on piano, Harish Raghavan on bass, and Justin Brown on drums.

“My Name is Oscar” is a spoken word piece with drums (or maybe it is a drum piece with spoken word interlude) about the shooting of Oscar Grant III at Fruitvale Station in 2009 – also the subject of Ryan Coogler’s film Fruitvale Station from 2013.

My copy is actually from the Vinyl Me Please Anthology The Story of Blue Note Records, second edition, on which it stands in for Blue Note’s “modern” era. Wonderful record I might not have heard outside the context of the anthology but I’m very happy to have.