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Melvin Gibbs: How Black Music Took Over The World
Residency
April 15, 2026–July 1, 2026
This Spring, FourOneOne collaborates with producer, bassist, and writer-thinker Melvin Gibbs on a series of events celebrating his singular life in music thus far – a path that has always been both absolutely of the moment and intimately linked to the ancestral knowledge that shapes our sense of music, community and history – and his highly anticipated new book, How Black Music Took Over The World.
From April through July, at venues around the city, Gibbs and a constellation of collaborators and friends—including Vijay Iyer, Immanuel Wilkins, Ben LaMar Gay, Kokayi, Tcheser Holmes, Chris Williams, Luke Stewart, Warren “Trae” Crudup III, Paul Wilson Bae, James Francies, choreographer Leslie Parker, and theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander—assemble to explore and respond to the book’s major themes through listening, conversation and performance.
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Melvin Gibbs: Geechee Reclamation
April 17, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Public Records
The first event in bassist, composer and writer Melvin Gibbs’ multi-part residency with FourOneOne, Geechee Reclamation uses music and dance to affirm the Gullah-Geechee people’s indelible contribution to American culture and music, which goes way beyond a “folkloric footnote.” Using electronics, archival recordings and an exceptional group of performers—dancer/choreographer Leslie Parker, multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay along with keyboardist Paul Wilson Bae, drummer Warren “Trae” Crudup III, and Gibbs on electric bass and electronics—Geechee Reclamation brings together the often overlooked origins of George Gershwin’s famous “folk opera” with Gibbs’ own family history. Doors 7pm, show 8pm.
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FourOneOne & Sound+Science Present: Melvin Gibbs and Stephon Alexander
April 15, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Brooklyn Public Library - Library for Arts and Culture
FourOneOne and Sound+Science join in celebration of producer, bassist, and author Melvin Gibbs’ new book How Black Music Took Over The World. Gibbs will discuss the book and related topics with Stephon Alexander, theoretical cosmologist, jazz musician, and author of The Jazz of Physics and Fear of a Black Universe. In the book, Gibbs discusses the musical inheritance of Africa. Beginning with two rhythmic building blocks he calls the cell and the frame, Gibbs shows how those tools can transport listeners to “a realm where sounds become vehicles for human movement.” Reforged in the African diaspora in the Americas, they are played today on church organs, electric guitars, computers, telephones, or a simple gourd. Kool & the Gang called Black musicians the “scientists of sound”—and Gibbs shows how they discovered the world’s music. Doors 5:30pm, event 6pm.
