Winners of the 2018 American Book Award for Oral Literature, Heroes Are Gang Leaders are a genre-bending ensemble known for its bold approach to Race Fearlessness and Creative Deception Busting. HAGL was co-founded by saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and Poet Thomas Sayers Ellis initially to pay tribute to the late poet, activist and Jazz critic Amiri Baraka but over the course of 4 CDs, HAGL has created an Oral Literature of whirling and original ideas unlike any Spoken Word Jazz Ensemble before them.
Recorded over a three-year period at the longtime Fast Speaking Music Home of poet Anne Waldman by her son, musician and engineer Ambrose Bye, in New York City,
Artificial Happiness Button finds HAGL in search of new and original ways to combine Poetry and Jazz. For this project they move away from the literary canon to turn inward, courageously and humorously reaching, aesthetically and politically, beneath and beyond the manufactured Problem Reaction Solution Movements of Social Justice to reinvigorate the tradition of Jazz Poetry.
With its longtime lineup of poets, musicians and artists James Brandon Lewis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Margaret Morris, Randall Horton, Luke Stewart, Heru Shabaka-ra, Devin Brahja Waldman, Brandon Moses, Warren "Trae" Crudup, Janice Lowe, HAGL is joined by new members Melanie Dyer, Jenna Camille, Nettie Chickering and Bonita Lee Penn as well as featured guests such as the legendary bassist William Parker, Jaimie "Breezy" Branch on trumpet and Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña. A wake up call for 2020, Artificial Happiness Button is unflinching in its ability to take on such topics as the built-in earthly ceiling of human joy, the truth tug of war that occurs in personal relationships, the addictive effects of bottled racism in literature and the American South, mechanized widespread programmed hurt and the deadly electronic net of one-hive info sharing. This new offering from Heroes Are Gang Leaders is a timely and prophetic tour de force aimed at giving back all of the false aspects of the globe (and local globalism) while rescuing the real ones.