Events Calendar

750 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7

“Raw, underground, and chaotic,” Kassa Overall is “one of modern jazz music’s most audacious futurists” (Pitchfork). The GRAMMY-nominated emcee, singer, producer and drummer melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. Since his 2019 debut, Overall has established himself as a rhythmic innovator and a visionary poet who addresses the injustices of the carceral system, the pharmaceutical industry, and anti-black racism, while wrangling with the perils of his own mental illness. On ANIMALS, his 2024 album on Warp Records, Kassa pushes his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further, layering Roland 808s against avant-garde drumming—in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart—alongside all-star collaborators like Danny Brown, Lil B, Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Vijay Iyer, and Shabazz Palaces. ANIMALS pushes Kassa’s lyrical message further, too. As an entertainer and as a black man in America, he reckons with the two-sided truth that to perform one’s freedom for an audience can mean succumbing to life inside a cage.

Kassa’s joined by Tomoki Sanders soprano sax, drums and percussion, Bendji Allonce congas and percussion, and Matt Wong keys.