As it was in 2017, Aaron Abernathy's Dialogue is a call to resistance and revolution. Revolution for people of color. Revolution for marginalized and oppressed communities here in America. Revolution that is is now playing out in the streets across our nation.

In solidarity with those protests and, more importantly, to not just celebrate the art of people of color but make space for their voices and stories, we've "remixed" our 2017 conversation with "Ab" about the creation of Dialogue, the state of existing while black, and more.

Jazz has long been one of the most potent musical languages that we have, and on their second album, Irreversible Entanglements are wielding it like a righteous sword.

Who Sent You explores injustice and resistance with cacophonous horns, warped bass-lines, and the barely-contained rage of poet Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother). The album's greatest triumph though, lies in the revelation that there can be exaltation in struggle and grace to be found in our common humanity if we're willing to receive it.

Join us on an all-new episode of Discolgist as we dig into one of the most important albums of 2020 from one of the fiercest jazz outfits in history.

It's likely that we'll look back at 2017 as the year almost everything fell apart, downerism ruled the land, and we came very close to being broken as a people. 

But we didn't break. We made it. And on this final installment of ChunkyGlasses: The Podcast for 2017, we're discussing the music that lifted us up, dropped us down, and sometimes even showed us the way, but never, ever let us down.

Thanks for tuning in all year. We'll see you soon. Until then be good to your ears, but be better to your people...

Mavis Staples, one of the greatest voices of this generation, or any, is back with a powerful new LP If All I Was Was Black. Continuing in her collaboration with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy in the production chair, the civil-rights icon is going back to her Chicago blues roots and delivering a powerful statement on racism in America in 2017.

PLUS! Robert Ellis and Courtney Hartman have teamed up for an album celebrating the music of John Hartford, and the iconic first single is just as exquisite as you would expect.

With Control, Janet Jackson became a household name, but it wasn't until her 1989 album Rhythm Nation 1814 that she ascended to the status of music legend. 

Buttressed by pop hits and jam-packed with hooks set loose from some future utopia, Nation was a not-so-subtle exploration of racism, sexism, love, and social responsibility that sought to elevate our humanity by any means necessary. More importantly, it's an album who's messages sadly may be MORE relevant almost thirty years later.

Join Kevin, Marcus K. Dowling, and Timothy Anne Burnside (National Museum of African American History and Culture) as they consider this landmark achievement in music.

Aaron "Ab' Abernathy is a music man. He 's a soul man. He is a man of faith. The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement runs through his blood. And he poured all of this and more into the and album that is as much a soundtrack to 2017 as it is a timeless statement on flawed nature of the human condition, Dialogue. [Part 2/2]

Aaron "Ab' Abernathy is a music man. He 's a soul man. He is a man of faith. The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement runs through his blood. And he poured all of this and more into the and album that is as much a soundtrack to 2017 as it is a timeless statement on flawed nature of the human condition, Dialogue.

On 2016's Monologue, soul man Aaron Abernathy explored his journey from a boy to the man he is today. Abernathy had every intention of continuing that story in his next song cycle, but a funny thing happened on the way to that follow up: The world went crazy... and Abernathy began asking questions. LOTS of questions.

A spiritual heir to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Dialogue finds Abernathy looking at the world around him, and searching deep inside AND out for answers to the daily horrors that seem to have taken over the zeitgeist. What does it mean to be decent in a world that seemingly only rewards depravity? How can an African American survive in a society that continues to not just perpetrate, but ostensibly celebrates systemic white supremacy? Do even the smallest of human actions matter?

These questions and more provide the framework for that rarest of things, a true soul record that trades as much in heart as it does universal truth and meaning. Join Kevin, Marcus K. Dowling, and Eduardo in the basement as they have their own dialogue about the world today and one of the most relevant and powerful albums to date of this new American landscape.