Free Spirits: Kiana Mickles presents Mary Lou Williams

For this listening session, Kiana Mickles will trace the work of their great-great-great aunt, the bebop pioneer Mary Lou Williams. The conversation will discuss the musician’s pivotal role in revolutionizing spiritual jazz, or what she called "jazz for the disturbed soul." Williams was a mentor to Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, the latter whom she also arranged for. As some jazz musicians were shifting toward making revolutionary jazz that reflected the political upheaval of the '60s and '70s, Williams was part of a faction of jazz musicians choosing to provide healing through sacred music. We will listen to the diverse music that defined distinct eras within Mary's discography, opening with the ragtime period during which she was known as "the little piano girl" who would play for white families in a racially tense Pittsburgh. Then, we will move into her Kansas City swing and boogie-woogie era, before finally closing with the forward-thinking spiritual music she made following her conversion to Catholicism.

Kiana Mickles is a New York-raised music critic at Pitchfork. Their criticism traces the history of electronic music subcultures, with a focus on music on the experimental fringe, Black and queer expression, and pop music. Their former column, Office Hours, centered untraditional queer spaces after dark. Mickles is drawn to stories that combine creative research and cultural criticism to unveil how sounds, people, spaces, and high and low culture shape the modern world.