Mazz Swift Lights the Path with 'The 10000 Things: Praise Songs for the iRiligious'
Their debut solo album has been featured in PBS, All About Jazz, Reverberations with Majel Connery, and more.
You may be familiar with Mazz Swift as a singer, composer, and Juilliard-trained violinist who has worked with bands and artists such as Silk Road Ensemble and D'Angelo. However, their debut solo album, The 10000 Things: Praise Songs for the iRiligious, sheds light on Swift's everyday journey as a proud, Black, American, non-binary, and neuro-emergent fiddler. The album reflects their efforts to honor and connect with their ancestry and to play music that feels natural to them. The 10000 Things: Praise Songs for the iRiligious has been featured on PBS, All About Jazz, Reverberations with Majel Connery, and more.
“My mother, won’t you give up the world?
My father, won’t you give up the world?
My brother, sister, won’t you give up the world?
We must leave this world behind.
What if you give up the world?”
- “SomeDay School” by Mazz Swift
Mazz Swift announced their debut solo album, The 10000 Things: Praise Songs for the iRiligious, on March 20, 2024. The first single and opening track, “No More,” was released alongside the announcement. Swift stated, “Beginning a record with ‘I will never turn back’ is a statement in itself. Now that I know "freedom" there’s nowhere to go but forward, but I still hear the ring of the pickaxe, and the overseer’s switch.”
“[The record] is very black, particularly, African-American Black…what we carry came through.” - Nanette Hill
During the Q&A session of their Album Listening Party at Figure 8 Studios, Mazz shared how, over a decade ago, they acquired the Slave Songs of the United States collection of Spirituals while visiting the Whitney Plantation with their family. This historical relic became a “bible and tarot reading. I would just…flip it open, look, and see what it speaks to me.” This exercise took the Guinean concept of Sankofa (to go back and fetch it) to another level. “I have long wanted a religion that was based on joy…I love practicing joy.”
There’s a depth to all of these songs. To be singing [them] is always been an interesting thing for me.” In the song "No More," Mazz incorporated synths, electronic percussion, experimental electronics, powerful violin improvisations, and commanding vocals to create deeply moving and sonically explorative work with deep roots in tradition. The ancestral complexities of returning to unknown roots are expressed through the voice of poet Reggie Gibson. He had recorded a random list of words for a collaborative project with Mazz during the pandemic. "I processed that recording for a live performance. When the performance came, the electronics failed." Despite the technical issue, Mazz decided to keep Gibson's recorded voice and used it for this song as a form of "black meditation," allowing it to play as recorded.
Check out “No More” by clicking below:
In an interview for NewAm’s podcast, Reverberations, host Majel Connery praised Mazz for "shredding" their violin all throughout the recording. She then asked what virtuosity in the classical violin context meant to them. Mazz responded by saying that it's not virtuosity in the classical sense at all, but rather a virtuosity in true self-expression through an instrument. “It takes a lot to learn how to play this thing, and so much of it is wrapped under the aesthetics of the people who are teaching you to how play it… is all subjective.” Mazz also mentioned that it was a long process of removing themselves "from the Schutz and all of that."
Listen to Reverberations With Majel Connery - Episode 3: Mazz Swift by clicking below:
The vocals on this record did not follow the classical line either. The soulful vocal range of Swift, heard on “Alabamy,” plays between the past and the future. “I added vocals to help with the transitions. I don’t consider myself a singer, so there is a sense of non-pressure.” While at the Listening Party, New Amsterdam Records Co-Artistic Director William Brittelle asked if Mazz had written the arrangement for this Spiritual. Mazz’s response? “I improvised it."
Throughout the listening section of the party, randomly selected guests would sit on the engineering chair, switching out each time a song ended. One of the guests, Mazz's sister Nanette Hill, was brought to tears as her voice surprisingly echoed through the last tune, "New Anthem." As the spiritual says, “Sister lights the lamp, and the lamp lights the road.” Her feedback noted how “[The record] is very black, particularly African-American Black…what we carry came through.”
Click here to learn more about The 10000 Things: Praise Songs for the iRiligious by Mazz Swift.
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