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Today, on a transcendent new album called Dilate Your Heart, a deep and compassionate collection of music from Bon Iver, Mary Lattimore, Angel Bat Dawid, Gia Margaret and Sam Gendel converges around the poetry of acclaimed author and educator, Ross Gay. Realized and released by Jagjaguwar, the project marks the beginning of the revered indie label's 25th Anniversary, and the first installment in Jag Quarterly: a four-part series of creative endeavors that celebrate collaboration, community and the world-building ethos that defines Jagjaguwar's rich history.
For decades, both Ross Gay and Jagjaguwar have been based in Bloomington, Indiana. His poems have made a special home in the heart of the label, and the community orchard he helped build for the city is a physical representation of his writing - a place open to all, teeming with life and abound with nature's gifts. Dilate Your Heart is Jagjaguwar's first spoken-word LP in 20 years, and across the album Ross Gay performs with a bright aliveness, delivering indelible, inspiring images of radical empathy, unabated gratitude, hard work and human connection. As Jagjaguwar says, "This record will make you a better human being."
Listen to Dilate Your Heart here: https://rossgay.ffm.to/dilate-your-heart
Tune in to Jagjaguwar's YouTube at 11:30am EDT today, where Ross Gay will join fellow poet and Jagjaguwar artist Jamila Woods for a live-streamed discussion about Dilate Your Heart, Gay's writing and more: https://youtu.be/5qCUHDma_7s
At 12pm EDT, the Q&A will be followed by the premiere of the video for Dilate Your Heart's stirring closer, "Sorrow Is Not My Name" (with Sam Gendel), which will also be available to view here: https://youtu.be/9-LJMGZCKaw
On Dilate Your Heart, each piece is a conversation between artists, some from the Jagjaguwar family and others just visionaries the label has adored for years. Gay's heartbreaking and relentlessly thankful "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" is given a gorgeous bed of vines by Bon Iver. In "Burial," harpist and composer Mary Lattimore's lunar landscape follows Gay's voice into outer space. Clarinetist and spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid dances with the frenetic, joyous scene Gay leads us through during "To The Fig Tree On 9th & Christian," in which a group of Philadelphian strangers scramble together to harvest the fruit. Gia Margaret provides an amniotic environment for "Poem To My Child, If Ever You Shall Be," a love letter to a future newborn discovering the beauty of Earth. On "Sorrow Is Not My Name," Sam Gendel crafts a Western feel, turning Gay's voice glassy and singsongy as his words focus on the treasure of everyday life, and not its finality.
Physical copies of Dilate Your Heart will be available on April 9, and fans can pre-order the limited edition, opaque green vinyl here.
Although the phrase "Dilate Your Heart" stems from an oft-used mantra of Jagjaguwar's past, and not one of Gay's poems, it owes a psychic debt to his work. It means to make room, to let more in: new faces, concepts, fears and community. The inspiration for each of the following Jag Quarterly releases will also come from Jagjaguwar mantras: This is a Mindfulness Drill, Join the Ritual and Sentimental Noise. Additional artists confirmed to participate in the projects include Lonnie Holley, Moses Sumney, Perfume Genius, Sharon Van Etten, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and many others. Stay tuned for more news soon.
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