Jazz legend Dee Dee Bridgewater is celebrating her 50th anniversary this year. The vocalist got her start in the 1970s with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band and worked with greats like Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, and Dizzy Gillespie. She has won two Grammy Awards, launched her own label, DDB, and released albums on it that explore her musical roots. In addition to being a musician, Bridgewater is also an activist and is coming to the festival with her project “We Exist!”. The title refers to Max Roach’s album We Insist!, one of the most important albums to come out of the civil rights movement. With a quartet that naturally consists of women, the singer calls for – no, demands – attention for women’s emancipation and the fight against racially motivated oppression. Arrangements of protest songs like Mississippi Goddam, Trying Times, and The Danger Zone bridge the past and the present, immediately showing how far we’ve come and the road that still lies ahead.
