Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey / Father Figures June 27, 2012

For its 21st album, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey reaches into the dark annals of its hometown's history and emerges with a masterwork:The Race Riot Suite.

The album is a long-form conceptual piece that tells the devastating story of the 1921 Tulsa race riot-a real estate-driven ethnocide occurring under the guise of citizen-dispensed justice. The oil-elite, civic government and local press colluded to take advantage of a racially tense climate in Jim Crow-era Oklahoma, resulting in the death of hundreds of black Tulsans and the destruction of an entire city district.