Elevator Music 35
Ephraim Asili: Jazz Salt

Jazz Salt, a multimedia installation by Ephraim Asili, features a newly recorded 30-minute cassette of sampled tracks, primarily from the 1960s through 1980s, that celebrate the music and poetry of black Americans while confronting 20th-century racial politics. The carefully combined and layered sounds of film, music, spoken word, and animal recordings further ask us to examine sampling as an art form unto itself and to question at what point a sound can—or should—be defined as original.

Both a limited-edition cassette of the elevator track and a limited-edition book featuring Asili’s original drawings and collages are available by donation in the elevator. The book offers a visual, physical, and textual pathway to the sound, and the sound an aural pathway to the book. Donations will support Tang programming.