“Legendary bassist and sartorial maven Jamaaladeen Tacuma has forever hung at the busy intersection of magic-making avant-garde jazz and experimental fusion-funk. The Southwest Philadelphia native, by age 19, was playing in Ornette Coleman's Prime Time (recording free classics such as 1977's Dancing in Your Head and 1978's Body Meta), laying down groove for Philadelphia organist Charles Earland and blasting forth for angular guitarist James Blood Ulmer's torrid Tales of Captain Black in 1978. If Tacuma had stopped there, he would have cemented his avant-jazz cred, but for him there’s always more – more extremes, more dynamic, more emotion, more adventures - and with that his ever-growing Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival, which brought the likes of guitarist Elliot Sharp, pianist Farid Barron, violinist/bassist Henry Grimes, saxophonist/noisemaker John Zorn, trombonist Craig Harris and more to the fore. In a word, “dag.” ” - A.D. Amorosi