Ben Bliss

Decades after the teenage Beethoven first read “An die Freude,” his Enlightenment ideals had been trampled but not extinguished by a series of repressive regimes. In 1824, when saying the word “freedom” could get you arrested in Austria, resurrecting Schiller's humanist anthem was a revolutionary act. The same urgent optimism propels Shango Memory, Olly Wilson's tribute to a Nigerian deity and the cultural contributions of the African diaspora.