Jason Robinson - Ancestral Numbers II (2024) [Hi-Res]

Across time and space our ancestry unfolds, mysteries abound, unanswerable questions proliferate, the imagination wanders in all directions. I’ve long been a fan of the work of Octavia Butler, whose 1979 novel Kindred features a time traveling protagonist named Dana. What if we all could traverse our ancestral timelines past and future? How would that inform who we want to be today?

Ancestral Numbers is a sound meditation on genealogy and family history comprising an ongoing series of compositions for varying instrumentation. The present album, Ancestral Numbers II, along with its antecedent partner Ancestral Numbers I, are the first published documents of the project.

Numbers: the numerical relationships revealed in one’s ancestry, perhaps a guide or motivating energy, a companion, a guardian.

Number: a song, a tale, an imaginative fragment or universe, momentarily drawn out of one’s ancestry and generational histories, but also as a broader investigation of who we are and from where we come.

I began composing the Ancestral Numbers series shortly after the passing of my grandmother on my mother’s side. Ruby Annette Kilbury (nee Thomason) was the oldest of four siblings and was raised on farms in Arkansas and Texas, before settling in California as an adolescent. Ancestral Numbers I and Ancestral Numbers II are inspired by the loving warmth of her influence in my family.