“With Dreams in Double Time, Jonathan Leal proves he has ‘something to say.’ I use this phrase in the prosaic sense that he contributes new understanding and opens fresh areas of inquiry, and in the sense associated with a jazz musician’s solo. Almost every page treats readers to surprising revelation and provocation, and the figures Leal focalizes his history through are compelling as subjects on their own. This book is a tremendous achievement, a gift to readers seeking cultural history and methodologically innovative work.” 

— Anthony Reed, author of Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production

“In this fascinating and compelling book, Jonathan Leal works against the grain of jazz criticism by focusing on three relatively unknown figures for whom bebop proposed new ways of being in the world. Leal’s ‘trio,’ as he calls them, offer readers a glimpse into a much larger population of marginalized, often poor people of color who heard bebop as a radical, creative challenge to the totalizing singularity of what ‘white’ stood for during the second half of the twentieth century.” 

— Ronald Radano, coeditor of Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique

“In Dreams in Double Time, Leal contends that bebop—the revolutionary jazz form from the 1940s—was an essential vehicle for improvisational expression and personal empowerment for musicians of color. He insightfully explores this through the lives of three relatively unknown artists: Japanese American saxophonist/trumpeter James Araki, Chicano “prison poet” and activist Raúl Salinas, and Harold Wing, a Black and Chinese drummer/pianist. Leal’s multilayered study recounts their lives through the filter of how dreams can move people beyond boundaries of possibility.”

— Library Journal

"Leal’s book is grounded in his own trajectories and his family’s past, as well as in the present moment. He pulls us back into the moment of writing, his 'now,' his 'tonight,' in order to help us hear bebop as not a historical relic but a form of 'musicking' that offers a 'densely signifying cultural practice just as capable of generative insights about the personal, social, and historical as more traditionally representational visual and textual media forms and practices.' In the words of James Baldwin’s 'Sonny’s Blues,' a story to which Leal returns several times, Dreams in Double Time keeps both bebop and jazz writing 'new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen.'"

— Sam V.H. Reese, Los Angeles Review of Books

"If you're interested in the relationship between jazz, sociology, racism and history, this book (a product of feeling as well as hard work) could prove highly rewarding." 

— Graham Colombé, Jazz Journal

"A very different sort of book on bebop—one that looks at the music during its key years in the mid-twentieth century, but through a different prism than the all-star players who usually get the most coverage . . . Leal gets past the platitudes about the music and offers insights into the communities and opportunities it created."

— Dusty Groove

"A thoroughly evocative and important study that should be read at an unrushed pace to hear and feel the music and consider the radical nature of bebop not in a too-precious, historical vacuum but as a reaction against the violence of racism. Highly recommended." 

— Debbie Burke, author of Glissando

"Leal provides a thoughtful and, at times, personal study that is academic in its rigour and musical knowledge while also genuinely illuminating and inspiring. . . . Leal's style of writing is refreshing and engaging, not just for his attention to detail and knowledge of the subject matter, but for his thoughtful and appropriately lyrical reflections on music." — Alex Brent, PopMatters

"After Now cycles through neo-soul, low-fi hip-hop, trad jazz, ambient music and more spoken word interludes. It's an episodic journey that quests for a future beyond racial divisions, the climate crisis, political upheaval and gun violence . . . the album takes listeners on a complex, ambitious and compelling ride. As its dual composers, Guerra — the house drummer at San Antonio's Jazz, TX — and Leal — an LA-based composer, author and researcher originally from the Rio Grande Valley — make able journey agents." 

—San Antonio Current

"The adventurous six-song suite by RGV native and LA musician/scholar Jonathan Leal, and San Antonio multi-instrumentalist and drum specialist Brandon Guerra, is a meditation on the issues of today, and the possibilities of the future (or as they put it, “after now.”) Along with cerebral jazz, there are haunting ambient passages and neo-soul sentimentality. It’s all brimming with multifaceted prowess — the meticulous and the improvised, the technical and the abstract, acoustic and electronic. Adding concreteness to the message are the spoken-word performances by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson that are delivered with strong rhythm, euphony, and emphasis. . . . With a profound sense of inspiration, a full cast of expert musicians, and thematic and sonic cohesion, its an album that shouldn’t be forgotten, even when we get to a time after now." 

—The McAllenite

"This fluid and ferocious new project from Jonathan Leal and Brandon Guerra is the sound of a country coming apart at the seams — and the possibility of building something better. Threaded with the incisive voice of San Antonio Poet Laureate Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, after now doesn’t flinch in its engagement with thorny social problems like gun violence, inequality and the unfolding climate crisis. But through the collection’s genre-scrambling exploration of contemporary  jazz, neo-soul, spoken word and ambient textures, these uncompromising and unforgettable compositions carve space for something like hope.”

—Jezy Gray, Boulder Weekly

“From the perspective of someone old enough to be that “great grandma’s great grandma” referenced in this mind-blowing celebratory sci-fi spin into the future, Futuro Conjunto is a tribute to the resilience of la cultura Chicanx in the face of an increasingly repressive world of curfews and repressive regimes. Leal and Vela are a dynamic duo of talent and crítica creativa, seamlessly weaving a visionary decolonial indigenous feminism into the soundtrack. La jornada es puro placer and utterly smart, arriving at a collective (re)sounding rendering of “Volver.” Yes, we return to reimagine a future. “Play it again.” Please.”

—Cherríe Moraga, author of Native Country of the Heart 

“Futuro Conjunto is the radical, body-rocking, post-apocalyptic Chicanx album the world needs right now. Jonathan Leal, Charlie Vela, and a roster of artists from the Rio Grande Valley have crafted a stunning aural document ranging from the heavy to the glitchy to the utterly serene. Arcing from noise to tranquility and back, each track takes a narrative step towards a future full of unimagined possibility. We may not know what comes next, but with Futuro Conjunto in our speakers, at least we know it’s going to sound fantastic.”

—Nate Sloan, Co-Host of Switched On Pop

"Futuro Conjunto represents the hope that our future salvation might be found in the remnants of our own history."

—Pitchfork

"Futuro Conjunto is an expansive work of speculative fiction, a musical project built upon a distant future that doesn’t exist. But it also revolves around urgent issues of our present in 2021, such as climate change, technology, war, and class disparity. Created in collaboration with more than 30 local artists, this album imagines what the Rio Grande Valley might look and sound like several generations into the future."

—Latino USA

“Wild Tongue shuffles conjunto bands, rappers, indie rockers, country bands, eighties-style darkwave, and dance music alongside each other, singing in English and Spanish (sometimes within the same song), all specifically writing songs about what it's like to be from the Rio Grande Valley. The resulting project is a snapshot of the current moment: not a historical artifact of eras past but a living document of artists whom one can see playing in the small towns of the Valley on any given weekend." 

—Texas Monthly