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Jazz Articles about Soweto Kinch
Paul Dunmall: Bright Light A Joyous Celebration
by John Sharpe
While the opener suggests a blowing session from veteran British saxophonist Paul Dunmall, as good as that promises to be, the reality is better still. Joining him is a starry cast drawn from succeeding generations, with the addition of American drummer Hamid Drake. With the drummer touring in the UK. Dunmall took the opportunity to renew a friendship that stretches back almost two decades, one first heard on the fiery Peace And Joy (Slam, 2006). Alongside them in the studio ...
read moreTomos Williams: Cwmwl Tystion II: Riot!
by Ian Patterson
Billowing clouds of black smoke dominate a blood-red backdrop. From the cover alone, it is clear that trumpeter/composer Tomos Williams has something extra-musical to say. The Welsh language project name--Cwmwl Tystion means 'witness'--and the English title-- Riot!--writ large, expel any doubt. Inspired by events both famous and infamous in Welsh history--workers revolts, pogroms and race riots--this sprawling one-hour suite is a musical manifesto for a more balanced perspective on Welsh identity/nationalism. It is a subject close to Williams' ...
read moreSamuel Blaser: Routes
by Chris May
The Jamaican trombonist Don Drummond (1934-1969), the inspiration for Routes, was in certain respects a mid-twentieth Jamaican parallel of the New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden (1877-1931). Bolden pioneered jazz in the US, Drummond in Jamaica. Both achieved mythic proportions during their lifetimes and both their legends endure. Both, tragically, spent their final years in what were then called insane asylums. One difference between the two musicians is that, while no recording of Bolden has survived, if indeed ...
read moreSoweto Kinch's 'White Juju Deconstructed' at SFJAZZ Center
by Harry S. Pariser
Soweto Kinch SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco, CA White Juju Deconstructed May 19, 2023 “It fascinates me how we're all acquainted with an unspoken architectural and symbolic language of power.' How do these monuments or myths affect how we see ourselves as a nation? Naming the piece “White Juju" deliberately inverted ideas of the 'savage' or primitive. Perhaps the bizarre fetishes and obsessions of a cult religion are more visible in modern Britain than third world ...
read moreSoweto Kinch: White Juju
by Chris May
Adding politically charged spoken-word lyrics to instrumental jazz needs to be done with care, because if sloganeering is tedious to listen to once, it becomes unbearable on repeated exposure. The record containing it drops off one's playlist. Counterproductive or what? The British saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch, however, has pulled the trick off many times. From Conversations With The Unseen (Dune, 2003) through to The Black Peril (Soweto Kinch Recordings, 2019), Kinch has made the combination work because of the ...
read moreEmma-Jean Thackray: Um Yang
by Chris May
Right now, in summer 2020, using new and recent releases as the yardstick, the two most exciting musicians on London's alternative jazz scene are trumpeters. One is Laura Jurd, whose recent To The Earth (Edition) is a high-water mark for her electro-acoustic band, Dinosaur. The other is Emma-Jean Thackray, whose EP Um Yang is also remarkable. Jurd is the longer established musician, having released three albums with Dinosaur since 2016. Thackray's first release came two years later, and she has ...
read moreSoweto Kinch: A Singular Jazz Odyssey
by David Burke
Soweto Kinch was a curious teenager when an encounter with Wynton Marsalis impelled him on his own jazz odyssey. An odyssey characterised by the creation of dynamic new soundscapes in the spirit of the music's great innovators, on landmark albums such as A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the Tower Block, The Legend of Mike Smith and Nonogram. “There is a point at which you can hear the music and not really be switched onto ...
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