From the Inside Out

Michael Burks Show of Strength Alligator Records 2012

Michael “Iron Man" Burks grew up playing guitar. A quick study, he soon began leading the blues, rhythm and blues and soul house bands that backed O.V. Wright, Johnnie Taylor and other stars as they passed through the R&B circuit near his Arkansas hometown. Then, ...

Chris Barber Memories of My Trip Proper American Records 2011

You will find very few jazz retrospectives more thoroughly, warmly inviting than Memories of My Trip, which celebrates six decades of recording and performing by one of Britain's most enduring traditional jazz musicians--trombonist, bassist and bandleader Chris Barber. Presented across two CDs (one ...

Bio Ritmo La Verdad Electric Cowbell Records 2011

In September 2011, Bio Ritmo, the ten-piece salsa band from Richmond (Virginia), celebrated twenty years together, no small accomplishment for a band originally formed (says its official company bio) “as a percussion ensemble brought together by two misplaced Puerto Ricans who met at art school, ...

T. K. Blue Latin Bird Motéma Music 2011

Saxophonist Charlie “Bird" Parker is primarily remembered as an incendiary, revolutionary, improvisatory soloist, but he often expressed his style through composition, and many of Parker's original tunes became part of the modern jazz canon. Latin Bird, saxophonist T.K. Blue's label debut for Motema, his ninth ...

Natacha Atlas Mounqaliba Six Degrees Records 2010

Vocalist Natacha Atlas seems to embody the modern musical millennia: She was born in Brussels and raised in one of its Moroccan suburbs; her compositions and singing reach into and crisscross storied European and Arabic musical traditions. Primarily co-written and performed with multi-instrumentalist Samy Bishai along ...

If you wanted to travel to--oh, let's just say--Tanzania and then from Tanzania to India, then to Puerto Rico, to England, then Spain, to Peru, then to South Africa, to personally experience their musical varieties both garden and exotic, you could do it by cashing in, with rounding, about 28,690 frequent flier miles.

Or you could ...

Antibalas Who is This America? Ropeadope Records 2010

Few American bands have been more influential in the global Afrobeat movement than the Brooklyn collective Antibalas. Keeper of the African protest flame ignited by Nigerian musician/activist Fela Kuti in the 1970s, Antibalas' reach is expansive and impressive: it contributed to the Tony- nominated musical ...

Through samples and loops, vocalese accompaniment within a chorus, harmony behind a verse, or a featured vocalist singing standard verses and choruses, the human voice brings a warm commonality to music from almost every space and time, including these six new and recent releases.

Joe Cuba A Man & His Music--El Alcalde del Barrio

Rhett Frazier, Inc. Escape from Dee-Troyt Digi-Soul Records 2010

At first, singer-songwriter Rhett Frazier and producer-drummer Donny Gruender “incorporated" this joint retro-futuristic soul side project just to play around, nothing more than a diversion from their Los Angeles studio session work (Gruender, for example, rocks beats for the Motown house ...

In a narrow view, soul music is a style of rhythm and blues in which the object of affection is most often a lover who's either in view or long been out of sight. But from a wider perspective, soul music can also tell the story of a nation's memories and dreams, and articulate the spirit ...

Corina Bartra & Her Azu Project Afro Peruvian Jazz Celebration Blue Spiral Music 2009

Corina Bartra does more than compose and sing in a style that merges music from North and South America--she lives this style by splitting her days between her native Peru and adopted hometown of New York ...

Leonardo E. M. Cioglia Contos Quizamba Music 2008

The following words probably do Brazilian bassist, composer and bandleader Leonardo E. M. Cioglia no favors, because it lays the weighty burden of expectation upon him and his group of young musicians. But no other words say precisely this: Contos showcases an ...

For the past decade or thereabouts, I've tried to organize “From the Inside Out" around one theme, to address in one column the different ways that different musicians perform on the same instrument, or in the same style or genre. But if there's one lesson that life seems intent on teaching, it's that music (like life) ...

Jazz, like most every form of music, comes in many different styles and shapes. So it only makes sense that the musicians who create jazz will gather and organize themselves into ensembles of different sizes and shapes, too. These days, musicians and producers can go one step further and collaborate with other musicians and producers that ...