Articles by Willard Jenkins

Nanami Haruta: The Vibe

by Willard Jenkins
February 8, 2025

Unlike other members of the family of western instruments, the ranks of the trombone are a bit exclusive--perhaps even more exclusive in the art of the improvisers, the jazz landscape. Which is yet more reason to celebrate the arrival of a new trombone voice in jazz music. Her name is Nanami Haruta and she arrives at this debut recording moment from Sapporo in the Hokkaido prefecture, the northernmost of Japan's main islands. Hokkaido is known for its volcanoes--perhaps explaining Nanami's ...

Gregory Thomas: Ain't But a Few of Us

by Willard Jenkins
December 3, 2009

Like most of the participants in our ongoing dialogue with African American music writers, Gregory Thomas has both feet and hands in several camps. Thomas' byline has been featured in numerous publications, including Salon.com, Guardian Observer (London), American Legacy, Africana.com, BlackAmericaWeb.com, Daily News (New York, NY), TBWT.com, Callaloo, The Village Voice, and others. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Harlem World magazine.

Additionally, Thomas has taught jazz education at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Thurgood ...

Festival D'Essouira Gnaoua Musiques Du Monde

by Willard Jenkins
July 29, 2006

"When I first heard Gnaoua music I heard Jimmy Blanton in the sound of the hajhouj, I heard the blues... I heard the black church..." The words of jazz master Randy Weston ring true with each encounter of the free Gnaoua Festival in Essaouira, Morocco. Essaouira is a picturesque fishing town of 70,000 inhabitants on the Atlantic coast which each June on a Thursday-Sunday weekend swells and pulsates with over 450,000 festival revelers. Essaouira has long been a fabled counter-culture ...

Michael Thomas: The Messenger

by Willard Jenkins
February 1, 2001

For DC-based trumpeter Michael Thomas this initial release is the result of a true labor of love. Not one to wait for a record label to come knocking at his door, Thomas seized the initiative himself, not only starting his own label and releasing his own debut disc, but also developing his own home studio to lay down these 10 persuasive tracks. Thomas has a brass proud trumpeter's arrogance in sound but not demeanor. The title is an apt one ...