Jazz Articles

Horace Tapscott with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra: Live at I.C.U.U.

by Karl Ackermann
June 16, 2019

Twenty years after his death, pianist-composer Horace Tapscott is receiving the accolades that largely passed him by at the peak of his career. Firmly ensconced in the Los Angeles jazz scene, his recording career as a leader began in 1969 when his quintet released The Giant Is Awakened (Flying Dutchman). Aiee! The Phantom (Arabesque, 1996) was the last album issued in his lifetime, and there have been very few posthumous releases. 2019 has seen a resurgence of interest in Tapscott's ...

Tribe: Message From The Tribe: An Anthology of Tribe Records 1972-1976

by Chris May
July 14, 2010

If the 1960s was the decade of sexual liberation and psycho-pharmaceuticals, the 1970s was the decade of self-empowerment and community activism, and nowhere was this more true than in black America. Musicians were among the vanguard of the activists, forming collectives to increase their leverage within the “entertainment" industry and, through education projects, to strengthen their links with the communities in which they operated. The first, and still the best known, of these collectives was Chicago's Association for the Advancement ...

Art Ensemble Of Chicago: Les Stances A Sophie

by Marcus O'Dair
December 23, 2008

They formed, of course, in the American city that constitutes part of their band moniker. But this 1970 album by the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, re-released on Soul Jazz, was in fact recorded in Paris, the four main AEOC members having formed part of the late '60s exodus that also brought to France Archie Shepp, Don Cherry and Anthony Braxton.

The location is significant because Les Stances A Sophie--a soundtrack for a 1971 New Wave film of the same title, ...

Hu Vibrational: Universal Mother

by Jeff Stockton
December 15, 2006

Drum circles in the park might get a bad rap, but for centuries the spiritual life of human beings has been synced to the sound of the drum. Any culture that puts meditation at the center of its practice has used a steady pulse as the vehicle for expanding consciousness and breaking through the temporal world. Percussionists Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake go way back to the days of the Mandingo Griot Society, a group formed in ...

Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson and the Sunrise Orchestra: Children of the Fire

by Aaron Rogers
February 15, 2006

Trumpet and koto player Marvin “Hannibal" Peterson has led a reclusive career in jazz since the early '70s, when he first started making albums. A free jazz player in the style of Don Cherry with the metallic tone of Freddie Hubbard, Peterson is widely unknown even to the most diehard jazz fans. His low profile is strange given that he played with popular artists like Pharoah Sanders and Elvin Jones and was a regular member of Gil Evans' big band ...

Steve Reid Ensemble: Spirit Walk

by Chris May
October 22, 2005

An uber-visceral, trance-centric celebration of Great Black Music ancient-to-modern--mixing up free improv, Afrobeat, the astral jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, North African Sufi music, early '70s electric Miles, chicken shack B3 grooves, Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, and more, all of it laced with real time electronica--Spirit Walk is serious mindbending business, as in free your ass and your mind will follow.

Led by the Bronx-born, currently Swiss-based, itinerant US drummer Steve Reid and recorded in ...

Voodoo Drums: Voodoo Drums

by AAJ Staff
February 1, 2002

When one examines the role rhythm plays in jazz, it's a complicated affair. The early introduction of European instruments, which essentially make up the modern jazz drummer's kit, brought with it the legacy of the marching band: timekeeping, accents, and (eventually) swing. But the sphere of African rhythm, as it has been maintained in traditions throughout the African diaspora, encompasses a far greater range of texture and color. Many of these instruments are played with hands, not sticks. American jazz ...