Jazz Articles

Conjure: Bad Mouth

by Dan McClenaghan
April 30, 2006

Musical director Kip Hanrahan instigates some of the most visionary, funky, bluesy modern world music amalgams on record with Bad Mouth, alongside his sonic congregation, Conjure. He assembled the group in 1984 to set writer Ishmael Reed's poety to music, on both a self-titled debut and a second outing, Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon (1983). Past members of Conjure include Bobby Womack, Eddie Harris, Don Pullen, Taj Majal, Olu Dara, Allen Toussaint, Steve Swallow, Jimmy Scott and Jack ...

Kip Hanrahan: Pinero

by John Eyles
February 8, 2006

This is the soundtrack album to Leon Ichaso's biopic of Puerto Rican street poet Miguel Pinero, maybe best known for his play about prison life, “Short Eyes. The film itself was described this way in a New York Times review: “The movie, a flashy montage, which jumps around in time and alternates between color and black & white, lacks narrative cohesion. But its agitated style mirrors Pinero's streetwise pre-rap poetry...

Given all of the above, it is no surprise that ...

Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez & Robby Ameen: Robby & Negro At The Third World War (La Timba No es Como Ayer)

by Jerry D'Souza
December 17, 2005

Horacio “El Negro" Hernandez and Robby Ameen pack a whole lot into this collaboration. The prime beat comes from Latin music, but there is hip-hop, classical, and jazz as well. How does it all fit in? Just perfectly, thank you!

The different strands go to make a compact body which the players get into and bring alive, with the arrangements adding to the potency. On “The Moon Shows Red (Tzuki...) Jerry Gonzalez sits in on trumpet and Ameen ...

Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez/Robby Ameen: Robby & Negro At The Third World War (La Timba No es Como Ayer)

by Michael McCaw
November 3, 2005

Have you ever heard a salsa version of “Sympathy for the Devil ? With the piano carrying the melody and a myriad of percussion instruments forming the swaggering beat? No matter what preconceptions or feelings you have towards the original, it's hard not to find yourself moving with the opening track on Robby & Negro at the Third World War. And if you weren't swaying, as the song transitions into “el Cielo, the second part of the medley, there is ...

Various Artists: Rumba Profunda: Alto En La Fiebre De La Rumba

by AAJ Staff
January 1, 2001

Kip Hanrahan has done it again. In his various musical projects, Hanrahan has repeatedly demonstrated an amazing talent at bringing together performers to make magic--without necessarily playing a note himself. His production of Deep Rumba's 1998 record Esta Noche Se Vuelva Una Rumba (This Night Becomes a Rumba) marked a high point in the exposition of the uniquely Cuban artform known as the rumba. The centerpiece of the record was a tight and authentic group of rhythm players, who offered ...