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Moroccan Jazz Singer Malika Zarra Embraces Her Heritage on "Berber Taxi"
Source:
All About Jazz @ Spinner
Whether one is improvising, composing or even just playing songs, music is a declaration of self. This is never more apparent than with singer and composer Malika Zarra. Born in Morocco and raised in France, Zarra draws upon her roots to inform her jazz by adding elements of North African chaâbi and well as traditional Moroccan styles like Berber, Gnawa, Issawa and Houara. Through it all, her sultry mezzo-soprano bounces between English, French, Berber, Moroccan dialect of Arabic and Arabic. ...
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Shipp shape: Piano improv master Matthew Shipp has an ear for just about everything
Source:
Michael Ricci
He might be older and wiser, but Matthew Shipp has not mellowed with age. A galvanizing force among the heirs to jazz's avant-garde movement of the 1960s, the pianist has spent the past quarter century building a vast, roiling musical universe. As an invaluable sideman and prolific bandleader, as a sometimes caustic advocate and discerning curator of Thirsty Ear Recordings' influential Blue Series documenting the work of similarly edgy musicians, he has done more than just about any other figure ...
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James Farm Takes Seed as New All-Star Jazz Band
Source:
All About Jazz @ Spinner
Yes, many will call James Farm an all-star band. Featuring drummer Eric Harland, bassist Matt Penman, pianist Aaron Parks and saxophonist Joshua Redman, the band certainly has some of the leading lights of today's jazz scene. But to hear Harland and Parks speak about the band's origins, James Farm seems something organically grown rather than a self-conscious assembly of heavy hitters. “We're just a bunch of guys who like making music together," Parks points out to ...
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The Art of Jazz Still Thrives with Saxophonist Sonny Rollins
Source:
Michael Ricci
For all of the longtime jazz fans who habitually fret about what has become of the art form and whether it's endangered, Sonny Rollins offers a reassuring and typically philosophical response: “Jazz is a spirit. It is freedom. It is reality put into musical form. It will never leave until this planet leaves," says the revered 80-year-old saxophonist, one of the few still-active links to the bebop era of Charlie Parker. Rollins co-headlines the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival ...
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From the basement to the Montréal Jazz Festival: Guitarist Carlos Jiménez' self-taught road to success
Source:
Lauren Rogers
On his latest album Undercurrents, guitarist Carlos Jiménez exhibits the cool self-confidence and keen precision of an artist at the top of his game, about as far as it gets from the kid who used to practice in his parents' basement. But every musician has to begin somewhere, and for Jiménez those tireless moments underground provided the key to his command of the instrument. “I'm initially self-taught," he revealed. “I would spend about seven hours a day in my parents' ...
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Jazz Influence @ The Roots of Hip Hop
Source:
The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins
Back in the early 80s, when hip hop was in its nascent stage, a young man who grew up in Brooklyn—definitely one of the root beds of the form—named Fred Brathwaite, Jr. was making his moves that cutting edge. Originally an aspiring graffitti artist, young Fred immersed himself in those early experiments, basment-rapping with an aspiring DJ friend in the rawest sense of what became hip hop. According to Freddy Brathwaite’s Wikipedia entry: “As a teen in the 70s he ...
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