Jazz Articles about The Word

The Word: Soul Food

by Doug Collette
May 30, 2015

Right from the cover graphic depicting an audio speaker as a source of spiritual sustenance, The Word's Soul Food continues one of the most unusual but profoundly successful and satisfying collaborations in contemporary roots music. Bluesrockers the North Mississippi Allstars so deeply bonded with keyboardist John Medeski and pedal steel wunderkind Robert Randolph on their initial eponymous collaboration (Ropeadope, 2001), a followup was probably inevitable, but this album is far from merely de rigeur. Quite the contrary, as ...

The Word: The Word

by C. Michael Bailey
November 1, 2001

Does the listener want something a little bit different? Well, Brother, here it is.

Sacred Steel is a brand of gospel music played on a pedal steel guitar. It is a little known musical tradition that had its beginnings in the 1930s in the Church of God, an African-American Pentecostal denomination, found in Jamaica and the United States. One of the current master craftsmen of this style is 25-year-old Robert Randolph, who has been playing in the Maplewood, New Jersey ...