Jazz Articles

Miramar: Dedication To Sylvia Rexach

by James Nadal
May 31, 2016

The modern Latin-American bolero (romantic ballad) of Spanish heritage, originated from the Cuban trova. Mexico influenced the genre with numerous prolific trios recording boleros, gaining an international audience. Its popularity spread with the development of cinema and phonograph records, reaching a zenith between the 1930's and 1960's. Puerto Rico was not immune to this musical phenomenon, and during the 1950's, Sylvia Rexach became the island's prominent interpreter of boleros. Though dying in 1961 at age 39, she has garnered an ...

Chico Trujillo: Reina de Todas Las Fiestas

by Chris M. Slawecki
November 19, 2015

As the late 1990s transitioned into the early 2000s, in the small Chilean town called Villa Aleman, singer Aldo “Macha" Asenjo and other members of the local punk-ska group LaFloripondio would gather around and jam for fun on old classics from the Chilean and Columbian cumbia traditions. After fifteen years, six albums, and a few world tours together as Chico Trujillo, the band remains true to these roots: Their newest title, Reina de Todas Las Fiestas, translates as The Queen ...

Banda de los Muertos: Banda de los Muertos

by Matt Marshall
September 2, 2015

It is common practice among groups that play Sinaloan banda music--a style that emerged from small village brass bands in Northwestern Mexico after the Revolution, typically featuring a few clarinets, trumpets, trombones and saxhorns, plus a tuba, snare drum and tambora--to link their name to their place of origin. Thus we get Banda El Recodo and La Arrolladora Banda El Limón, two of the music's most popular groups. This village association, and the broader regional identity of the music, is ...

Sanda Weigl: Gypsy in a Tree

by Raul d'Gama Rose
May 28, 2011

Anyone who has lived the myriad lives of the Diaspora as Sanda Weigl has, is qualified to speak for the generations of pain and joy, torture and triumph of human life that has come to pass for her people, and the Gypsies as well. Fleeing the repressive regime of Romania and falling afoul of the even more dictatorial post-war East Germany, she was jailed, gagged and just about forced to live the Gypsy life herself, until she left Europe altogether. ...

Various Artists: The Roots of Chicha Volume 2: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru

by Chris M. Slawecki
March 30, 2011

The modern tradition of cumbia music in Peru goes back to the 1960s. But in the 1970s, cumbia began to be known as “chicha," the name for an alcoholic drink of which the Incas were famously fond, and cumbia and chicha both somehow became associated with the poor and downtrodden living in Peruvian slums--ghetto music. Following up Barbes' 2007 release The Roots of Chicha Volume 1, Volume 2 delivers chicha from Los Destellos' founder and guitarist Enrique Delgado, ...

Sanda: Gypsy in a Tree

by Bruce Lindsay
March 5, 2011

Try as they might, the world's greatest instrument makers have yet to create anything that comes close to the beauty, joy or emotional intensity of the human voice. If this sounds like a somewhat contentious statement, then Gypsy In A Tree--a follow-up to Gypsy Killer (Knitting Factory Works, 2002)--should provide sufficient evidence, in the form of Sanda Weigl's dramatically evocative vocal interpretations of Roma songs from her childhood homeland. Sanda, as she is known professionally, sings these ...

Sanda Weigl: Gypsy in a Tree

by C. Michael Bailey
February 17, 2011

Romanian singer Sanda Weigl's story is a harrowing one that spans the full length of the Cold War, from pre-Ceausescu Romania to communist East Berlin to West Berlin before arriving most recently in New York City, at a time when many Gotham musicians were investigating Eastern European influences in Western music, making her expertise in Gypsy music immediately popular. A lifelong fan of Romanian Gypsy music, Weigl drank deep from all its influences, pouring her lifetime of musical and political ...

Slavic Soul Party: Taketron

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 24, 2010

The massive Baltic brass band Slavic Soul Party (SSP) has played in Istanbul and Carnegie Hall, Macedonia and the Kennedy Center, Serbia and the Knitting Factory, and currently resides Tuesday nights at Club Barbes in Brooklyn, which released this fifth SSP album on its own label. “I think Taketron really shows our original style, more so than any of our other records," says Taketron's leader, percussionist Matt Moran. “We get something electrifying: it sounds kind of Balkan and kinda not; ...

Slavic Soul Party!: Bigger

by Kurt Gottschalk
January 19, 2006

The music of the Roma--some of whom accept the “gypsy moniker and some of whom reject it--is often joyful, necessarily so. Like the American blues, gypsy music isn't about complaining so much as surviving despite. For even the biggest Balkan stars, the money gigs are weddings, which involve a week of ceremony and parties. A successful Balkan band needs not only to know the popular songs of the day, but also be able to carry a week of gigs for ...

The Rare Bird Rumba Ranch: Pornos For Peace Keepers

by AAJ Staff
February 3, 2005

On its first album, Bull Feathers (Jerk Shack Records, 2004), The Rare Bird Rumba Ranch unveiled its combination of Tex-Mex, bubbling Latin rhythms, knotty jazz saxophone, and oddball, even silly lyrics. On Pornos For Peace Keepers , these Rare Birds solidify and refine their approach, only this time their lyrics are edgier and more political.

This rhythm section fairly bursts with energy, as bassist Taylor Bergren-Chrisman and percussionist Greg Stare generate both heat and light, carrying momentum throughout ...