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Mali: Habib Koit
by AAJ Staff
Habib Koité & Bamada Foly! Live Around The World World Village 2004 For the uninitated, the best way to understand most traditional West African music is to view it through the prism of trance. Full appreciation of tribal drumming from Ghana, for example, requires complete submission to an ...
African Roots, African Invention
by AAJ Staff
Music Is the Weapon of the Future: Fifty Years of African Popular Music Frank Tenaille Lawrence Hill Books ISBN 1-55652-450-1 “Jazz was born in America but its deepest roots are in Africa." --Mulatu Astatqe (father of Ethio-Jazz) The music of Africa unfortunately remains perhaps the most ...
Patricia Barber Connects the Arts
by AAJ Staff
By Carolyn Graye The longer I work in and around the arts, the more convinced I am that for many artists, the lives and careers they create for themselves are as interesting as the actual work they produce. I like to think about it in terms of the Zen parable in which the journey, not the ...
South Africa: Sheer Sound
by AAJ Staff
By far South Africa's biggest and most influential jazz record label, Sheer Sound has made a point of documenting both veterans and up-and-comers from all over the country and beyond. From traditional African sounds to modern folk music, from chill-out jazz to the avant-garde, the label has made its mark. Recent highlights from the label include ...
South Africa: Voices On High
by AAJ Staff
You just have to put two and two together. Zulu and Xhosa music from Southern Africa has been all about song for as long as any historian--academic or tribal--can recall. Ancient church music from Europe blends many voices into a collective whole through hymns and choral music. And since both traditions are fully focused on spiritual ...
The Development of Jazz In South Africa
by Hotep Idris Galeta
South African jazz has had many elements contributing to its evolution and development, the most prominent and significant being the rich eclectic cultural diversity of the country's inhabitants and the influence of African-American culture upon it over the years. These two variants, coupled with an environment of legislated racism and gross human rights violations, created the ...
Zimbabwe: Chimurenga & Tuku Music
by AAJ Staff
In all the focus the Western world has placed on the individual, it has lost sight of the family--both immediate and extended versions, encompassing the members of a shared culture. In part that's due to the mass commercialization of culture, and the fragmentation of the family unit certainly doesn't help. We are more lonely than we ...
South Africa: A Fresh Crop
by AAJ Staff
It's ironic that South African jazz penetrated Western ears because of that country's expatriates, who fled in the '60s from utter repression. Its tentacles reached early into the European school of free jazz though the hands of pianist Chris McGregor and drummer Louis Moholo. Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim brought his very personal style through many changes, retaining ...
West Africa: Different Standards
by AAJ Staff
This column has regularly strayed from any strict definition of jazz, with the goal of representing creative improvised African music in all its forms. To be honest, if one were to make a list of African musicians playing jazz in a strict sense, it would be very short indeed. Almost all of those musicians would come ...
Algeria: Rai Or Not, Here We Come
by AAJ Staff
Algeria is positioned at an unusual juncture with respect to both geography and history. As a Mediterranean state, it's been immersed for centuries in a wash of influences from all over Europe and Africa. As a French colony, it's received a hefty dose of that country's culture (and stays well-connected to its audience). As a critical ...
