Results for "Afro Jazz"

Omer Ashano

Born: February 4, 1993

Ashano’s musical influences are as cosmopolitan as he is, having lived in several places including Amsterdam, New York City, Athens and various cities and villages in Israel. As a result of these experiences and engaging with different people throughout his travels in Europe, North America and the far East, Ashano was constantly influenced by a variety of cultural inspirations and local communities. This helped shape his eclectic musical identity, which holds traces of Israeli music, African-american music, Classical music as well as folklore music from Africa, Romania and India.

Born in 1993, Ashano started playing violin when he was six years old, later taking up the guitar at age 13. At the time, his guitar teachers were the influencers who exposed Omer to the styles of Blues, Rock n’ Roll and Jazz as well as the ideas and possibilities surrounding improvisation. It was from this exposure that Omer started experimenting with this new knowledge and adapting it for the violin.

Thandi Ntuli

Born: September 10, 1987

Exploring the fullness of who she is – who we are – in her personal and collaborative projects, Thandi Ntuli negotiates a wide palette of sound and genre. This approach is a proud embracing of having grown up with the family lore of a classical singer aunt, after whom she is named; an uncle (Selby Ntuli) who was a member of Afro-rock band Harari; and a grandfather (Levi Godlib Ntuli) who – while living with his young family in 1940s Sophiatown, a cultural hub not unlike 1920s Harlem in New York – fostered among his children a tradition of composing, playing and singing music together. This tradition still lives on.

Esinam

Multi-instrumentalist Esinam recalls the spirit of her Ghanaian roots in a ballet of instruments slightly sustained by almost invisible loop machines. Born in Brussels, she finds inspiration in her journeys all over the world and encounters with different cultures. In her solo set, she uses electronic machines and turns into a « one-woman band».She composes, plays and performs her own contemporary music with flute, percussions, vocals as well as traditional and modern instruments. Both her sensitivity and her personal way of merging different genres together do create, color and uplift Esinam’s musical universe

BRZZVLL

Born: 2006

BRZZVLL was founded by Vincent Brijs in 2006. This Antwerp collective plays improvised dance music with a jazz-fusion, funk and rare groove sound like those of the 70’s: bass and drums very tight and funky, horns, guitar and keyboards very imaginative and sexy. The bands’ unique cross polination of cosmic jazz, spoken word & afrobeat makes them stand out in today’s jazz scene. Their debute “Days of Thunder, Days of Grace” was voted Best Belgian Jazz Album of 2008 by newspaper Le Soir. For their last two critically acclaimed albums, BRZZVLL worked together with spoken word artists Anthony Joseph (“Engines”, 2014) & Amir Sulaiman (“First Let’s Dance”, 2016)