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Dawda Jobarteh: Northern Light Gambian Night
by Chris May
Dawda JobartehNorthern Light Gambian NightSterns Music2011 As the Gaddafis, Assads, Kim Jongs and other poisoned bloodlines (how long have you got?) remind us, dynastic succession is usually bad news. But in African music, bloodlines are benign: from childhood, a musician learns his art from a family elder ...
Jackie Cain & Roy Kral: A Wilder Alias
by Chris May
Jackie Cain & Roy KralA Wilder AliasCTI Masterworks2011 (1974) Producer Creed Taylor's 1970s' label, CTI, has had a controversial history. Some of its detractors, averse to the lush sound and embrace of fusion, have been reluctant even to recognize CTI as a jazz label. The New Grove ...
Randy Weston: Blue Moses
by Chris May
Randy WestonBlue MosesCTI Masterworks2011 (1972) Sony's program of reissues from CTI--the label set up by producer Creed Taylor in the late 1960s, post Impulse!, which he also founded, and post Verve, where he had moved on leaving Impulse!--continues with one of the brightest jewels in the CTI ...
Splashgirl: Pressure
by Chris May
Splashgirl Pressure Hubro 2011 This radiant album from Norwegian piano trio Splashgirl is unlike anything that came before it, except, in some measure, its immediate predecessor, Arbor (Hubro, 2009), whose trajectory it develops. Certainly, nothing quite like it has come out of central Europe or the US. An approximate comparative ...
Django Bates: Like Life
by Chris May
Django BatesLike LifeStoryville2011 (1998) If you had to choose one artifact which is emblematic of the work of the British composer, bandleader and keyboards and e-flat horn player Django Bates, then his notorious “derangement" of John Kander and Fred Ebb's “New York, New York" would be a ...
Jan Kopinski's Reflektor: Mirrors
by Chris May
Jan Kopinski's ReflektorMirrors33 Jazz2011 Tenor saxophonist Jan Kopinski is best known for his pioneering improv-meets-funk band, Pinksi Zoo. Formed in the mid-1980s, Pinski Zoo burst onto the emerging British delinquent-jazz scene around the same time as Rip Rig & Panic, then fronted by multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry's adopted ...
Ray Charles: Rare Genius
by Chris May
Concord's reissue of vocalist and keyboardist Ray Charles' albums for ABC-Paramount, the label he moved to from Atlantic in 1959, is a mixed bag. It includes two winners, The Genius Hits The Road (1960) and Modern Sounds In Country Music Vols. 1 & 2 (1962), a so-so concept album, A Message From The People (1973)--and, in ...
Aram Bajakian's Kef: New Sounds from the Armenian Diaspora
by Chris May
Aram BajakianAram Bajakian's KefTzadik2011 Itself born out of traditional music, jazz has over the last hundred years often enriched itself with folk infusions. In the 1930s, the Gypsy jazz of guitarist Django Reinhardt enlivened the European scene. Contemporaneously, the country swing of bands such as Bob Willis ...
Part 24 - Ghariokwu Lemi: Fela Kuti And Me
by Chris May
In an illuminating interview, artist and sleeve designer Ghariokwu Lemi talks to Afrobeat Diaries about his work and friendship with Fela Kuti. The interview attests to the indelible link between Lemi's designs and Kuti's music, and to a working relationship which, Lemi reveals, broke down only once, over 1977's Sorrow Tears And Blood. The interview is ...
Goran Kajfes: X/Y
by Chris May
Goran KajfešX/YHeadspin Recordings2011 Best known for his work with the timewarp friendly Swedish band Oddjob, Croatian-born trumpeter Goran Kajfeš has released two solo albums during the last decade--on each of which he too has had one foot planted in retro ground and the other in more modern ...
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