Recent Jazz Articles

EMEFE Good Future EMEFE Music 2012 For a glorious week and a half in November, London seemed like the epicenter of Afrobeat. Antibalas played Islington Town Hall. Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra played Hackney's New Empowering Church. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 played Kentish Town Forum. If only every month could be like that. ...

Bassekou Kouyate / Tamikrest / Sidi Toure Barbican London January 26, 2013 Ten days earlier, the vibe at this Malian package show--billed as Sahara Soul--would likely have been jumpy rather than joyful. The northern half of Mali seemed secure in the hands of Islamist invaders, who were intent on destroying the region's indigenous ...

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba Jama Ko Out/Here 2013 Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate and his band, Ngoni Ba's third album continues the increasingly outward-looking trajectory of its predecessors. The debut, the lovely Segu Blue (Out/Here, 2007), was unadorned roots music. Its follow-up, the more visceral I Speak Fula (Out/Here, 2010), wove amplification ...

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Concord Records In 1959, when Whitney Balliett, the New Yorker's jazz critic, published a collection of his columns, he titled the book The Sound of Surprise. The promise of the unexpected, wrote Balliett, was jazz's most precious quality. In a year which went on to include the release of trumpeter ...

Are the best books always about the past rather than the present, or is it simply easier to write about events on which the dust has settled? Whatever. These three books are all about the past and each is outstanding. Matthew Ruddick Funny Valentine: The Story Of Chet Baker Grippingly written and meticulously researched, Matthew ...

Stan Sulzmann is among the most singular saxophonists in the UK, with an instantly recognizable, lush but rough-edged sound, and a distinguished track record as a composer and arranger for large and small bands. Born in London in 1948, Sulzmann is approaching veteran status and is a source of inspiration to many of Britain's emerging younger ...

Jazz: Body and Soul Bob Willoughby 176 pages, hardback, slipcase ISBN: 978 1 901268 58 4 Evans Mitchell Books 2012 To the wider world, Bob Willoughby is the Los Angeles photographer who took a raft of iconic photographs of movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe from ...

Funny Valentine: The Story of Chet Baker Matthew Ruddick 828 pages, softback ISBN: 978-1-907732-71-3 Melrose Books 2012 Grippingly written and meticulously researched, Matthew Ruddick's 828-page opus is the definitive biography of trumpeter and singer Chet Baker. More than that, it is a vivid account of the junkie subculture that ran through ...

Mose Fan Fan Musicatelama Sterns 2012 Considering the barbarism of Congo's Belgian colonial regime, which stripped the country of everything bar the light bulbs when independence was won in 1960, it is a wonder that music as beautiful Congolese rumba was created in the late 1940s and 1950s. But the style transcended the ...

Ray Charles The Complete ABC Recordings 1959-1961 Le Chant du Monde 2012 At first glance, it's a mystery. Why choose 1961 as the cut-off point for a collection spanning the first years of singer/keyboardist Ray Charles' lengthy tenure with ABC-Paramount? Extend that to 1962, and even within the 3-CD confines of The Complete ...

Trumpeter/bandleader Christian Scott's aTunde Adjuah (Concord, 2012), like its immediate predecessor, Yesterday You Said Tomorrow (Concord, 2010), delivers on two fronts. Musically, it retains what is precious in the jazz tradition, while drawing in ideas from hip hop, rock, funk, ambient and Afrorock. Extra-musically, it reaffirms jazz as protest music. Born and brought up in New ...

Criolo Nó Na Orelha Sterns Music 2012 There may be an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, but there's not an awful lot of Afrobeat. So here's some qualitative easing: the opening track on singer/rapper Criolo's Nó Na Orelha ("knot in the ear"). “Bogotá" has the rhythms, a turbulent horn arrangement, chopping rhythm ...

Rahsaan Roland Kirk Spirits Up Above: The Atlantic Years 1965-1976 Warner Jazz 2012 He was as funky as singer James Brown. With three horns in his mouth, he sounded like the entire JB reed section. And onstage, with a truckload of instruments around his neck, he was the hardest working man in jazz ...

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah Concord Records 2012 In 1959, when Whitney Balliett, the New Yorker's jazz critic, published a collection of his columns, he titled the book The Sound of Surprise. The promise of the unexpected, wrote Balliett, was jazz's most precious quality. In a year which went on to include the release ...