Our Favorite Album of 2013
I’ve had Shane Cooper’s “Oscillations” in my possession for the past four months. From the onset, it
jazz
A window into South Africa’s jazz history
The first full color photographs of the vibrant, underground jazz scene that flourished in South Africa in the 1960s.
The new South African family film
The idea that a post-racial South Africa can only be achieved through the adoption of white ideals, culture, and norms by black South Africans.
Remembering Sathima Bea Benjamin
Sathima had the unique ability to strike first at your heart, not unlike the experience of hearing Billie Holiday for the first time.
Friday All Jazz Break
A bonus music break focused on jazz, including a conference on South African jazz, as well as the varied sounds of Jon Batiste, Guillermo Klein, Madeline Peyroux, Secret Society, and Moonchild,
The loss of “new” South African innocence
Moses Molelekwa, the brilliant South African pianist, composer and producer died by suicide on 13 February 2001. Florence Mtoba, his wife (also his manager) was found with him; she had been strangled.
To hear musicians breathe
An ode to The Mahogany Room, the pre-eminent live jazz venue in Cape Town, South Africa.
Kyle Shepherd X
The pianist, Kyle Shepherd, loathes labels, especially of him as the architect or savior of Cape Jazz, the music associated with Cape Town.
A voice that is incessantly in exile
South African jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin's life complicates jazz history and shows how Africans reshaped American jazz in the 20th century.
Parisian Africa
Younger generations of artists, many immigrants of African origin, are reconfiguring the arts in France on their own terms.
Batsumi's cascade of sound
By Dan Magaziner* South Africa’s 1970s are rightly remembered as a time of rising militancy. From
Music Break
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTRmpJ_EpJE Dub Colossus member Samuel Yirga “plays one night a week in Addis’s only jazz club/coffee
Music Break
I first saw Kesivan Naidoo play at the Independent Armchair Theater in Observatory. I was living
When Thelonious Monk first met Dollar Brand
By 1964, Dollar Brand (later Abdullah Ibrahim) had already made 3 LP's as a bandleader. He was living in Switzerland and had just gotten a boost from Duke Ellington.
His father named him for Duke Ellington
Late jazz musician Duke Ngcukana, has been described as “a trumpet player extraordinaire," and "a fine person.”
Found Object, No. 11
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAwOqtiVVCI&w=500&h=307&rel=0] Corrected: A rare film clip (there must be more where this came from), posted on Youtube
Portico Quartet
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM6hPuui-l8&w=500&h=307&rel=0] Next Tuesday (September 28th) and Wednesday (September 29th) London jazz group Portico Quartet–their sound has
Ezra Ngcukana, R.I.P.
Woke up this morning with the sad news in my email inbox–from music journalist Gwen Ansell–that
South African music is more than Graceland
What often gets lost within the narratives of oppression and exile is that the 1960s and 1970s also proved to be an exceptionally vibrant and creative period.