ETTA JAMES had a rare voice—one that could convey a lifetime of experience without showing signs of age. Sometimes dusky, with a bit of a growl, it was also confident, powerful and clear. So a song like “At Last”, her signature tune, written in 1941 and recorded by Ms James in 1960, remains timelessly...
AS THE music industry searches for new voices and talent, entrepreneurs are pinning their hopes on emerging African artists both from the continent and the diaspora. Africa Unsigned is an Amsterdam-based start-up music label founded by Pim Betist that promotes African artists. Under Mr Betist’s watch, Africa Unsigned has invested €525,000 (about $725,000) in...
Promotional fliers for rock shows typically end up in the trash. But David Ensminger collects them. He’s stockpiled them for more than 30 years, documenting a Xeroxed history of punk gatherings, an anthropologist of punk rock’s printed images and text. The do-it-yourself tradition of punk-rock fliers are just part of his new book, “Visual...
When performing live, Galactic makes playing funk music look easy. It isn’t. Delivering precise, tight funk is hard work, but this five-piece New Orleans band seems to power through their shows as if they could keep it all going endlessly. Their most recent album, “The Other Side of Midnight: Live in New Orleans”, captures...
Evan Parker, a saxophonist from Bristol, England, who helped shape the improv-heavy sound of European free jazz through the ’60s and ’70s, told an interviewer in 2003 that “you can make just as bad a mistake when you think you are doing absolutely the right thing as you can when you just make a...
Seun Kuti, an Afrobeat bandleader and the youngest son of Fela Kuti, is on tour to support his new album, “From Africa With Fury: Rise“, produced by Brian Eno. With its strong horn melodies, grooving rhythms and punchy song titles (“African Soldier”, “Rise”), the album is a mix of classic, energetic Afrobeat rhythms and...
Brian Burton and Composer Daniele Luppi Reinvent the Spaghetti Western Soundtrack. For his latest album, super-producer Danger Mouse (AKA Brian Burton) joined forces with LA-based composer and frequent collaborator Daniele Luppi for Rome, a spaghetti western-inspired tour de force. Referencing Ennio Morricone, legendary composer of soundtracks for A Fistful of Dollars and The Good,...
It’s been 20 years since Vincent Ahehehinnou and his bandmates in the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou could afford to spend their days playing music. Back then, the band from Benin — formed in the late ’60s following the country’s independence from France — was busy spreading the joys of Afrobeat, a blend of soul,...
In the late 1980s, Miles Davis once told a Canadian journalist that a lot of his paintings and drawings in that period were simply “faces and lines,” and that making art helped him relax. When asked how he compared to other musicians pursuing visual art at the time — Tony Bennett, Joni Mitchell, David...
Recently caught live performances by Soul Rebels Brass Band, Get the Blessing, and Led Bib during the 2010 London Jazz Festival. Several hundred people who gathered at the Southbank Centre to see Soul Rebels Brass Band were so into it the show that they boo-ed loudly when the band did not play an encore....