Miguel Zenón’s rhythms follow a changing culture

February 22, 2013 By

Boston Globe, February 21, 2013

The saxophonist Miguel Zenón came from Puerto Rico to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music in 1996, and fast emerged as a major creative voice in jazz, with a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2008 to attest to it. In his young but prolific career, he has made Puerto Rico one of his work’s running themes, exploring in several recent albums, with his quartet, its classic song canon and folkways.

With his new project, which he brings to NEC’s Jordan Hall Friday, Zenón follows this logic but takes a new tack, shifting his focus from the island itself to those who left it to come work in the United States, and their descendants. In the multimedia performance “Identities Are Changeable: Tales from the Diaspora,” he takes on a question that has fascinated him ever since his own move to the mainland. [Read more...]

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Trumpeter Christian Scott gives jazz much-needed stretch

August 9, 2012 By

Boston Globe, August 9, 2012

NEW YORK — The trumpeter Christian Scott terms “stretch music” the big, open-minded sound that he seeks, for his own band and for jazz in general.

On his brand-new album, “Christian aTunde Adjuah,” Scott stretches more than just rhythmic and harmonic conventions. The album itself is a sprawling double CD, 23 tracks long. Even Scott’s name has grown longer: the New Orleans native is now Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, a “completion,” as he puts it, that honors his ultimate African ancestry.

At 29 and with eight albums as a leader, Scott, who plays Scullers Friday, has not been shy with compositions and ideas. “Christian aTunde Adjuah,” though, presents as a uniquely personal statement — and not just by its length, title, or cover art, which features Scott in the regalia of a Black Indian, the New Orleans ritual tradition in which he grew up.

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At Newport Jazz, Frisell gets by with a little help from his friends

August 2, 2012 By

Boston Globe, August 2, 2012

The jazz guitarist Bill Frisell can play knotty, cerebral music with the best of the avant-garde, but being cryptic is not his stock in trade. He’s interested in the history and art of the song, the American folk tradition, roots music of different origins, and that makes much of his own work lyrical and in some emotional sense, familiar.

But while some music feels familiar in a vague way, other songs are so universal that they summon in the listener instantly recalled lyrics and a kaleidoscope of memories; songs freighted, even burdened, with meaning.

“All We Are Saying. . .”, Frisell’s latest album, devoted to the repertoire of John Lennon, and which he presents on Saturday with his quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival, boldly enters that complicated territory.

[Read more...]

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Congolese guitarist Diblo Dibala

July 12, 2012 By

Boston Globe, July 12, 2012

NEW YORK — A corner apartment in Harlem: air conditioning on high against the blazing heat outside, African art objects and concert posters on the walls, incense wafting through the living room.

This is the temporary command post of Diblo Dibala, Congolese bandleader and guitarist extraordinaire, as he readies for a one-month North American tour spreading the gospel of soukous, one of the most compelling and contagiously rump-shaking styles of music ever invented, yet one rarely performed in these parts nowadays.

[Read more...]

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Nona Hendryx balances soul, conscience

July 8, 2012 By

Boston Globe, July 8, 2012

NEW YORK— Let’s say you formed your first band as a Trenton, N.J., teen in the ’50s. You helped invent funk in a trio, LaBelle, that found cult status in the ’70s. You pioneered sci-fi themes before George Clinton. Later, you forged ahead as a solo artist and in collaborations with everyone from Yoko Ono to the Talking Heads.

You might be forgiven, at 67, for resting on your laurels. But that isn’t the Nona Hendryx way.

“Rust never sleeps,” says Hendryx. “I enjoy using my energy. What else are you going to do on this planet?”

In the cool of her midtown Manhattan studio, the singer strikes a naturally edgy elegance, clad in a form-fitting gray ensemble accessorized with silver jewelry. Gold records and industry memorabilia adorn the wall.

To the world at large, Hendryx is known as one-third of LaBelle, the band with the 1974 hit “Lady Marmalade.” (The one with the saucy French chorus, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”) But here in New York, she’s appreciated for all she’s done since, as a songwriter, creator, mentor, and activist.

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Brazilian’s road album draws from touring, tradition

June 25, 2012 By

Boston Globe, June 25, 2012

The Brazilian singer Céu calls “Caravana Sereia Bloom” — her third CD, which came out earlier this year — a road album. It is meant to capture, she says, “many aspects of the road,” a topic she’s had ample time to reflect on as a touring artist.

“Since my first album in 2005, I started to travel a lot,” says Céu, who plays Brighton Music Hall on Thursday. Appropriately enough, she’s speaking from a tour bus.

“I felt I had to talk about this. Not about a specific trip: Everyone has movement in their lives, and when you have to travel it’s like a parallel reality. You meet cultures, people, food, images, smells.”

And emotions, of course. As countless filmmakers have intuited, the road is about feelings — rupture, nostalgia, anticipation, realization.

For Céu, who first came to US attention when her debut turned up for sale at Starbucks outlets, “Caravana” confirms what her second album, “Vagarosa,” presaged: This is no central-casting Brazilian lounge diva, but a complex poet with raw force and an explorer’s sensibility.

[Read more...]

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Singer Curumin is a shining star in Saõ Paulo

June 25, 2012 By

Boston Globe, June 25, 2012

“São Paulo is a huge city, but we don’t have a lot of music tradition,” says singer Curumin, speaking of Brazil’s commercial metropolis, with its area population of 20 million.

“Samba belongs to Rio, maracatu belongs to Recife — in Brazilian musical history, we don’t have a lot of people from São Paulo doing good stuff.”

Perhaps. But like his friend Céu, for whom he is opening on their current United States tour, Curumin, whose new album “Arrocha” came out this year, is doing his part to reverse any musical-desert stereotype that might still affix to their city.

They are part of a large local arts scene that, as Curumin describes it, has taken the city’s position as a hub, attracting migrants and cultural inputs, and turned it into fodder for creativity.

[Read more...]

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Malaysian singer-songwriter Yuna finds a home away from home

June 8, 2012 By

Boston Globe, June 8, 2012

Yuna didn’t have to come to America.

Things were going just fine for the young singer-songwriter back home in Malaysia three years ago, when a Los Angeles artist management company started courting her on the strength of the songs she’d posted online.

She had parlayed MySpace popularity into a budding career, garnering TV appearances and winning local music awards. She had earned a law degree, and she was getting set to launch a fashion boutique.

So when faced with the unexpected prospect of setting all that aside to start from scratch as an unknown in the United States, Yuna understandably hesitated.

What tilted the balance, she says, wasn’t America’s inherent appeal, but the chance to use all her material.

“I wasn’t sure,” she says. “I was doing really well in Malaysia. But I felt this might be good for me, because I had written a bunch of English songs. In Malaysia you can only get by doing Malay music. I had about 40 songs in English, and I didn’t want to waste them.”

[Read more...]

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Boston singer Marianne Solivan’s NY move pays off

May 25, 2012 By

Boston Globe, May 25, 2012

NEW YORK — This city may boast the nation’s highest concentration of jazz musicians, venues, recording opportunities, and cover-charge-paying aficionados, but that doesn’t mean you can just show up here and get a gig.

Just ask singer Marianne Solivan.

When she first got here in 2007, with enough money for a one-month sublet to get her started, she left behind the comfortable lifestyle that she had made for herself through regular work on the Boston scene.

“I had tons of gigs, teaching jobs, I was making money, I had a great apartment, a car,” she says. She sang twice a week at Les Zygomates in the Leather District. She was a regular at the Living Room and Red Fez. She ran a jam session at the Chopping Block in Mission Hill. She played cruises and corporate gigs.

And weddings. “So many weddings,” she says.

[Read more...]

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For Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, war is over but not forgotten

May 20, 2012 By

Boston Globe, May 20, 2012

It has been 10 years since the civil war in Sierra Leone ended. For Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, however, the war and its effects are engraved not just in the memories of the band members, but in the group’s very name.

As listeners to their 2006 debut, “Living Like a Refugee,” or viewers of the 2005 documentary devoted to their story know, the group formed in refugee camps in Guinea in the late 1990s.

There, tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans had fled massacres and destruction in their country. Several band members themselves had been victims of ghastly atrocities.

Even after the war’s end in January 2002 and the restoration of civil peace that has endured to this day, it took several years before the band members were able to settle back in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city.

So it’s impossible to unspool war and displacement from the fabric of this band, as much as its exquisite guitar rhythms, vocal harmonies, and accents of reggae and other Caribbean flavors have made it tempting.

Still, life goes on, and so does the music. On their third album, “Radio Salone,” which came out last month, the All Stars, who visit Brighton Music Hall on June 24, have put together their most eclectic and best-produced program of music to date, with nary a reference to the conflict.

[Read more...]

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