A Brooklyn artist sees beauty in some of the harrowing images she finds in the news – such as the plight of African migrants escaping to Europe. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter caught up with her.
Long-term relationship plays well: Metheny & Burton
Boston Globe, June 14, 2009
NEW YORK – It’s a cold, drizzly spring afternoon in Times Square, but in the hotel suite overlooking the dull hurry of tourists and umbrellas, Pat Metheny looks as if he’s just stepped in out of the blazing sunshine, in shorts and a T-shirt, tousled hair crawling out from under a baseball cap.
“Pat only came half-dressed,” Gary Burton cracks. Burton, the distinguished vibraphonist, bandleader, and music educator, is dapper in slacks and a blazer over a smart striped shirt.
Metheny, the revolutionary guitarist whose every musical move is tracked by a huge global fan base, lives on the Upper West Side; he and his wife just had a baby, their third child, so Burton’s hotel is a more conducive spot for conversation.
From pioneer to ambassador: King Sunny Ade
Boston Globe, July 12, 2009
It’s a signal achievement in world music to go global – to achieve recognition and a fan following that fills arenas and festival fields in countries far and wide. But sometimes you don’t have to. Sometimes, the respect you garner at home affords you all the gigs you need, plus creative inspiration and business opportunities.
For 30 years, that’s been the status of King Sunny Ade, the composer, bandleader, singer, guitarist, and entrepreneur whose importance in Lagos, Nigeria – the gigantic commercial hub of Africa’s biggest country – has earned him a string of affectionate honorifics like “Chairman of the Board” and “Minister of Enjoyment.”
And so Ade, pioneer and master of the mellow, shimmering, large-band party genre called juju music, hasn’t had to worry about Western tastes and fusion appeal. He hasn’t had to transform his band’s life into a marathon of airports and visa applications. His overseas gigs are few and far between; so his current American tour, which hits the Museum of Fine Arts on Wednesday, is momentous indeed.
Five women artists, five takes on Islam
Islam is in the air – from Barack Obama’s big speech, to a festival in New York this month of Muslim arts and ideas. Among those voices are five young women artists who have a show at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art in Brooklyn. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter spoke with them.
Rapping on the door of opportunity: Kaysha
Boston Globe, May 31, 2009
“I’ve always had a double identity,” says Edward Mokolo, who raps, sings, and produces under the name Kaysha.
And that’s a simple way to put it. Congolese by birth, French by education, American by affinity, Caribbean by adoption, Pan-African by choice, the 35-year-old Kaysha is a walking pop hybrid who draws on all these sources to produce a smooth, club-oriented blend.
A fixture on the French- and Portuguese-speaking circuits behind crossover hits that draw on zouk, soukouss, coupe-decale, house, and kuduro, Kaysha is also a producer and label head. He produces dance music under alter ego “Mr. Shada,” and his Paris-based label, Sushiraw, is home to a half-dozen artists of various African backgrounds.
FLY: Five first ladies of dance
Five black women at the top of their field. Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade, Dianne McIntyre, Bebe Miller and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar are dancer-choreographers who are pioneers in the dance world. They perform this weekend in a rare program of solo pieces, at the Kumble Theatre in Brooklyn.
Sculptor Elizabeth Catlett
Sharecroppers, laborers, mothers and their children — these people have captured the imagination of sculptor Elizabeth Catlett for over 40 years. Catlett talked about her life and work at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this week and WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter was there.
A “fresh wave” of sound: Jose Conde
Boston Globe, May 17, 2009
BROOKLYN – The elephant lumbered out of the forest and straight into the lobby of a luxury hotel. At the bar, an elegant woman, martini in hand, gasped, while the pachyderm, oblivious, settled down to feast on a mango. Absurd, amusing, and gently intimating some kind of ecological moral to the story, this scene – based on a photo spotted in National Geographic magazine – struck Jose Conde as perfect fodder for a song. Embellishments to the story began to write themselves in the Cuban-American singer’s mind. And so did the music.
“Elefante in Hotel,” one of several new songs Conde is developing for his next album and already performing with his group Ola Fresca, ended up taking the form of a Venezuelan joropo. On the strength of the musical variety on Ola Fresca’s 2007 album, “Revolucion,” it could just as easily have come out as a Cuban son, Puerto Rican bomba, Haitian compas, or even a New Orleans funk jam – or any combination of these and other Latin and Caribbean styles.
All-night Indian music concert
Even the most obsessive music lover might think twice about a concert that lasted more than 3 or 4 hours. But in Indian music, all-night concerts that run from dusk to dawn are highly appreciated. This weekend some of India’s most revered musicians played all night at St John the Divine. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter went the distance.
Made in Newark: The local art scene
In Newark, New Jersey, a local arts scene is thriving away from the Manhattan spotlight. This evening, Newark’s Aljira Gallery celebrates its 25th anniversary. For the last decade Aljira has hosted a program for emerging artists. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter spoke with some of them.
Kuduro shakes things up: Buraka Som Sistema
Boston Globe, May 9, 2009
So you’ve grooved to house, tranced to techno. You’ve shaken to ghetto-tech, Baltimore club, and Miami booty bass. Perhaps you’ve undulated to Brazilian baile-funk or hard-charged the floor to London grime or dubstep. In the process you may have noticed dance music getting faster – and its geographical origins blurring in the riot of samples, loops, polyglot vocals, and cascading remixes.
In short: You may be ready for kuduro.
Dance music’s new craze – with roots in Angola and Portugal – hits Boston tonight as the genre’s standard-bearer, Buraka Som Sistema, appears at Harpers Ferry fresh from blowing festival-goers’ minds at Coachella. The buzz is intense around the four DJ-producers (and floating cast of dancers and MCs) and their melange of heavy percussions, layered electronics, and exhortative Portuguese rapping – delivered at 140 beats per minute with sensuous, acrobatic accompanying dances.
A summit of Japanese costume roleplay in Brooklyn
More than a thousand people are expected to gather this weekend under the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. They won’t be there to smell the flowers—they’ll be there to pose as their favorite Japanese cartoon characters. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter asks why.
The French Caribbean: Cosmopolitan, colonial, complicated
Produced by Siddhartha Mitter. Follow link for audio. In the music of the French Antilles – the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe – you can hear influences that range from the traditional bèlè and gwo ka drumming of the islands’ rural communities, to European additions like polka and French chanson. But when these islands produced a pop genre that took much of the Caribbean and African world by storm – the smooth and sexy dance music zouk, which exploded in the 1980s – it was an entirely new blend that uniquely reflected the complex layers of identity in these Caribbean communities that are, administratively, a full-fledged part of France. Still colonies? Many think so. Either way the Antilles have long produced artists and thinkers with deep sensitivity to the gradations of race, class, migration, and relationship to a powerful, distant metropolis. Now, musicians in Guadeloupe and Martinique are re-exploring their roots, celebrating rhythms that go back to slavery days without pulling back from the cosmopolitanism of recent years. Our guide to this music – and the rich history and ongoing debates that it reflects – is Brenda Berrian of the University of Pittsburgh, whose book, Awakening Spaces: French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music and Culture, is a definitive – and enthusiastic – treatment of the subject.
An all-female take on graffiti
Graffiti art has as much of a following in the gallery world as it does on the streets. And, a new show in Williamsburg is presenting graffiti with a twist. In a genre dominated by men, this show is all female. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
The record store experience in the era of digital downloads
Saturday is Record Store Day, a day of events and promotions at independent record stores around the country and overseas. If you sense a hint of desperation it’s because the rise of digital downloads has pushed a lot of record stores out of business. So what’s happened to the record store experience? WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter went to find out.
Bed-Stuy Meadow
In a few weeks wild flowers will sprout up all over Bedford-Stuyvesant. That’s the hope of activists who sowed the flowers over the weekend on untended land in the Brooklyn neighborhood. But the environmental project also raised questions — about how to organize community action in a changing neighborhood.
Fly Girlz
It’s a time-honored way to cope with the stress of growing up in a tough neighborhood: you make music about it. A group of girls from Brownsville are telling their story, with a little help from some new friends.
Vietnam remembered in poetry and jazz
On this first day of Poetry Month, Pulitzer prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa meets up with jazz violinist Billy Bang. They’re both veterans who have used their art to deal with painful memories.
Balkan Beat Box is on top of the world
Boston Globe, March 27, 2009
The band’s name is Balkan Beat Box. Its core membership is three Israelis who found their voice in New York subcultures and whose sound encompasses Arabic rap, Moroccan gnawa, mariachi, and dub in an electronically infused cocktail. And when the band hits the Paradise Wednesday, it’ll be fresh from Mexico City, where it has a huge outdoor gig this weekend in the central plaza, the Zocalo, sharing a bill with Asian Dub Foundation, the London Indo-punk massive.
Orthodox, these guys are not. Not in their Jewishness, squarely anchored at the secular, pluralistic end of the spectrum, and even less so in their musical sensibility. But don’t confuse Balkan Beat Box with one of those goofy world-fusion jam bands that peddle low-impact exotica to undiscerning ears. It may be a party band – its live shows are famously raucous – but its members have the spirit of researchers and activists.
New take on Indian classical music
Classical music jumped across continents this weekend. The two-week festival that celebrated the opening of the new Alice Tully Hall came to a close with a concert that showcased a new take on Indian classical music. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter was there.
Fashion Week… recycled
Fashion week wrapped up late last week, but as the designers measure their success and the models move on to the next chic venue, discarded runways and backdrops are getting put to good use. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports on one woman’s quest to rescue leftover materials from the dumpster, and deliver them to the city’s artists.
Cultural shift (live from DC on the eve of the Obama inauguration)
The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, January 19, 2009
Siddhartha Mitter, WNYC culture reporter, joins us from DC looking ahead to inauguration day tomorrow. [Note: I appear after 07:05 in the segment. We discuss the Lincoln Memorial concert and the general mood in DC.]
The making of an icon
Studio 360, WNYC, January 16, 2009
Art played a bigger role in this presidential election than ever before. Especially that heroic red-white-and-blue image of Barack Obama. You know the one. It’s by a street artist named Shepard Fairey. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter talked to him and some other Obama image makers, who confessed that victory puts them in a tricky situation.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
For the last fourteen years, Russell Goings has been writing about big and small characters in African American history. Now, he’s created a long epic poem meant to match the Iliad, or the tale of Gilgamesh. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
Election helps community college students find their voice
For many New Yorkers the presidential election is in the rear view mirror, but for a group of first-time voters at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the revelations from that day keep on coming. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
The rise of the religious music industry in Kenya: Gospel from roots to rap
Afropop Worldwide, December 18, 2008
Produced by Siddhartha Mitter. Follow link for audio. Missionaries and nationalists rubbed shoulders in Kenya as early as 1906, when Kenya was a young, British colony. Christianity has long been closely allied with local, cultural expressions: however, it was only with the spread of radio in the 1940s that choral makwaya groups began to be heard by mass audiences. Hymns, arranged in 4-part harmony and translated into African languages, mark the humble beginnings of what has become a robust industry in Kenya. Today, Christian-themed music dominates the country, from traditional drumming and singing, to Kenyan country music, to guitar band pop, to reggae and rap. Our guest on this program is author and ethnomusicologist Jean Kidula. Kidula will trace Kenyan music’s development from the 1940s to the present, placing rare and unavailable musical examples from her extensive collection in historical context. Produced by Siddhartha Mitter.
That neo-hoodoo that you do
“Neo-Hoodoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith” is the title of an exhibition that’s running at PS 1 in Queens until January 26th. Poet Quincy Troupe is reading at the museum Saturday. Troupe says what was once forgotten is now remembered. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter spoke with him.
Her time has come: Lalah Hathaway
Boston Globe, November 7, 2008
Patience. Perseverance. Acceptance. They’re among the cardinal values of soul music, black America’s soundtrack of struggle and faith and economic striving. And they suffuse not just the latest album, but the whole career of Lalah Hathaway, one of soul’s most elegant and gifted exponents today.
Now nearing 40, the perpetually under-the-radar Hathaway – who headlines the Dimock Center’s annual Steppin’ Out gala tomorrow – earlier this year released her fifth album, “Self Portrait,” a smooth and seamless serving of midtempo, keyboard-rich, adult-oriented rhythm & blues that is inspirational without being narcissistic or schmaltzy. It confirms Hathaway as one of those fine-wine artists, the kind who develop depth when allowed to mature unimpeded.
This didn’t come easy, and not just because Hathaway, who went to Berklee College of Music, chose the road less traveled in an industry that churns out overhyped and objectified female stars before shifting them to the slag heap.
What the Left thinks of “socialism”
The last few weeks of turmoil on the financial markets and all the talk of bailouts and rescue plans has brought government intervention in the economy to the forefront of debate in a way it hasn’t been in a long time. But there are some who have been advocating alternatives to capitalism all along, and for them, this crisis is also an opportunity. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
From soccer pitch to silver screen
French athlete Zinedine Zidane is a star on the soccer field… and now on the big screen. “Zidane” the film is running this week only at BAM and at Anthology Film Archives. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter has these observations on the way soccer becomes a work of art.
Three’s the best company: Keith Jarrett
Boston Globe, October 24, 2008
NEW YORK – “If this isn’t the best trio in the world,” jazz pianist Keith Jarrett announced last Saturday night to a packed Carnegie Hall audience that was clearly already on board with his premise, “then I don’t care what anyone wants me to eat – I’ll eat it.”
The remark came after a particularly intense passage of group interplay among Jarrett’s trio – including bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette – that’s celebrating its 25th anniversary this fall. Rising from his bench, the pianist approached each man and embraced him, waving to the crowd while shaking his head in wonderment.
The room – as large and diverse a jazz crowd as one could ask for, with a strong European contingent and tangles of young Japanese women in stylish outfits – agreed. They offered one standing ovation after another and the trio replied with encores, stretching the evening into close to three hours of jazz communion.
Wee Trio members are thinking big
Boston Globe, October 17, 2008
NEW YORK – They’re called the Wee Trio, but there’s nothing small about these three guys straight from the eclectic Brooklyn scene. Not their music, a free-spirited brew that works in Nirvana and Sufjan Stevens covers beside Thelonious Monk classics. And not their personality: From the Wee ones, who visit the Lily Pad tonight, emanates the goofy, endearing feel of buddies whose chemistry carries well off the bandstand.
It makes for a winning debut, as heard on the group’s album “Capitol Diner, Vol.I” – and all the more so for the instrumentation. With James Westfall on vibraphone, Dan Loomis on bass, and Jared Schonig on drums, the Wee lineup is one seldom seen in jazz. Virtually every vibes-fronted combo – whether led by Bobby Hutcherson, Gary Burton, Stefon Harris, or any other vibist of note – has featured piano or horns in the front line.
Point this out to the guys, though, and they respond only with bemusement, as if it were the first time they considered this pioneering aspect.
Saving an oud tradition
Boston Globe, October 10, 2008
NEW YORK – To enter the world of Simon Shaheen, the virtuoso musician and bandleader who has become Arabic music’s most prominent ambassador and most active educator in the United States, simply consider his principal instrument, the oud.
As Shaheen describes it, the elegant lute with its pear-like shape, fretless neck, and 11 strings – five pairs of two plus a single one at the low end – not only grounds Arabic music, but offers clues to the whole aesthetic of a culture.
“The oud is the center of the Arabic traditional small ensemble,” says Shaheen, who visits the Museum of Fine Arts tonight for a trio session of classical Arabic pieces and new works. “It has a very round, well-projecting sound. It has fantastic technical abilities. And like the piano in the West, it acts like the main instrument in the hands of composers and singers, to accompany themselves or use as a reference when they are composing.”
Family affair with a bossa nova beat: Milton Nascimento
Boston Globe, October 9, 2008
On “Novas Bossas,” the latest project from singer and composer Milton Nascimento, two legends of Brazilian – and by extension, global – popular music find their long-delayed confluence.
The first is the late Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, the seminal songwriter of the bossa nova movement, whose compositions, artfully rearranged, make up the bulk of the record’s program. The other is Nascimento himself, a protean figure whose immense body of work has hovered both above the Brazilian scene, taking in all of its regional styles and influences, and away from it with, among other things, masterly incursions into jazz.
Born of a Rio de Janeiro concert last year to celebrate what would have been Jobim’s 80th birthday, “Novas Bossas” unites Nascimento with the Jobim Trio – featuring Tom’s son Paulo on guitar and grandson Daniel on piano, along with Paulo Braga on drums. Though not officially part of the trio, bassist Rodrigo Villa rounds out the unit.
French ensemble makes old new again
Boston Globe, October 3, 2008
The notion of reviving an obscure linguistic tradition by means of six-part vocal polyphony might sound like an austere and dreary exercise. But one glance at the cover art of “Tant Deman,” the recent album by the Marseille-based vocal group Lo Cor de la Plana, should be enough to dissipate that impression.
It shows a red chair that looks comfortable enough until you realize that it has only two legs. Like a painting by Magritte or Dali, it contains an optical illusion and a playful acknowledgment of absurdity.
This is fitting because even though Lo Cor de la Plana, which appears tonight at the Somerville Theatre, has made it its mission to present both traditional chants and new compositions in Occitan – the medieval language of the southern half of France, relegated under the modern republic to rural isolation – the group does so in a way that is just as likely to alienate the purists of cultural survival as it is to satisfy them.
Poking fun at Palin
Gov. Sarah Palin arrives at the vice presidential debate tonight as a near-overnight celebrity. But with her interviews few and far between, a lot of what we know about her – or what we think about her – has been supplied by comedians. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter takes a look at the Sarah Palin comedy boom.
Life and work of Mahmoud Darwish remembered
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who died in August, was considered the most distinguished literary voice of his community. So much so, in fact, that he received a state funeral from the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Last week Darwish’s New York admirers got together to celebrate his work. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter was there.
This one’s for Coltrane: GURU
Boston Globe, September 26, 2008
NEW YORK – They burned bright … and faded fast. Of the phenomenal MCs who lit up hip-hop in its late 1980s and early 1990s golden age, turning it from a regional novelty to the most influential arts movement of our time, few remain in the limelight.
Rakim, KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, and so many more – the Coltranes and Parkers of their day – have drifted into the background, the industry having stopped rewarding their poetic sophistication and retreated into the wastelands of bling.
But it isn’t time to pronounce hip-hop dead – at least not if Guru can help it.
Armory show explores “Democracy in America”
“Democracy in America” — it’s a big agenda and it’s also the title of a show up this week at the Park Avenue Armory. There’s work from more than 40 artists — taking on the political issues of our time. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter checked it out and has this report.
An intimate look at Ramadan
Muslims are midway through the holy month of Ramadan, with its obligation to fast every day from sunrise to sunset. This year Ramadan falls in a busy season, with kids going back to school and not much room for time off. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter spent a recent Ramadan evening in the Bronx with a Senegalese family.
Their Trane keeps on rolling
Boston Globe, September 21, 2008
In January 2007, a tragic two-day stretch saw the passing of two immense and influential figures in jazz. First, Alice Coltrane – widow of John Coltrane and a major pianist and composer in her own right – died from liver cancer. The next day, tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker succumbed, at 57, to leukemia.
To Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano, the losses registered with special poignancy. As tenor players, they were colleagues of Brecker and disciples of John Coltrane, with a particular taste for Coltrane’s free-minded, spirit-drenched late period. With Brecker, they had formed a group, dubbed Saxophone Summit, to study and celebrate that moment in music. Their 2004 album, “Gathering of Spirits,” featured kindred souls Cecil McBee on bass, Billy Hart on drums, and Phil Markowitz on piano behind the fiery three-horn front line.
This year the Summit returns, with two nights next week at Regattabar, Wednesday and Thursday, in support of a new album, “Seraphic Light.” In Brecker’s spot is none other than Ravi Coltrane – son of John and Alice and a tenor player who has developed his voice at his own pace, largely evading the assumptions one might make from his parentage.
Seun Kuti – cover story
Alarm Magazine #33, September 2008
[Copy as filed before edit]
“Right now,” says Seun Kuti, “music is the only fuel that is backing the movement.”
Adamant and engaged, the stance fairly sums up the disposition of the 25-year-old Nigerian singer and bandleader. Kuti brims with the urgency of mission, and now, on the heels of a major international tour behind a highly lauded debut album, “Seun Kuti & Egypt 80,” he’s got himself a platform to match the scale of his searing social critique and righteous indignation.
And – of course – of his lineage. For Seun is the son, and arguably the designated heir, of the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the towering master of Afrobeat whose legacy well overflows the boundaries of music and art to take on the aspect of prophecy; an icon of social empowerment and personal liberation who lived his values, often at great risk, in defiance of a parade of military dictators and corrupt civilian rulers, while rendering them in a perfected transatlantic synthesis of funk, jazz, and West African groove.
Ace of bass: Dave Holland
Boston Globe, September 12, 2008
Consider a conversation with bassist Dave Holland a chance to check in with the state of jazz today. And consider a performance by a Holland-led group, such as the sextet he brings to Regattabar for a three-night stand starting Thursday, as synoptic a take on the music as you can fit into a 90-minute set: its traditions, its possibilities, and glimpses of its future.
Holland is arguably the hardest-working bassist-bandleader in jazz today. Intensely busy and prolific at 62, he currently leads a quintet, sextet, octet, and big band; he has an abundant discography in smaller formats, including several solo albums; and he is constantly popping up in special projects.
And by the way – he’s also the incumbent bassist in old friend Herbie Hancock’s working group. At the JVC Jazz Festival in Newport last month, Holland played with Hancock’s band and also reunited a special quartet that first came together last year at the Monterey Jazz Festival, with pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, saxophonist Chris Potter, and drummer Eric Harland.
Banding together: Etran Finatawa
Boston Globe, September 7, 2008
Their name means “Stars of Tradition,” but the members of Etran Finatawa are just as much cultural pioneers, melding long-separate ethnic traditions of their native Niger in the service of nationhood – and in the process, producing one of the most fascinating recent hybrids on the African music scene.
The band, which visits the MFA on Oct. 8, has successfully merged the trancey guitar-driven “desert blues” of the Tuareg ethnic group with the polyphonic vocals and spare percussion of the Wodaabe. It features three members from each community. Their new CD, “Desert Crossroads,” is an exciting record of songs in both Tuareg and Wodaabe languages that possesses a deep feeling of roots while never feeling obscure or monotonous.
Etran Finatawa formed only recently, joining members of two separate traditional groups that were invited to perform at the 2004 edition of the Festival in the Desert – a key event on the world-music circuit, held in Timbuktu, Mali, and crucially, an outlet for musicians from impoverished nations of the Sahara desert region.
Recent Conservatory grad is making the grade
Boston Globe, September 5, 2008
School couldn’t end fast enough for Noah Preminger.
At 22, the tenor saxophonist and brand-new New England Conservatory grad has the filled-out look and assured manner of one quite a few years older – like that one preternaturally mature kid who seems to stand out in every class.
And his recently released debut album, “Dry Bridge Road,” is no rough-draft, collegiate blowing session thrown together with some buddies from school. Instead it’s an extremely polished program session recorded last year with a sextet of important New York musicians well senior to him, like pianist Frank Kimbrough and guitarist Ben Monder – none of whom had heard of this upstart before.
Learning from the masters: Lafayette Gilchrist
Boston Globe, August 29, 2008
Jazz is saturated with hot talent fresh out of music schools. That’s not a bad problem to have – it certainly proves to any doubters the music’s continued appeal – but it makes it especially refreshing when a distinctive new presence on the scene belongs to a true autodidact. Characters who learned on the fly, came in on a tangent from other musical scenes, or simply didn’t have access to expensive educations are central to the history of the music. Today, they remind us of its roots and its soul.
Enter the pianist Lafayette Gilchrist. In the late 1980s Gilchrist was just another black middle-class teenager and hip-hop head from northeast Washington, D.C., getting ready to major in economics and become an accountant, as per his family’s wishes, when a chance encounter with a 9-foot Steinway propelled him onto a different path.
More than bliss: Federico Aubele
Boston Globe, August 29, 2008
Loungey, downtempo electronic music is everywhere these days; it’s the international late-night sound of our time, at once product of a hyperkinetic global culture and antidote to its agitation. The swirling soundscapes, the layers of polyglot melodies riding supple rhythms, convey a kind of new cosmopolitan sensibility and feed the need for peace amid tumult that has turned “chillout” into a whole musical genre.
Yet recognizable as the style might be, it hasn’t been easy for individual artists to make their mark in a milieu where DJ culture favors individual tracks over complete albums and the music’s inherent ease of listening can turn it all too quickly into sonic wallpaper.
So when a singer and instrumentalist like Argentina’s Federico Aubele emerges with a distinctive creative voice and a track record of critically lauded albums – so much as to support his own band and tour globally, with a stop at the Paradise on Thursday – it means he’s doing much more than messing around on a laptop in search of a blissed-out vibe.
Orchestre Baobab, “Made in Dakar”
Paste Magazine, August 20, 2008
“The Black Atlantic” is the term black British scholar Paul Gilroy coined to convey how the Atlantic Ocean has shaped the growth of black culture and identity. The ocean, Gilroy argued, hasn’t so much divided black culture as it has unified it. From the days of slavery to the anti-colonial movement to the dawn of globalization, black arts, ideas and politics have developed at least as much through movement and exchange back and forth across the water as they have in specific locales.
Music is an arena in which this constant process of exchange has been especially sophisticated and clearly discernable. It isn’t just that Africa supplied the raw materials of rumba, mambo, jazz and blues. It’s also that, over time, African musicians have imported these musics back as finished products, only to reinvent them anew in a kind of organic cultural remastering.
The lost/found story of Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab—which became a West African institution in the 1970s with its Dakar-inflected Afro-Cuban fusion—is an object lesson in Black Atlantic culture creation. It’s also a cautionary tale about the fragility of art—had it not been for the group’s near-accidental rediscovery by British world-music impresario Nick Gold, its sound might’ve been missed by everyone but those fortunate enough to have visited Dakar’s elite Coralia Club Le Baobab, where the group once served as house band.
DJ legend on a dancefloor mission
He’s a legendary DJ from even before the days of disco. Now Brooklyn’s own Nicky Siano has returned — on a mission — to bring the soul back to the dance floor. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
At Willets Point, resistance and resignation
Even by Bloomberg Administration standards, rebuilding Willets Point in Queens is a massive development project. This summer, the city proposal to tear down the industrial district near Shea Stadium, known for its auto repair shops, and build housing, retail and a convention center has been steadily clearing hurdles. At the end of July Queens Borough President Helen Marshall gave her approval, echoing the local community board. But on the site, only a handful of the roughly 260 small businesses have agreed to sell so far. With eminent domain in the air, local businesses are somewhere between resistance and resignation. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
Siddhartha Mitter 