News & Updates — folk

Long a cult figure, the legend and appreciation of Arthur Russell only increases with time as more of his music gets issued and reissued and re-examined. His ability to cross from disco to minimalism to orchestral to hiphop to singer/songwriter material of unique personality is testament to his creativity. A lot of his worked was unfinished at the time of his passing but clearly brilliant and much of it sees release in a seemingly never-ending stream of fascinating documents. From Iowa, he was a hick with serious artistic aspirations, taking up piano and cello at an early age. He studied...

An important voice in Cuba, Lázaro Ros is virtually unknown outside of Yoruba-oriented circles. One of Cuba's major Akpwons (praise singer), he was a Lucumí folkloricist and mentor to young singers & scholars serious about Santeria. Havana born, started singing at festivals at 13 and was singing on the radio by '49, around which time he was initiated. The new government formed the cultural/musical entity Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba and with this program Ros got to record and tour Europe, Mexico and the USA. In the '80s he lent his powerful voice, deep knowledge and blessing to a project...

Kofi Ghanaba, aka Guy Warren, was the first musician from the African continent to become known with a career and recordings in the USA, fusing American jazz with African folk forms. He was also a teacher, writer, historian and pan-Africanist of renown. A Ghanaian by birth, during WW2 he worked for the US as a spy, after which he became a journalist and a jazz musician. In 1947 he was a founding member of the great African-jazz band The Tempos with ET Mensah. In '51 he became the first African to become a BBC radio producer and also did radio...

One of the rumberos who helped the tradition thrive in NYC, Totico is best known for teaming with Carlos "Patato" Valdes. Born in Havana, he arrived in Boston in '59 and moved to NYC shortly after. He quickly found work as a percussionist, playing with Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln & Eric Dolphy on Roach's incredible Percussion Bittersuite album in '61. He also hooked up with Pupi Legarreta's charanga ensemble (check the Salsa Nova LP) before the absolute classic rumba album Patato & Totico on Verve ('68). The album features Arsenio Rodriguez and Cachao, and I love the killer version of...

Maya Deren was the mother of American avant-garde cinema. Her films were surreal and intense, full of symbolism and incredibly strange ideas. Check out The Very Eye of Night, Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land. She was a Ukrainian Jew who fled to the US with her family to escape the ethnic-cleansing pogrom. Her first husband was a socialist activist who she married at 18. Her second husband, famous European photographer Alexander Hammid, was co-collaborator on Meshes and her third husband, Japanese-American composer Teiji Ito, made some amazing soundtracks to these films. John Cage and Marcel Duchamp were involved...