News & Updates — jazz

The much loved Cuban singer Ibrihim Ferrer rose to world-wide fame as part of Buena Vista Social Club, but not before a long career in Cuba with, among others, Los Bocucos, Beny Moré and Afro-Cuban All-Stars, with his first Cuban hit record coming in 1955. He had been an orphaned street youth singer who became a Santero, as well as a singer of sones, guarachas and boleros. In 1962 he toured Europe with Los Bocucos and met Nikita Kruschev. He continued his singing career in Cuba, largely shut off to the world. Said Ferrer: "The music got better after the...

When a pre-fame Fela Kuti took his Koola Lobitos band to the USA in 1969, they ended up stranded in Los Angeles, working nightclubs into 1970. There they took in the Black Power movement, and the politicized perspective being away from home helped radicalize Fela, who was just another black nobody in L.A. dealing with the struggle but trying to keep moving forward. But his drummer and future musical director, Tony Allen (the man who would co-create the Afrobeat sound), took even more back to Nigeria with him. He learned how to play with looser wrists, more touching than hitting...

Our friends over at the always-tasteful Paris DJs have put up a downloadable mixtape of some of the grooviest nuggets of recent vintage for your listening pleasure. Yes, the Friends & Family Vol 1 set is your audio update on the dopest sounds of today. Their website has given coverage to so many great contemporary bands of the funk, reggae, soul, hip-hop, jazz and boogaloo scenes that it's like they want to do the work for you, keeping you up to date with the freshest arrivals. All of the tunes selected here are from late 2016 or 2017. They cover...

The should've-been-better-known out-jazz tenor player (and bass clarinetist) Glenn Spearman brought a powerful lyricism and fierce beauty to great records by Cecil Taylor, Emergency (a group he co-founded in Paris with Bob Reid), Raphe Malik, Marco Eneidi, Trio Hurricane, John Heward and William Hooker. He also worked with Rova Saxophone Quartet and his own groups, such as G-Force and his classic Interstellar Space-inspired duo album Night After Night with Don Robinson. He was a major part of the Bay Area avant-garde & out-jazz scenes beginning in the late '60s and was on staff at Mills College. I have seem him...

The innovative American psych-folk artist Tim Buckley has always been a cult favorite. His music ranged from straight folk and blue-eyed soul to weird jazz and psychedelic vocal experiments. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, he quit college to sign with Elektra and his records included some intense lyrical content, both dark, personal statements and anti-war & topical themes. His classic albums are Happy Sad, Lorca and Starsailor. He died of a heroin overdose at 28. One of my faves from Buckley, his weird side on full display: