Amerigo Gazaway’s new *Soul Mates* series continues the theme of his previous work in creating collaborations that never were. On the series’ first installment, the producer unites Brooklyn rapper Yasiin Bey (Formerly Mos Def) and soul legend Marvin Gaye for a dream collaboration aptly titled “Yasiin Gaye”. Building the album’s foundation from deconstructed samples of Gaye’s Motown classics, Gazaway re-orchestrates the instrumentation into new productions within a similar framework. Carefully weaving Bey’s dense raps and Gaye’ soulful vocals over his new arrangements, the producer delivers a quality far closer to Gaye’s famous duets than that of a “mashup” album.
Above… the full 6 minute version… below… the teaser….
ANTHONY JOSEPH & MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO seize the ‘TIME’ on his brand new album.
A couple of nights ago I popped Anthony Joseph’s new CD, ‘Time’, into the player. I am already a fan of this poet/ novelist/educator’s spoken word adventures but there was something different about this album. As I buzzed around my kitchen, buffeted by the words which are wrapped in the warm lilt of the poet’s Trinidadian accent, I felt something fresh was happening. Gone was the afrobeat I’d witnessed at his last live performance. It had been replaced by some spacey bass driven impressionistic funk and radical arrangements that circled the words like celestial planets. Unfolding the press release I see the name of flautist Majik Malik and then Meshell Ndegeocello – it all begins to fall into place. This was collaboration made in heaven. ‘Time’ is alive with stories that, alongside the percussion driven ‘Michael X’, feature an array of women: heroines, resistance fighters, mothers judged and shamed by crowds, suicidal wives and a Pakistani teenager – Malala Yousafzai – attacked by the Taliban. It’s radical. Tek ‘Time’ and listen.
I spotted what’s printed below on Anthony Joseph’s Facebook and we are given full access to the process that has given birth to one deep poetry album. Read on….
“I’ve released five albums in the last seven years. Today, the 5th, ‘Time’ is released. And it could only be called ‘Time’. An apt title when you consider the drift of moments that has brought us here, that has brought me here to this point, to working with Meshell Ndegeocello, to recording the 11 songs/poems/word-movies in five days in Paris last spring.
“I’d met Meshell in September 2011. I was doing an interview at the Naive Records offices when she walked in unexpectedly to say how much she loved the then new album, Rubber Orchestras. It was a beautiful moment. I’d loved and lived through her music since ‘Plantation Lullabies’, her music had induced both tears and ecstasy throughout the years. I was a huge fan. So meeting her, and hearing that she knew my work was something special. We kept in touch.
“It was a year before I asked her if she’d be interested in producing the next album. When she agreed, I knew we were on a train, all we had to do was hold on and we would get there. But when we started working on the album, exchanging ideas and sounds, I had written very little, then the words came, in bursts and waves, and the music too; we were engaged in a mutually inspiring, deep creative process. So when we met at the studios in Paris we knew exactly what we had to do. The musicians did too, Meshell had been working on the arrangements with her band while on tour!
Meshell pic: Joachim Bertrand /Funk-U
“Meshell was clear from the start that she wanted to focus on the words, that the music, though important, supported the poems. I think this was what she did with the instrumentation, as you will hear when you listen to the album. Poetry is at the centre of this universe. It brings me full circle; the first Spasm Band album, Leggo the Lion (2007) was all poetry, spiritual baptist rhythms and free jazz. Meshell wanted me to go back to being a poet on this album, in her words to ‘just say the poem’. She wanted the voice to penetrate the ear, to make what Kamau Brathwaite calls ‘word-sculptures’ for the ear.
“If you listen to the album, you will hear, (as my new band has been finding out) how she has manipulated the fabric of time, how rhythms shift unexpectedly, how certain things seem to go out of time, to suggest their autonomy, but always seem to be right, how sub bass frequencies emerge from nowhere, and how sometimes, like in ‘Shine’, one of the more spiritual tracks on the album, (you’ll see why when we play it live) the head wants to stay in one place but the body demands movement. There are moments like this throughout the album, and its part of the enjoyment to find them.
“Seven years. And here we are in 2014 with a new album, a new band, a new approach, but on the same path towards the frequency of magic, which is what I think poetry is.”
Seek out Anthony Joseph’s ‘Time’. It’s on Naive Records and out now!Word sound & power!
Mick Hockney’s The House Of Mouse & Pandas is his second solo show at Bristol’s aptly named Weapon Of Choice Gallery.
If you are familiar with Bristol’s Weapon of Choice gallery you’ll probably be familiar with the irreverent, darkly humorous and politically charged images of Mick Hockney. His first solo show at WOC was back in 2010 and during their group show his work – which targeted branding, fascism and eco-issues – sat happily alongside other artists like Inkie, Andy Council, Acer 1, Sepr et al.
Something of an elder statesman in the Weapon Of Choice crew, Mick is easily identifiable by his Wild Bill Hickok moustache and a penchant for classic 50’s western shirts and American classic workwear. I’ve known Mick since the dawn of the Seventies when he arrived at the College of Art & Design in Cheltenham with a Bowie/Mick Ronson haircut fresh from the Isle of Wight Festival. After notching up a first class honours in sculpture Mick’s casting and model making skills led him to work at the Welsh National Opera and Madame Tussaud’s but it was his stint at Spitting Images during the turbulent Eighties that was to hone his feisty and witty political over view. Working with Fluck and Law during the height of Thatcher era was a massive buzz. From there to Nick Park’s Aardman animation empire in Bristol was but a short step but his role as Union shop steward during the making of ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘Wallace and Gromit: Curse of The Were-Rabbit’ was guaranteed to be potentially volatile.
Mick has always got a visual project on the go and it’s music along with the radio – cricket commentary etc – that generally provides the audio backcloth. Having DJ’d a good few house parties with Mick I can attest to his excellent and eclectic taste and while he has honed his vinyl collection down in recent times he continues to add new music to the stack of tunes in his kitchen.
Living in Bristol he is attuned to the world of street art and enthusiastic about the work of other contemporary artists like Stanley Donwood. Mick is a craftsman and not surprisingly a devotee of the “outsider art” bible, Raw Vision. I can definitely envision him enthusing about an artist like Lonnie Holley whose visual pieces come to life to the sound of his singing and the rhythms of making.
Having been deep in the shed with this current work for the past 12 months it’s a relief and a joy to see it finally surface. So, what’s it all about? I shall leave that to the man himself:
“The exhibition comprises three strands – a quartet of panda drawings, a suite of nuclear blasts and and a group of Disney cut-ups. The inspiration for the work comes from my childhood in the 50s and 60s and the beginning of cultural imports from the USA: Disney animations seen through the prism of memory; Cold War anxiety and the paradoxical beauty and horror of nuclear blasts; pandas Chi Chi and An An and our continuing obsession with celebrity and anthropomorphising of animals.”
I’ll definitely check the show before it finishes. If you are in the Bristol area… pop into Weapon Of Choice and snap up a Hockney. Support your local visionaries!
Weapon of Choice Gallery 8B Park St, Bristol BS1 5HR – It’s open Tuesday- Saturday 10-6pm
Arts Foundation Awards: Spirit Of Innovation is alive and well in 2014
Last night, along with a long-time Straight No Chaser collaborator and Tokyo based stylist Naoki Toyama, I followed up an invitation to The Arts Foundation Awards, an annual even that has donated more than £1.5 million to artists since it was initiated in 1993. The 20th Century Theatre in Westbourne Park, which has a history dating back to Charles Dickens, was alive with anticipation as nominees for the awards along with their friends and family mingled with what appeared to be the good and the great of the contemporary arts scene in the capital. That said, it was something a relief to bump into fellow music scribe and photography critic/curator Sue Steward, flautist Emi Watanabe, improv-musician/composer Steve Beresford, and documentary film maker Molly Dineen.
I’d been made aware of the Awards by a good friend and one of the foundation’s trustees, Virginia Hodge, a celebrated Hoxton Square based textile designer who has been heavily involved in creating a new award that focused on Materials Innovation. A life-long music lover she, along with Jonathan Reekie, the current Director of Somerset House, also initiated the discussion which led to an award that focused on Experimental Music. That award category resulted in last week’s New Expermentalists QEH concert, featuring the four finalists Richard Skelton, Rie Nakajima, Jennifer Walshe and Lina Lapelyte. It attracted over 600 people and, as is the nature of such adventures in sound, it successfully generated the odd walk out.
ABOVE: Excerpt from Accompaniment for A-O-I-E-U. Rie Nakajima meets Miki Yui found objects, toy-instruments playing with small sounds; real sounds playing with acoustic memories
The Arts Foundation Awards vary year to year and this year’s awards embraced sculpture, painting, materials innovation, playwriting, arts journalism and experimental music. Under the guidance of its chair, William Seighart and its diligent administrator, Shelley Warren, The Arts Foundation collaborates with the Lionel Bart Foundation and the Yoma Sasburg Estate. It gathers together a collective of heavyweight trustees and nominators, including sculptor Anthony Gormley, publisher Jamie Byng and former CEO of Aldeburgh Music Jonathan Reekie, to come up the various awards, initiate several judging panels and produce a shortlist of four innovative young practitioners in each category.
Stephen Jones
The shortlist booklet gave us a solid introduction to each nominees work but on the night it was left to various trustees and panel judges like radical milliner Stephen Jones and Café Oto’s Hamish Dunbar to give an incisive and passionate introduction to their respective specialism before handing over to the evening’s special guest, Oscar winning script writer Sir Ronald Harwood, to dish out a handsome award of £10K to the winner and a grand to each of the runners up.
It was good to see John Doran of The Quietus nominated for Arts Journalism though the award went to Isabel Barbison, a writer and critic whose recent opinion pieces in Frieze and Kaleidoscope-press have evolved into curatorial projects. Installation artist and sculptor Rei Nakajima is currently the associate artist at Café Oto in Dalston and she walked away the experimental music award while promising the create more. I’d have loved to have sat on the discussions of Experimental Music judging panel, which included Brian Eno, as the scope of musical innovation also spanned Lina Lapelyte’s intriguing ‘Candy Songs’ (which repurposes the sexist ranting endemic in much contemporary hip hop to devastating effect) and Richard Skelton’s inspired and sustained arrangements with place – primarily the landscapes of northern England. Mind blowing.
One had to be impressed those involved in Materials Innovation and while the German born winner Julia Lohmann vividly extolled the virtues of kelp… yes, seaweed… I couldn’t help feeling a little gutted for runner up Alkesh Parmar whose passion for sustainable materials had led him to patent a new process for transforming the huge amount of citrus waste, produced while making orange juice, into a versatile new material. Amazing!
Leah Capaldi: Prop Vitrine
Nicholas Wright’s leisurely and eloquent introduction to art of playwriting and it’s lack of financial reward prefaced an award to the meticulous poetic work of Alice Birch. The sculpture award went to a hugely grateful Leah Capaldi whose work explores the boundaries of performance and sculpture. Unfortunately, the person who was to present the painting award was a no show and left us all – especially the artists nominated – feeling a little short changed. It would have been nice to get the context. However, the images, the paintings of the winner, Andrew Cranston, left me wanting to see much more of this man’s work.
Andrew Cranston- Thinking Inside The Box
In a way, it was all over in a flash and we were left to reflect on a host of UK based artists many of whom have roots in the new Europe rather than the old empire. The Arts Foundation Awards is a celebration of the vibrant creativity that underpins our economy and culture and it stands in sharp relief to the destructive lack of vision displayed by the philistines and dullards who we currently allow to run this country.
Les Sapeurs de Brazzaville: Made Of More is the latest venture into global style by Guinness.
It was something of a surprise to come across this latest Guinness advert which shines a light on Les Sapeurs – the Society of Elegant Persons of the Congo. These Gentlemen of Bacongo are mostly blue-collar workers who dedicate their leisure time to displaying an effortless savoir faire.
The Republic of Congo has experience civil wars and militia conflicts. After three coup-ridden but relatively peaceful decades of independence, the former French colony experienced the first of two destructive bouts of fighting when disputed parliamentary elections in 1993 led to ethnically-based fighting between pro-government forces and the opposition. A ceasefire and the inclusion of some opposition members in the government helped to restore peace. According the this short film, a relative peace has settled on Brazzaville and given these brethren renewed optimism and confidence. However, for some strange reason this ad was filmed in South Africa. That said, based on previous film footage of Le SAPE, the vignettes in the short documentary remain essentially true to life.
Along with an ice cold glass or bottle of Guiness we get to savour the simple philosophy of the Sapeurs who defy circumstances, collect an array of expensive shoes and keep their tailors busy in order to live with “joie de vivre”. There are definitely touching moments in the documentary … check the one where the guy describes burying all his treasured sartorial possessions during an outbreak of war only to return to find them rotted away… “it is like a cemetery, like someone is buried there.” I’m also loving the policeman who was inspired by Prince Charles!
Interestingly, we get a strong bluesy soundtrack which works well with the ad but for the sake if “authenticite” I’ve added a couple of more appropriate Congolese cuts here from Papa Wemba, Evoloko Jocker and Kofi Olomide.
Solange Knowles – Beyonce’s sister – made it to the Congo-Brazzaville before Guinness.
“ The political activists, cultural revolutionary and the proverbial pain-in-the-arse to the American conservative establishment, Amiri Baraka, died on 9th January.
He identified for many of us the Blues People of America as the protagonist of the music that we all now hear and understand as jazz and R&B.
Back in 1988, 26 years ago this month, as one the writers on the first issue of Straight No Chaser, I was privileged to spend the day with the man that helped articulate my thoughts on the social and cultural importance of the music I love. The piece reproduced below captured then and represent now the concerns of a man who was passionate for and committed to the radical exposure of truth and justice” – Claudius Hilliman
Hassan Hajjaj’ s My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume 1 has crossed the Atlantic and is now showing at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Hassan Hajjaj
Hassan originally hails from Larache, a small harbor town in northern Morocco but moved to north London as a teenager. He currently divides his time between his shop on Calvert Avenue in Shoreditch and his atelier in Marrakesh. Initially known for his streetwear label R.A.P. and then as a photographer, Hassan has recently turned to video to depict a globalized society in which the margins of cultural identity—whether African, Arab, or European—are continuously shifting and blurred.
My Rock Stars Experimental, Volume 1 includes nine separately filmed performances by an international array of musicians and Hassan’s “rock stars” and “sitters” wear clothes that the artist designed himself and pose in spaces covered by patterns he selected. Clad in traditional fabrics, as well as luxury-brand clothes and shoes, the musicians bridge the gap between now and then, us and them, and high and low culture, thus reflecting a fusion of Moroccan craftsmanship and contemporary art while creating a conscious friction with Western stereotypes.
Fashion designer – joe_casely-hayford
IN THE MIX….
Mandisa Dumezweni (“Sit Down”) Mandisa Dumezweni is a South African singer based in London. She sings “Sit Down” from her Slow Burn EP.
Jose James (“Code”) Jose James is a singer-songwriter who trained at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City and is signed to Blue Note. “Code” is from his album Blackmagic (2010).
Boubacar Kafando (Gnawa song) Boubacar Kafando is a Gnawa musician from Burkina Faso. He plays the kora, a 21-string bridge-harp from West Africa and sings a traditional Gnawa song.
Toca Feliciano (Capoeira song) Toca Feliciano is a capoeira master from Brazil, now based in London. He plays the berimbau, a Brazilian musical bow that is used to control the speed of capoeira games.
Simo Lagnawi (Gnawa song) Simo Lagnawi, from Morocco, is the UK’s leading Gnawa musician.
The Venus Bushfires (“Love Our Lovers”) The Venus Bushfires is Helen Parker-Jayne Isibor, a singer-songwriter from Nigeria. She plays the Swiss-made hang drum and performs “Love Our Lovers” from her EP The Venus Bushfires (2013)
Poetic Pilgrimage (“No More War”) Poetic Pilgrimage, of Jamaican descent, is the Hip Hop duo Muneera Rashida and Sukina Abdul Noor. The pair is the subject of the forthcoming documentary Hip Hop Hijabis directed by Mette Reitzel.
MARQUES TOLIVER “Charter Music” Marques Toliver is a violinist, vocalist, composer, and magazine editor from the U.S. They met when he was busking in London. “Charter Music” is from his EP Butterflies Are Not Free (2011).
LUZMIRA ZERPA “El dia que yo me case” Luzmira Zerpa is a Venezuelan singer-songwriter and founder of the music and dance group Family Atlantica.
If you’re in LA… check it out. Style & pattern! Exuberant and thought provoking!
Strata Records owner Barbara Cox will lose her home and unreleased Strata master tapes with it, if she doesn’t pay $6700 in real estate taxes by January 20th.
Barbara Cox – Strata East (1978)
“I am writing you to ask for your help, urgently, with something that is very important to me. As many of you know, I recently started a record label (http://180-proof.com/) that is gradually releasing the entire catalog of Strata Records, a Jazz label, broadly speaking, founded in Detroit in the late 60s, and active through the 70s. This catalog contains many (mostly, in fact) unreleased gems. And the few titles that were originally released were not done so in great quantity or quality, due to lack of funds. My mission is to give this great music the meticulous and respectful treatment it deserves.
This journey began when I had the pleasure of meeting Barbara Cox, the woman who owns Strata records, and the widow of its founder, Kenny Cox, in her home in Detroit in 2011. She agreed to give me the exclusive rights to release the Strata catalog. But now, sadly, Barbara is in imminent danger of losing her home (and unreleased Strata catalog master tapes, which she still owns, with it) if she doesn’t come up with $6700 in real estate taxes by January 20th. She’s 75 years old and living on Social Security. If she loses her house it would be not only a personal tragedy for her, but a great loss for music and the cultural history of Black America.
Strata was much more than a record label. It was a grassroots culture and education collective in Detroit that has a rich legacy. Artists like Charles Mingus, Herbie Hancock, Elvin Jones, Weather Report and Chick Corea, all worked with Strata in some capacity. For more information on Strata see http://www.scioniqproject.com/guided-tours/strata
I have released three Strata titles on my label so far. But the money I have been able to raise from that for Barbara is not sufficient to cover these expenses. So I am reaching out to you, my friends, fellow lovers of Jazz, record collectors, musicians, djs, and good people in general who I hope can help me to help a friend in need, and preserve important music and history at the same time.
All money raised will go to Barbara Cox. Any amount over the goal of $6700 will be used to protect her (and the Strata masters) from this happening again in the future. Please give whatever you can afford. No amount is too small (or too big!). Please also help out by spreading this however you can.”
Thank you!
Amir Abdullah
PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW & SPREAD THE WORD. ONE LOVE
Scanning through various “Best Of…” end of year selections I came across this track by Lonnie Holley. It was included in Gilles Peterson’s annual selection for on-line mag Dummy and that in turn sent me off to Bandcamp and the label who released it Dust to Digital.
Lonnie Holley is a 63 year old self taught artist who has notched up a stack of You Tube views with a meandering but hypnotic 13 minute track he recorded with Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Cole Alexander of Black Lips. The video simply documents the three of them recording and playing and it gives us expanded access to the working of this man’s mind and how it all came together including the metallic percussive accents that result from Holley tossing a sawblade, weights and other chunks of metal into a wheel barrow.
Holley is not best known as a musician but as a an “outsider” artist. He began his artistic life in 1979 by carving tombstones for his sister’s two children who tragically died in a house fire. He believes that divine intervention inspired his artwork and also led him to the material he used – discarded blocks of a soft sandstone-like by-product of metal casting that he’d discovered at a local foundry.
Sandstone – Carved head
Holley continued to create. He made other carvings and assembled them in his yard along with various found objects and in ’81 took a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Birmingham (Alabama!)Museum of Art director Richard Murray who immediately agreed to exhibit some of the pieces. In turn, Murray introduced him to the organizers of the 1981 exhibition ‘More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia’ at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Soon his work was being acquired by other institutions, such as the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His work has even been shown at the White House.
By the mid-1980s his work had diversified to include paintings and recycled found-object sculptures. His yard and the adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment that attracted visitors from the art world and scrap-metal scavengers alike but eventually it was the expansion of the Birmingham International Airport that was to prove the biggest threat to the work he’d created.
In late 1996 Holley was notified that his hilltop property near the airport would be condemned. He rejected the airport authority’s offer to buy the property at the market rate of $14,000, knowing that his site-specific installation had personal and artistic value he demanded $250,000. The dispute went to probate court and in 1997 a settlement was reached and the airport authority paid $165,700 to move Holley’s family and work to a larger property in a small Alabama town called Harpersville. The appearance in town of this natty Afro American artist, accompanied with 5 of his 15 children and a truckload of artwork created from trash, apparently did not go down well his new neighbors.
A decade has now elapsed since Holley’s first major retrospective, Do We Think Too Much? I Don’t Think We Can Ever Stop: Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-Five Year Survey traveled from Birmingham, Alabama in 2003 to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England. Since then the man has worked on numerous site specific installations, has been featured in Arthur Crenshaw’s film ‘The Sandman’s Garden’ and remains a popular guest at children’s art events, bringing blocks of the foundry stone for children to carve. Lonnie Holley gets special pleasure from sharing his experience of learning to love oneself through creative activity.
Also, while we are on an “outsider” vibe I eventually succumbed to the wayward keys and ethereal vocals of Michigan based Otis G Johnson. Braving the pre-Xmas madness of Oxford Circus I headed off to If Music – Jean Claude’s vinyl sanctuary in Langham Street- whereupon I secured a copy of the LP, ‘Everything’ on the Holy Spirit label. Basically, it was the perfect slice of left-field gospel to play alongside other Xmas morning faves like Charles Brown’s ‘Merry Xmas Baby’, Charlie Parker with Strings, Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’, Trane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ and Ras Michael’s ‘Spiritual Roots’ – a sing along classic.
Lawrence Feringhetti – Fuck Art, Let’s Dance. (Photo by Chris Felver)
Scanning my mails I noticed that San Francisco based http://jazzybeatchick.com had posted a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I decided to check it out. I’d once rung Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookshop in the hope hustling a copy of Serge Bramley’s excellent book on Macumba to review for Straight No Chaser. To my amazement the man himself answered the phone. Whoah… I was on a transatlantic call with a Beat Generation legend and he said he’d gladly send me the book. Anyway, I digress. Scanning Jazzybeatchick’s posts I notice another post entitled Jazz Is My Religion which sparked off another memory…
During a stay in hospital I recall having to sign a form that would enable the authorities to summon the correct denomination… Methodist, C of E, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu … whatever… to administer one’s last rites should the said treatment not prevail. And believe me, the amount people who snuffed it on that ward was radical. So, without a hesitation I filled the appropriate space with the word JAZZ. Yeah… that felt right. Jazz. Jazz is my religion.
And so to the Ted Joans poem which was undoubtedly the lyrical root of that whimsical decision…
JAZZ IS MY RELIGION by Ted Joans
JAZZ is my religion and it alone do I dig the jazz clubs are my houses of worship and sometimes the concert halls
but some holy places are too commercial (like churches) so I don’t dig the sermons there I buy jazz sides to dig in solitude Like man/Harlem, Harlem U.S.A. used used to be a jazz heaven where most of the jazz sermons were preached but now-a-days due to chacha cha and rotten rock ‘n’roll alotta good jazzmen have sold their souls but jazz is still my religion because I know and feel the message it brings like reverend Dizzy Gillespie/Brother Bird and Basie/Uncle Armstrong/Minister Monk/ Deacon Miles Davis/ Rector Rollins/ Priest Ellington/ His funkness Horace Silver/ and the great Pope John, John COLTRANE and Cecil Taylor They Preach A Sermon That Always Swings!!
Yeah jazz is MY religion Jazz is my story it was my mom’s and pop’s and their moms and pops from the days of Buddy Bolton who swung them blues to Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman‘s extension of Bebop Yeah jazz is my religion Jazz is unique musical religion the sermons spread happiness and joy to be able to dig and swing inside what a wonderful feeling
jazz is/YEAH BOY!! JAZZ is my religion and dig this: it wasn’t for us to choose because they created it for a damn good reason as a weapon to battle our blues!JAZZ is my religion and its international all the way JAZZ is just an Afro-American music and like us its here to stay So remember that JAZZ is my religion but it can be your religion too but JAZZ is a truth that is always black and blue Hallelujah I love JAZZ so Hallelujah I dig JAZZ so Yeah JAZZ IS MY RELIGION…….
OK… Now here’s a little film of Ted Joans – poet, surrealist, trumpeter, and painter – doing a reading in Amsterdam and as a reflection of the times Joan’s can’t help but drop in a diss of “Dave Brubeck and some other phoney musicians…” that didn’t appear in the original poem..
Take 5 Baby! and while we are on the Jazz-oetry vibe the 40th Anniversary of Lightnin’ Rod’s ‘Hustler’s Convention’ is upon us.
Back in 1973 a fast-talking, hustler by the name of Sport played a seminal role in the birth of Hip-Hop. Brought to life by Lightnin’ Rod a.k.a Jalal Mansur Nuriddin of the Last Poets and backed by music provided by Kool & The Gang among others his street tales of card games, dice and chasing women influenced Wu Tang, Ice T, Public Enemy, Jungle Brothers, Black Moon and many more.
To mark the’ 40th anniversary of ‘Hustlers Convention’, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin takes to the stage alongside the Jazz Warriors International Collective to bring the innovative and original story to life. It will be the first time ever the album has been performed live since its release.
In the pipeline is a brand new feature documentary on the pioneering role Jalal and the ‘Hustlers Convention’ LP have played in the evolution of rap. The film is set release in 2014 and be warned this session will be filmed.
Jalal Mansur Nuriddin
Support is by Malik & The O.G’s and our host on the night is poet Lemn Sissay. A radical happening for all hip-hop, spoken word and jazz headz. Flash it.
Jalal (Last Poets a.k.a Lightnin’ Rod) with Jazz Warriors International Collective
& Malik & The O.G’s + DJ Perry Louis.
7pm – 11pm Monday 10th Feb 2014
@ Jazz Café, Parkway, Camden, London NW1
Plum Publications
Excellent resource for run by Ted & Debbie in California, both long time martial arts practitioners…. lots of books, dvds etc with informed reviews based on experience.
SUPA DUPA rare 'n' old skool Nigerian Ju Ju, Fuji & hi life…
Just haul up the the groovemonzter, log on & stream the majestic sounds of Sir Shina Adewale, Dr Orlando Owoh, King Sunny Ade, Cardinal Rex Lawson, Queen Oludunni Decency, Tunde Nightingale, Alhaji Sikuru Ayinde Barrister…. wonderful!
the blue moment
Richard William’s exellent reflections on the world of music and….
Plum Publications
Excellent resource for run by Ted & Debbie in California, both long time martial arts practitioners…. lots of books, dvds etc with informed reviews based on experience.
ancienttofuture.com 