Music
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Rage Against the Machine Guitarist Honored With Woody Guthrie Prize
Monday, 30 September 2024 — CovertActi0on Magazine By Jeremy Kuzmarov Tom Morello holds up the Woody Guthrie Prize at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on September 25. [Source: Photo courtesy of Jeremy Kuzmarov] Tom Morello Has Nobly Carried on the American Protest Music Tradition On September 25, former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello Continue reading
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Camilo Moreira from Cuba in the Bronx with Bobby Sanabria
August 2017, Jazz on the Tube brought Havana jazz educator Camilo Moreira to New York City and the Bronx to experience US jazz and meet his Latin jazz “uncles” and “cousins” in the U.S. first hand for the first time. (Camilo has been up before but always with heavy work loads that didn’t permit him… Continue reading
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Wayne Shorter 1933 – 2023
Friday, 3 March 2023 — WKCR 35 hours of Wayne’s music, everything from his work with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis, Weather Report and of course his own music on Blue Note through to his later work like Atlantis and rebroadcast of the late, great jazz broadcaster Phil Schapp’s marathon on WKCR on Wayne Continue reading
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Eddy Wiggins – The Lost Historian
Recently a friend introduced me to an incredible book. Printed in French, and unknown to many, “Eddy Wiggins: Le Noir et Le Blanc”, is a loving tribute to a man who captured African Americans in Paris, Gilles LeRoy, published a beautiful book of photographs that would have been lost forever. Lost, like the history of… Continue reading
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Betty Davis, a nasty gal to the end
During a 2005 interview with journalist James Maycock, 1970s funk pioneer Betty Davis said she’d never felt ahead of her time. That she recorded three astounding albums in the early part of that decade that only got their due when reissued early in the new millennium suggests that she was, but Davis made an important… Continue reading
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‘It’s not the notes, it’s how they’re played’
Setting goals is one thing; meeting them sometimes another. But pianist Sibusiso “Mash” Mashiloane vowed in 2017 he would release an album a year until 2023 – and number six, Music From My People, has just landed. Conceived on a much grander scale than its predecessors, it involves 17 other musicians and brings together his music… Continue reading
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South Africa: Fugitive collaborations in art and jazz
Friday, 21 January 2022 — New Frame South African jazz artists tend to immerse themselves in art spaces other than music. It is a visual and musical communing across forms that meet not only in artistry, but also in politics. ‘Painting a Melody’. (Illustration by Anastasya Eliseeva) By: Percy Mabandu Continue reading
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Gil Scott-Heron spells out why “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
Consider the influence of television, even in the digital age. Consider the power that networks like Fox and CNN continue to wield over that nebulous thing called public opinion; the continued dominance of NBC and CBS. These giants don’t really inform so much as sell packaged ideological content paid for and approved by corporate sponsors.… Continue reading
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An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”
Coltrane is, of course, one of the true giants of 20th century music. He first got attention playing with the Miles Davis Quintet in the mid-1950s on albums like Relaxin’, Cookin’ and Steamin’ before he released his seminal solo album Blue Train. But his career quickly faltered. He was hooked on heroin and Davis, a… Continue reading
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Universal Music Group coverup continues in response to artists’ class-action lawsuit By Kevin Reed
The social and legal fallout from the June 2008 music vault fire in Hollywood, which destroyed an invaluable popular music archive at Universal Studios and which Universal Music Group (UMG) covered up for years, is continuing. Continue reading
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Behind the cover-up of the 2008 Universal Music Group vault fire By Kevin Reed
The New York Times Magazine feature “The Day the Music Burned” by Jody Rosen published June 11 has brought to light important details about the inferno that destroyed an invaluable popular music archive in 2008 at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Of equal significance are Rosen’s revelations about the cover-up of the disaster by Universal Music… Continue reading
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Stax Records President Al Bell Honors Aretha Franklin, a Lost Icon in 2018
As part of our end-of-year round up, iconic record label executive Al Bell, responsible for soul legends like Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding, tells personal stories about meeting Aretha Franklin when she was 16 and her cultural legacy Continue reading
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The ignorant, repressive attack on Frank Loesser’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” By David Walsh
The attack on Loesser’s song, from one point of view, is laughable. But the social forces who have aggressively pushed the #MeToo campaign and the new Puritanism are no laughing matter. In the face of intolerable levels of social inequality and mounting resistance in the working class, the obsession with gender and racial issues within… Continue reading
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Fort Apache Lives: In Memoriam, Jerry González (1949-2018) By Dr. José E. Cruz
Jerry González, a giant of Puerto Rican, Cuban, Afro-Cuban jazz, and jazz music is no more. He was born in Manhattan on June 5th, 1949, the son of Puerto Rican parents. He grew up in the Bronx and left us on October 1st, 2018, the victim of smoke inhalation leading to cardiac arrest as a… Continue reading
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Remembering Bra Hugh Masekela
26 January 2018 — Jazz on the Tube Hugh Masekela (April 4, 1939 – January 23, 2018) Hugh Masekela “Grazing In The Grass” live at the Kuumbwa, March 24th, 2014 I had the pleasure, and the honour of hanging out with Bra Hugh on a number of occasions when I lived Johannesburg as well as here Continue reading
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An Interview with Louis Moholo-Moholo
13 April 2017 — Cafe Oto My friend, the fabulous, and apparently immortal Bra Louis Moholo-Moholo is performing at Cafe Oto tomorrow, Friday 14 April. It’s been nine months since he was here, so all you London bods who are into SA music should try and make it. He will be joined by longtime music Continue reading
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Sun Ra’s Solar Archestra Live in London!
This year marks the centenary of Sun Ra’s birth and these four nights promise to be a very special celebration of one of the greats. Operating under the direction of saxophonist Marshall Allen – who himself is celebrating his 90th year, the Arkestra have made Cafe OTO their home in London and this will be… Continue reading
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Video: Alive Inside: How the Magic of Music Proves Therapeutic for Patients With Alzheimer’s and Dementia
The clip begins with video of Dryer looking largely unresponsive to the outside world. Then he was given a pair of headphones to listen to Cab Calloway, his favorite artist. The music energizes him, awakens him and helps bring back old memories. We play clips from the film and speak with Cohen about his project,… Continue reading
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Juan Formell: Talking about salsa By Rafael Lam
JUAN Formell has a new award this year, the Grammy Special Prize for Excellence. With his group Los Van Van, he has already received the Artist of the World Prize at the WOMEX Expo (October 23-27, 2013 in Cardiff, Wales). This is the first time that a Cuban has received this prize. Continue reading
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Hip-Hop Against the World! BY Jared Ball
Propaganda agencies operate on the principle that everything can be turned to advantage, even the cultural properties of the oppressed.‘ Like jazzman Louis Armstrong’s ‘good will’ tours for the U.S. State Department in the Fifties, rappers today are dispatched on foreign missions to ‘cleanse an image that simply defies cleanliness.’ Hip Hop, the culture that… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 