Spinner
@us

The Unthanks Dive Into Their Dark Folk Heritage and Cover King Crimson

The-Unthanks.com Rachel Unthank laughs at darkness and desolation. Literally. The singer, who alongside her sister Beck fronts inventive English folk band the Unthanks, chortles when Spinner says that the songs on their new album, 'Last,' are rather bleak. "Well, yeah!" she says, giggling in her distinctively Northern burr. "I've grown ...

Continue reading

@us

Femi Kuti Takes His Message to the Battlefield on 'Africa for Africa'

Julien Mignot Having been a working musicians since his teens and standing today as full-fledged Afrobeat royalty, 48-year-old Femi Kuti has decided it's finally time to get to the point. "There's always been a problem of mine of how to reach where I'm going," the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, speaking by somewhat audible ...

Continue reading

@us

Azam Ali Crafts Grown-Up Middle-Eastern Lullabies on 'From the Night'

Austin Young Lullabies, as it turns out, are not for babies. The song 'Noor (The Light in My Eyes),' which opens Azam Ali's new album 'From Night to the Edge of Day' (due out April 12 by Six Degrees Records) certainly doesn't sound like kids' stuff. Leading off a collection drawn largely from various cultures in Ali's native Iran and ...

Continue reading

@us

Jazz Fest to Honor Haiti's Musical and Tragic Relationship With New Orleans

Daniel Morel When the bands RAM Haiti and Boukman Eksperyans played at the 1994 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as part of the spring event's spotlight on Haitian arts and cultures that year, the shared aspects of the two places were hard to miss for the visiting musicians. The generations-ago influx of Afro-Caribbean traditions via ...

Continue reading

@us

Seun Kuti 'Rises' Out of Africa With Fury, With Help From Brian Eno

Gareth Cattermole, Getty Images The beaches and cafes of Rio de Janeiro were lovely and inviting when Seun Kuti settled in there last year to record his new album. 'From Africa With Fury: Rise.' Well, he assumes that was the case -- members of his band, Egypt 80, told him so. He didn't experience any of that. "I was in the studio the whole ...

Continue reading

@us

Hawk and a Hacksaw Trace Northern New Mexico Sonic Roots to Eastern Europe

Courtesy A Hawk and a Hacksaw The Northern New Mexico town of Espanola is not generally viewed in a romantic light, for those who view it at all. Set about 25 miles up the Rio Grande Valley from Santa Fe, right before you really hit the stretch of the Rocky Mountains that rise up through the rest of the continent, it's the gateway to a ...

Continue reading

@us

Vijay Iyer's 'Tirtha' Is Not Indian Jazz -- and Is Not NOT Indian Jazz

Alan Nahigian Vijay Iyer is explaining about gamaka, one of the keystone elements of Indian music. These are not the notes or scales but the ornamentations – the slides and bends and melismatic embellishments that shape or connect the notes. "It's the particular ornamentation on Carnatic music where you hear it and say, 'Oh, that's ...

Continue reading