Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – LIVE at Centre for The Book, Cape Town
Listen to Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, LIVE at The Centre for the Book, Cape Town on 2 October 2009.
The nine members of HBE, eight brothers and a cousin, come from an extraordinary musical family. All sisters, brothers and mothers are professional musicians, and Philip Cohran, their father, has roots running back to Mississippi, his time in the musical hothouse of 1940s St Louis, and his role with Sun Ra’s Arkestra in Chicago in the 1950s – but is perhaps best known as a founder of Chicago’s seminal jazz collective the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
The band embraces AACM’s collective approach to music making. However, the group strives to make its musical roots speak to and for its own generation, infusing imaginative jazz arrangements with a hip-hop sensibility. They started out busking in the streets of Chicago and eventually moved to New York. They have since performed with a wide range of artists, from Mos Def and Erykah Badu to Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, and have come to be known as one of the hottest and most individual bands around.
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Toumani Diabate – LIVE at Slave Church, Cape Town (2009)
Listen to Toumani Diabate, recorded live at Slave Church, Cape Town in 2009. Bringing Mandinka history lessons that chart 700+ years., Diabate mediates traditions inherited from Mali’s ancient Mande Empire through globetrotting jazz, blues and electro frequencies. A lifelong Bamako resident, Diabate rose to global acclaim almost 20 years ago when he recorded the world’s first solo kora album Kaira. Since then his career has been characterised by a fierce refusal to erect a line between an ancient locality and …
Madala ‘Bafo’ Kunene – LIVE at Slave Church, Cape Town
Listen to Madala ‘Bafo’ Kunene, recorded live at Slave Church, Cape Town on 2 October 2008. Known to many simply as ‘Bafo’, Madala Kunene is undeniably one of the best guitarists to have come out of Durban. This eclectic musician has an aura of calmness and wisdom that is meticulously replicated in his music – deep-rooted in spiritual and traditional rhythms. Bafo has performed his trance-inducing sounds at festivals around the world and collaborated with the likes of Busi Mhlongo, …
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Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band – LIVE at Assembly, Cape Town
Listen to Anthony Joseph & The Spasm Band, recorded LIVE at Assembly, Cape Town on 2 October 2008. Anthony Joseph is a poet, novelist, musician and lecturer described as ‘the leader of the black avant-garde in Britain’. Born in Trinidad, his experimental poetry, fiction, music and spoken word occupies a space between surrealism, jazz and the rhythms of Caribbean speech and sound, creating what he calls ‘liquid textology’. He is the author of two poetry collections and a novel The African …
Cindy Blackman Quartet – LIVE at Slave Church, Cape Town
Listen to Cindy Blackman and her quartet, recorded live at Slave Church in Cape Town on 1 October 2008. Cindy Blackman is widely regarded as one of the top drummers in the world. She’s upheld the backbeat and created texture for a veritable Who’s Who in jazz: Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, Don Pullen, Hugh Masekela, Pharaoh Sanders, Sam Rivers, Cassandra Wilson, Angela Bofill, Bill Laswell, Buckethead. However, she’s better known as keeper of ‘polyriddims’ for funk rocker Lenny Kravitz since …
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BLK JKS -LIVE at Assembly, Cape Town
BLK JKS are an internationally acclaimed, Johannesburg based band. Says music journalist Miles Keylock: “What makes them hip is that they’re South African and damn it, they sound it. In fact listening to BLK JKS is kind of like taking a slow cruise through Jozi with your windows rolled down. Afro-jazz riffs segue into tribal rhythms, which swagger through street-level sociology before exploding into hardcore bursts of noise, kwaai kwaito beats and addictive rock hooks. It’s not funk rock. It’s …
Songs for Biko, and other stomps, screams and prayers (2008)
September 12 is Biko Day. On this day in 1977, black consciousness philosopher, thinker, leader Steve Biko died in police custody in 1977. This day also historically marks the start of the Pan African Space Station intervention. The 24-hr marathon praise party held to launch PASS in 2008, titled “Songs for Biko, and other stomps, screams and prayers”, included DJs, musicians, soundists, poets and generally noise people presenting music and sound inspired by Steve Biko’s work; and read from his words in I …
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