Considering the fact that it was the end of the decade, and that we're all trying to distract ourselves from the encroaching heat death of the planet, it's not surprising that the 2019/2020 list season on the literary internet has been particularly…
Below are the results of NPR Music's 7th Annual Jazz Critics Poll (my 14th, going back to the poll's beginnings in the Village Voice). 2019's results provided surprise after surprise. The only predictable winner was in Latin Jazz: Miguel Zenon's…
Ever since Scottie McNiece and David Allen co-founded International Anthem in 2014, they've pushed back against easy categorization and joined a proud hometown tradition in the process. The Chicago label documents a community that is greatly…
The list of musicians who are also visual artists goes on and on. We're all familiar with the biggest names: David Bowie, Patti Smith, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Captain Beefheart, etc, etc, etc. Lesser-known alternative and indie artists like…
Traditionally, plenty has stood in the way of an African musician hoping to make a splash on the world stage. The continent's sheer size and lack of music industry infrastructure has meant that even pioneering musicians have often toiled in…
Between 1963 and 1970, tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley recorded 12 albums' worth of hard bop. Seven of them were released by Blue Note during this period, while the rest of the material wound up as orphaned tracks sitting on a Blue Note shelf until…
If I could read tarot cards or had a crystal ball that could assist me in foreseeing future trends in music, with emerging artists that'll be introduced and new albums that will stand out above others, this might make for a very interesting column.
It was supposed to be the West Coast's answer to Woodstock, but a perfect storm of negativity and naiveté saw the Rolling Stones Altamont show of December 6th, 1969 forever defined as the day the U.S. counterculture's utopian hippie dream…
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