Kaiso Power - Sound Revolution In Trinidad 1970 - 1980
Soundway collects ten rare sides from Trinidad's revolutionary decade, when calypso, jazz and heavy percussion carried the charge of the Black Power years. Kaiso Power assembles music made for the dancehall and the steelband yard, its politics built into the rhythm rather than spelled out.
Ourang-Outang
In August 1971, the white wizards of South Africa's psychedelic rock underground shared the stage with the black witchdoctors of the Afro-jazz avant-garde. The event was the Tribal Blues concerts at Wits Great Hall, an unprecedented cross-cultural showcase of independent music hosted by the maverick 3rd Ear Music label. Ourang-Outang (2020) presents rehearsals and jams recorded by 3rd Ear director, producer and engineer David Marks in rural KwaZulu-Natal as this unlikely alliance of musical drui…
Group Theory: Black Music
Group Theory: Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2…
A Cosmic Poet From Martinique 1979-1989
Creole poetry, folk mysticism and heavy-grooving cosmic synths combine on this unprecedented survey of spiritual Martinique polymath Gratien Midonet’s first four albums. “I always broke free from the rules, from codes being too narrow,” says poet, musician and sonic shaman Gratien Midonet. “I have always had this sense of peaceful knowledge that there is no separation between genres, beings and universal things.” For Midonet, pushing musical boundaries was less a choice than an extension of his …
Say And Play
Second ECM album by Batagraf, led by Jon Balke and Helge Andreas Norbakken, with Erland Dahlen, singer Emilie Stoesen Christensen and poet Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen, recorded in various locations in 2009 and mixed by Olav Torget in 2010/11.
Tuki
Tuki (ECM 1971, 2006) is the first ECM album as leader by Gambian percussionist Miki N'Doye (kalimba, drums, vocals), with Jon Balke, Per Jørgensen and Helge Norbakken, recorded 2003-2005 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo.