Son of renowned Brazilian percussionist Bosco de Oliveira, Fabio de Oliveira, aka Babo Moreno, grew up in London, making his name with folk pop star George Ezra before becoming a key player in the capital’s jazz scene.
This cultural duality shapes much of the drummer’s self-titled debut. Brazilian percussion and atmospherics colour his approach to London’s assorted instrumental jazz strains.
Samba rhythms, ambient synths and birdsong add a tropical feel to the languid rhythms of ‘Bicho Preguiça (The Sloth)’, a track tailor-made for balmy summer days.
Elsewhere, the superb ‘Rei Da Pesca’ pairs punchy, Lincoln Olivetti-style horns with berimbau strum, while Latin-jazz funker…
Category: world
Like many a listener, Resonance founder George Klabin was bewitched when he heard Milton Nascimento’s singing voice for the first time. Introduced to him by Airto and Flora Purim when they were playing at a small NYC club, Klabin learned that the young man was in town to record at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary New Jersey studio. Issued in 1969 on CTI Records, the resultant album was Courage, a classic-in-the-making (Klabin’s all-time favourite, in fact) featuring Herbie Hancock and orchestral arrangements by Eumir Deodato. Now, fifty-six years after its release, renowned clarinetist Eddie Daniels offers a fresh re-take of Courage, his third tribute album to a Brazilian music icon after earlier ones focusing on Egberto Gismonti and Ivan Lins.
Just when you think you’ve discovered all the greats from the heyday of Turkish psych, along comes a rare nugget like this. Çetin Bükey was a saxophonist/flautist known for composing film scores, who also played on Barış Manço’s 1974 single ‘Bir Bahar Akşamı’.
Two years before that, and going by the name Chettini, he cut this ebullient slab of psychedelic soul-jazz with a heavy Turkish flavour.
Though only clocking in at a slim 26 minutes, its eight tracks ping with enough energy to get any party started. Bükey plays an exquisitely expressive clarinet, with a weeping intonation closer to a ney, across a selection of originals and traditional tunes. Bükey’s arrangements of the latter transform folk dances into jumping soul-jazz…
Chavela Vargas, the great Costa Rican-Mexican ranchera singer, once asked, “¿Cómo será de bella la muerte que nadie ha vuelto de allá?” (“How beautiful must death be that no one has returned from it?”) At a 2024 residency at the home of Vargas, one of the greatest musicians ever to speak on the subject, Silvana Estrada watched interviews with the late singer and wrote to understand her own grief.
For a musician so thoughtful about her words — and Estrada’s signature songwriting is, as ever, full of thoughtful words — the Mexican singer-songwriter’s latest album, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, is often searching for them, doubling back, or abandoning them altogether. On 2022’s Marchita, Estrada introduced herself…
Carlos Dafe, born in Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro, grew up surrounded by music and poetry. His father, a chorinho player, and his mother, a poet, nurtured his talent from a young age. By four, he was correcting notes in his father’s rehearsals; by eleven, he was studying at the Conservatory of Music, and by fourteen, he was performing with ensembles and orchestras. In the 1970s, Dafé became a pillar of Brazil’s Black music movement, alongside Tim Maia, Cassiano, Wilson Simonal, and Banda Black Rio. Known as “The Prince of Soul,” a title bestowed by Nelson Motta, Dafé brought samba, soul, and funk into harmony, creating enduring hits like ‘A Beleza É Você Menina’.
Dafé’s career spans decades of collaborations, accolades, and cultural…
The Greek duo of lyra player Sokratis Sinopoulos and pianist Yann Keerim’s first studio statement is a deep well of inspired musical dialogues that cross the idiomatic space between European folk tradition and chamber-jazz seamlessly.
Bartók’s six “Romanian Folk Dances” appear in newly shaped guises throughout the album, with Sokratis’s painterly lyra playing setting a lyrical counterpoint against Yann’s in turns rhythmically propulsive and quietly thoughtful accompaniment. This is the first time the duo is heard distilled from Sokratis’s acclaimed quartet (albums Eight Winds and Metamodal) and their conversations interlock gracefully, always responsive to one another and with a keen sense of space and atmosphere. Their own duo elaborations join…
…Soul Jazz Records delve into the vast vaults of Discos Fuentes, one of the oldest and largest record companies in Latin America, known as ‘the Motown of Colombia’. Discos Fuentes played a major role in spreading Afro-Latin sounds both to Colombia and around the world and this album explores that legacy.
Latin Fire! features legendary Colombian artists such as Fruko, The Latin Brothers, Michi Sarmiento, Afrosound, Pedro Laza, Wganda Kenya and more and showcases the wide-ranging variety of styles that Discos Fuentes made unique to their sound. The album features music from the golden era of Fuentes; from late 50s and 1960s Cumbia through to the emergence of heavyweight and hardcore salsa and Afro-funk in the 1970s…
Designed in 1962 by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the concrete dome in Tripoli, Lebanon was intended to be one of 15 structures that housed a permanent International Fair, expected to welcome over two million annual visitors. By the time civil war broke out in 1975, construction had not yet been completed, leading to the suspension and eventual abandonment of the project. The Dome Sessions, conceived by audiovisual artist Firas El Hallak, is a series of recordings that captures musical performances in the space of Niemeyer’s unfinished concrete dome, and also serves as the soundtrack to an upcoming documentary about the dome’s position in Tripoli’s cultural history. Each piece features a different artist, both solo and ensemble,…
The cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of colonialism should be widely recognized by now. The almost schizoid cultural distortions and developments it led to are impressively illustrated by Zulu Guitar Blues.
This is a truly extraordinary album, a captivating chronicle of the glorious, rousing and defiant music that was created during the horrors of South Africa’s apartheid era – and has remained largely forgotten until now.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens and Juluka’s guitarist Sipho Mchunu may have brought Zulu styles to a global audience, but there was no such fame for the remarkable artists featuring on this 18-track album, lovingly compiled and restored…
Though he announced his retirement in 2018, few were convinced Salif Keita had sung his last and he now appears to be being coaxed back into the spotlight.
Two years ago, aged 73, he played the Kyotoponie festival in Japan; and it was in his hotel room afterwards that he – reluctantly, as he said his playing would be substandard – picked up his guitar and, with the help of ngoni (lute) and calabash percussion, recorded these nine tracks.
At its best Keita’s music had an extraordinary lushness; stripped of this, there’s still a brittle, unavoidable magic in the air.
His voice is magnificent, the songs simple and moving. He revisits “Tassi” (from 2012’s Talé) and “Laban” (first heard on 2005’s…
As a musical curator, Coco Maria has an ear for color. The third compilation in her Club Coco series, Coco Maria Presents: New Dimensions in Latin Music, offers a broad and brightly-hued sonic palette of sounds from across the global Latin diaspora and beyond. Born in Saltillo, Mexico, and now based in Amsterdam after stints in Berlin and London, Coco María is well acquainted with the vastness of the scene, whose titular dimensions she explores here.
She serves us a sampler that leans into the more playful possibilities of eclecticism, presenting the cutting edge with a sense of fun so often missing from visions of the avant-garde. What Coco knows — and shares with us in her virtual club — is that experimentation is better when…
To listen to a new release from Geneva-based label Bongo Joe is to have a twofold reaction. On the one hand, the Bongo Joe catalog is so eclectic that each new direction it takes is a surprise. On the other hand, the albums that come out of it tend to be so good that it seems only logical for the latest interesting release to be a Bongo Joe production. An inarticulate harmony and a tasteful eclecticism hold their discography together.
Now, the imprint celebrates its first full decade with a vivid compilation that makes the extent of the Bongo Joe palette clear. In 23 tracks, 2015-2025: Les Disques Bongo Joe – 10 Years of Sonic Explorations tells the story its subtitle promises, moving through space and time with an ear for quality. It’s unquestionably…
Alhaji K Frimpong’s 1977 Highlife masterpiece, melding traditional Ghanaian musical forms with experimental instrumentation and innovative arrangements.
Opening with the urgent, call-and-response drive of “Hwehwe Mu Na Yi Wo Mpena” and closing with the 15-minute odyssey of “Adam Nana,” the record stretches highlife’s rhythmic and structural possibilities. Its sinuous guitar lines, clavinet vamps, layered vocal phrases and hypnotic percussion evolve with a looseness and freedom that echo the experimental spirit found in 1970s jazz and funk — a Ghanaian counterpart to many of the African-influenced sounds being shaped across the Atlantic.
…The Black Album expands the electronic…
In 2019, New York-based multi-instrumentalist Cochemea set out on a trilogy of albums. The first, All My Relations, proved to be an eclectic collection of free-form jazz, whose tropes crumbled under the pressure of the musician’s ambitions. With Vol. 2: Baca Sewa, Cochemea focused on deep percussion swings, adding streaks of wind instruments to produce flares of whimsy to the unassuming yet potent grooves. These first two outings proved that the artist had intentions far past an impressive discography. Cochemea wanted to bridge worlds and generations using the connective tissue that has always been present but never fully utilized: Jazz.
Cochemea, as ready as an artist can be, prepares for the finale of his ambitious…
They started as a neighbourhood group, The Dwarfs of East Agouza, with ex-Sun City Girl Alan Bishop, Karkhana member Maurice Louca, and Sam Shalabi (of Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect, among others) all living in the same apartment block in Cairo, Egypt. It’s tempting to import a kind of “community of sound” ethos onto their collective work; over the decade-or-so that they’ve been together, The Dwarfs of East Agouza have certainly found a voice, a mood, a tone. But surprising things always happen on their albums, whether recorded in the studio or in live performance.
Prior Dwarfs of East Agouza albums have tended toward the sprawl: side-long pieces on albums like Rats Don’t Eat Synthesizers (2018) and High Tide in the Lowlands (2023), and…
The late-career success of legendary Ethiopian musicians Mulatu Astatke and Hailu Mergia have brought new audiences to classic Ethio-jazz. The surge of attention has been aided by reissue labels that have made it their business to preserve decades-old recordings of snaking horn play, elegant vibraphones, and mesmeric grooves. But right in the Bay Area, you’ll find a contemporary artist in the same lineage, recording music with a rhythm and style that honors these righteous predecessors.
Singer and educator Meklit Hadero was born in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to an ethnic Kambaata father and Amhara mother. Journeying to America as a refugee, she settled in San Francisco during childhood, and since the late…
If only one name comes to mind when you think of Ethio-jazz, it’s almost certainly that of Mulatu Astatke. A vibraphone and percussion virtuoso, Mulatu has also been prolific on the keys, releasing records under this stylistic nomenclature since the 1970s. Inspired by Ethiopian melodic modes and the rhythms and instrumentation of Latin and other American jazz traditions, Mulatu studied at Berklee College of Music. Ethio-jazz is as cool now as it was then, if not cooler for the vintage air that surrounds it; even its use in NPR music breaks can’t undermine its radical complexities.
That’s not to say, though, that Ethio-jazz is a genre of the past. That much is clear on Mulatu Plays Mulatu, the newest release from the octogenarian musical giant. He frames it as…
…Known as Zambia’s first pop star – he’s even got a road named after him in the country’s capital of Lusaka – vocalist and guitarist Alick Nkhata cut his teeth playing in the Lusaka Radio Band (later called the Big Gold Six Band), writing wry, socially motivated sing-along songs in mostly Bemba and Nyanja.
Nkhata’s secret weapon was his worldliness and education; he’d traveled outside Africa during World War II when he served in Myanmar, and when he returned home in the 1940s, he connected with British ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey and began to archive the traditional music he’d grown up with. But he was fascinated with everything the world was offering at the time, and began to figure out ways to blend global pop sounds with Zambian folk.
Born in Peru but currently based in Buenos Aires, Jorge Espinal has spent more than a decade touring and collaborating, participating in projects such as Ricarda Cometa and Calato, developing a musical approach in which body and instrument function as a single unit. With his debut solo album, Bombos y Cencerros, he uses prepared electric guitar, bass drum, cowbell, pedals, and a laptop to trigger samples, build loops, and freeze sounds. As his official bio states, “the guitar becomes a source of rhythm rather than harmony.”
The album, which took shape after a 16-date European tour in 2023, was recorded in a single session in December 2023, simultaneously played using hands and feet, but comprised a series of pieces that condensed years of…
In a world that incessantly pressures artists to be “productive,” Yasmine Hamdan takes her time. Considered a pioneer in Lebanon’s modern indie music scene, Hamdan first made waves in October of 1997, with the debut of her electro-pop group Soap Kills. Over a decade later, she decided to embark on her own journey, debuting with Ya Nass in 2013 and performing on NPR’s Tiny Desk a year later. In 2017 she released Al Jamilat, and fans have spent the last eight years quietly wondering if she would ever release another project. To their relief, she surfaced with new singles early last year, ahead of her latest album, I Remember I Forget, orبنسى وبتذكر.
In the near decade of her absence, the world endured a global pandemic, dozens of…