On the 50th anniversary of Bitches Brew, one of the contributing musicians and the director of a new documentary share their thoughts on the record [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Guitarist John McLaughlin, who helped electrify Miles Davis’s music, describes Bitches Brew as “Picasso in sound”. Stanley Nelson, who directed a new documentary on Davis, calls it “an […]
View MoreTag: African American Music
Heard but Not Seen | Slate
Black music in white spaces. . [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Away from home, I walk into unfamiliar spaces with my shoulders hunched and tight. Instinctively, I scan my surroundings, stretching every sense around the corners of the room until it feels safe. What the eye see? What the ears hear? What the nose smell? It’s Sunday afternoon […]
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Remembering Curtis Mayfield Today on the 20th Anniversary of His Passing (December 26, 1999) | Albumism
Please join the Albumism team in celebrating Curtis Mayfield’s musical legacy and revisit audio & video highlights from his career below! [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Biography: Perhaps because he didn’t cross over to the pop audience as heavily as Motown’s stars, it may be that the scope of Curtis Mayfield’s talents and contributions have yet to be […]
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Roberta Flack to Make Rare Appearance At GRAMMY Awards | American Songwriter
In a press release earlier this week, the Recording Academy® announced its 2020 Special Merit Awards recipients. The Lifetime Achievement Award honorees include Roberta Flack. The legendary musician and singer will make a rare public appearance to attend the GRAMMY Awards on Sunday, January 26, 2020 at Los Angeles’ STAPLES Center. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] “I am […]
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What Louis Armstrong Really Thinks | The New Yorker
On October 31, 1965, Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong gave his first performance in New Orleans, his home town, in nine years. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] At twelve, he marched in parades for the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, where he was given his first cornet. But he had publicly boycotted the city since its banning of integrated bands, […]
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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Finally Recognizes Woman Who Practically Invented Rock and Roll | Jezebel
This year’s inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been announced, and they have finally gotten around to adding Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who’s got a pretty good claim to having invented that shit. She got her credit the same year as Dire Straits and Bon Jovi. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] The Wall Street Journal […]
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Lovely Pics of Billie Holiday With Her Dog Mister in 1949 | Vintage Everyday
African American jazz singer Billie Holiday who had a career spanning nearly thirty years was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. Her hit “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” became a jazz standard. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the […]
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Atlanta pays tribute to the legendary rap duo OutKast with a huge mural | CNN
(CNN) – The South has something to say — or show, rather. Finally, the city at the heart of southern hip-hop has been given what it deserves — the benevolent gaze of André 3000 and Big Boi watching over it in full photorealism. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] The mural, painted by an artist who goes by JEKS, […]
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Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights | Daily JSTOR
Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”
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Jessye Norman, Regal American Soprano, Is Dead at 74 | The New York Times
A multiple Grammy Award winner, she was a towering figure on the operatic, concert and recital stages.
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