Brass Trax Essentials: Black Uhuru Sinsemilla

By Rick Sawyer
September 23rd, 2009

Roots reggae ground breakers Black Uhuru existed, in name at least, before Michael Rose joined, but it was Rose’s honeyed voice and lyrical deftness that would come to define the band.

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Brass Trax

Wilson Simonal’s Last Stand: Olhaí, Balândro…É Bufo No Birrolho Grinza!

By Rick Sawyer
September 16th, 2009

Olhaí, Balândro…É Bufo No Birrolho Grinza! might have been the last shimmer of Wilson Simonal’s brilliance before his artistic decline began to match the decline in his popularity.

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Brass Trax

Free Jazz Chanson: Brigitte Fontaine
+ Art Ensemble of Chicago

By Rick Sawyer
September 10th, 2009

It sounds like a musical trainwreck in the making or the set-up for a joke about the excesses of the avant garde. A French chanteuse and a Kabyle musician meet an Afrocentric American free jazz band on a stage in Paris. Chaos ensues? Au contraire.

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Brass Trax

Annette Peacock’s Avant-R&B

By Rick Sawyer
August 28th, 2009

If jazz needed a Patti Smith, a frank and alluring wordsmith with an abiding love of rock and roll, it found one in Annette Peacock. Throughout the sixties and seventies, Peacock fused free jazz with rock, electronic music and poetry, developing an idiosyncratic artistic language that has rarely garnered the attention it deserved.

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Brass Trax

Iconic Free Jazz Drummer Rashied Ali Dies at 76

By Rick Sawyer
August 21st, 2009

Ali will best be remembered as John Coltrane’s drummer during the crucial late phases of his career when he all but abandoned traditional jazz forms for a freer, heavily improvised style that reflected his religious ambitions.

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Brass Trax

Remembering Jazz Pioneer George Russell

By Rick Sawyer
August 17th, 2009

George Russell, the man who freed jazz, died last month at the age of 86. If his obituaries are anything to go by, Russell will be remembered more keenly for his contributions to jazz music theory than his own compositions, which will be a shame. Russell, a pianist, composer, and arranger, came up with the theoretical basis for modal jazz, but he made some fantastic music, too.

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Brass Trax

Pathways to Unknown Worlds:
The Afrofuturism of Sun Ra

By Rick Sawyer
August 10th, 2009

It was more than just jazz for Sun Ra. The pianist and band leader created a total, collaborative artwork that comprised his music, his album covers and iconography, his band and its costumes, his record label, and even his public and private persona.

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Brass Trax

Funk x 4: Revivalist Bands Worth a Listen

By Rick Sawyer
July 24th, 2009

The funk revival has been going on for longer than a decade, rehashing that brief period, say 1966 to 1975, when funk was deep and the drum breaks were sick.

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