Latin Jazz has been an important and evolving current in jazz since the mid-1940s, when Dizzy Gillespie invited the legendary Cuban conga drummer Chano Pozo to join his big band. However, Latin rhythms were present in jazz even earlier, as proven by such recordings as Louis Armstrong’s 1930 “The Peanut Vendor” (a reworking of Cuban […]
2 LP The album accompanies Questlove’s directorial debut documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Like the documentary, most of the audio recordings that were recorded during the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival have not been heard for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America’s history lost – until […]
An iconic figure of the Bossa Nova, Brazilian pianist, composer and arranger João Donato (born in 1934; he is 84 years old at this writing) introduced a new original rhythm pattern to the genre. He is profoundly influential, having inspired generations of musicians. João Gilberto confessed to having taken his bossa nova beat at the […]
Harlem Hipshake sees the welcome return of The Bongolian AKA multi-instrumentalist and Big Boss Man front man Nasser Bouzida. This, the sixth album under The Bongolian moniker, follows the highly acclaimed Moog Maximus. Harlem Hipshake finds The Bongolian deeply immersed in his lifelong love for the music of the sixties New York’s Latin Soul scene, […]
