In the history of Jamaican music, there is a before and an after the summer of 1966. Jamaican history had always been both turbulent and…
Kingston’s Summer of ’66
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
Carole Demesmin
She’s now occasionally an old lady singer and a powerful Vodou priestess, or a manbo. She now mostly sits and only sometimes comments instead of…
Azel
In 2007, several Tuareg groups rebelled in Niger and in Mali. It was the not the very first instance of Tuareg rebellion in Niger and…
Micheal Manley & Max Romeo: The Songs Politics Produced
Mr Big trembling in his shoes saying he’s got a lot to lose, Don’t want to hear about suffering at all (Joshua said) One man…
the green and gold: an incredible song of Jamaican diaspora
It’s always hard to know exactly what a musician means by a song at first listen, unless if the musician in question has explained the…
Manno, the Accomplished Political Troubadour
Manno Charlemagne is one of Haiti’s greatest singers. His albums are all gems of Haitian culture rooted in informed political expression – in place –…
Fama denke: An old Malian song
“Fama Denke” is a traditional Malian song to make a note of. One of the joys of traditional Malian music is that its corpus is…
Arrawak Dance (My World)
Mushy Widmaeir’s album My World went fairly unnoticed in the United States, as it is the case for most Caribbean art music and Jazz albums…
The Bèlè Dance of the Caribbean
Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon are today globally revered writers. They were reared in societies of the French islands of the Caribbean that are not…
Zelalem
Mikael Seifu – Zelalem (RVNG International, 2016) Ethiopian artist Mikael Seifu’s album Zelalem, Amharic for ‘eternity’, is his debut album. However, it doesn’t sound like…