Cheikh Ndiguël Lô
Like the patchwork clothing he dons, Cheikh Lô is a man of many parts
and colors. At the heart of his creative work, however, is a family man who
burns with spiritual passion.
In his home country of Senegal, Cheikh Ndiguël Lô is a difficult
man to find. He lives quietly in a small town just far enough away from the
frenetic capital of Dakar. He seldom performs in his homeland. But his
international reputation precedes him when he ventures into Europe or the
United States, and his concerts there are cause for celebration...
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Hugh Masekela
Hugh Masekela: King of South Africa's royal jazz court, eternal funkster, self-styled
"man with a horn," from musician/bandleader to mentor, commentator and cultural
ambassador at large. How can we put our finger on the root of his music? The sheer
volume of product he has pumped out over the past 40 years thwarts such an exercise.
His prolific use of musical collage defeats categorization. Clearly his career
cannot be known in its totality, and that's all right, because we dig the vibe of
the music and the man that struts behind it.
Born near Johannesburg in 1939, Hugh Masekela has traversed the globe with his
triumphant trumpet and played with almost every pivotal musical figure in the past
four decades, including Nigeria's Fela Kuti, Zimbabwe's Dorothy Masuka, Zaire's
OK Jazz, the Crusaders, Herb Alpert and Paul Simon, as well as many South African
jazz and pop icons...
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Bob Marley Days
All notions of Making Long Beach's annual Bob Marley days a dancehall versus
roots affair now seem to be gone for good. Thus I showed up for a day of
reggae sans subtitles, fairly certain I would be able to come up with my own
adjectives to describe what I heard and saw...
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Monty Alexander
The distance between the heartbeat of the Rastaman in the hills of Jamaica and
the swinging jazz legacy of 52nd Street in New York might seem substantial, but
in his career pianist Monty Alexander has managed to forge a tight connection
between the two. Despite jazz credentials that extend to the music's core --
associations with Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny rollins --
Alexander has never abandoned his Jamaican heritage, and as a result, he occupies
unique territory in the history of the two genres...
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