Author Archives: Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Recommended Event: DISSIDENT ARTS FESTIVAL Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Full Weekend of Music, Spoken Word, Dance Toward Social Change

The Dissident Arts Festival, the annual gathering of revolutionary creativity, will fete its 10th anniversary with a special weekend-long “2 nites/2 sites” edition. The event takes place on Saturday August 15 and Sunday August 16 at El Taller Latino Americano (Manhattan) and ShapeShifter Lab (Brooklyn), respectively.

A highlight of this year’s special anniversary Festival will be the reunion of free jazz master Daniel Carter’s 1980s hardcore/no wave band Dissipated Face. Other features include modern dance performance by Patricia Parker (producer of the Vision Fest/Arts for Art), neo-beat spoken word by Steve Dalachinsky, Downtown stalwart Trudy Silver’s solo piano, the Nueva Cancion of Bernardo Palumbo, liberation jazz by the Red Microphone, the expansive sound of the 12 Houses Orchestra (conducted by Matt Lavelle), poet Raymond Nat Turner’s Remembrance of the Victims of Police Violence, the “other-world art music” of Sumari, topical spoken word by Chris Butters, Safiya Martinez and Sana Shabazz, and Festival founder John Pietaro’s Literary Warrior Project. The event is sponsored by the Len Ragozin Foundation and endorsed by the National Writers Union-New York and the on-line magazine DooBeeDooBeeDoo NY.

Day One

Continue reading

Metal Postcards Rec Release: Debut EP From Indonesia’s Psych / Heavy Rock Band “Napolleon”

Napolleon (indonesia)Artist: Napolleon
Title: Napolleon
Label: Metal Postcard Rec
Genre: psychedelic indie rock
Buy here: https://metalpostcard.bandcamp.com/album/napolleon-ep

Debut ep from Indonesia’s psych/indie rock band Napolleon.
They describe their sound as “sound is more 1969/1970 Proto heavy rock than standard psych and we love them for it.”

This band is from Bandung, Indonesia. Formed in 2011 “when four young earthlings meet and dreaming about the sounds of outer space. They create hypnotizing and fuzzling sounds, as they blend echo-based sounds with experimental touch. They drawing some elements from 60’s psychedelic aesthetics to modern music with textured sound, and heavily inspired by Also Sprach Zarathustra.”

Continue reading

Is Jazz Dead?…The Tragedy of Jazz, And Its Reawakening

Text by Dawoud Kringle

Photo by Helge Øverås

Photo by Helge Øverås

“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.” Thus spoke Frank Zappa.

According to Nielson’s 2014 Year End Report (thejazzline.com/news/2015/03/jazz-least-popular-music-genre/), jazz & classical combined accounts for 1.4% of music consumed in the US.

Continue reading

Recommended Book: Banning Eyre’s “Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and The Music That Made Zimbabwe”

Banning Eyre Author: Banning Eyre
Title: Lion Songs: Thomas Mapfumo and The Music That Made Zimbabwe
Format: book (hard cover 416 pages) & CD
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (May 22, 2015)
Buy book here:#lion-songs-book-section" target="_blank"> http://www.banningeyre.com/lion-songs/#lion-songs-book-section

Author and guitarist Banning Eyre has spent over 20 years exploring music and history in Zimbabwe. The country’s greatest singer/bandleader, Thomas Mapfumo, began his epic career in the early 1970s. Now in exile, Mapfumo is both a brilliant musical innovator, a reviver and re-inventor of ancient traditions, and a persistent gadfly in the affairs of corrupt politicians, whether in white ruled Rhodesia or black ruled Zimbabwe. Mapfumo’s dramatic story, never before told in such detail, stands beside those of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Fela Kuti.

Banning will be doing events in many locations around the country this summer. (See banningeyre.com/events for more).

Continue reading