Category Archives: Reviews

Fula Flute

LP + Digital Album Review: Sylvain Leroux “Qromatica” – the Evolution of the Fula Flute

Fula FluteArtist: Sylvain Leroux
Title: Qromatica
Formats: Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Labels: Fula Flute & Meta Dash
Genre: African Jazz
Release date: May 4, 2023
Buy and stream here: https://sylvainleroux.bandcamp.com/album/qromatica

Album Review by Dawoud Kringle

Sylvain Leroux is a unique musician. He devoted years to the study and mastery of the Fula flute, the traditional flute from Guinea, West Africa. He founded a music school, L’ecole Fula Flute; a music literacy project that teaches this endangered flute tradition. He is one of those people who successfully – and respectfully – adapts a foreign musical tradition, and then expands upon it.

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Festival Review: Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival (EJBF) July 2022

Text and photos by Fiona Mactaggart

This year’s lavish, multi-venue, ten-day juggernaut of an Edinburgh Jazz and
Blues Festival (EJBF) opened with a bang, with a ‘Mardi Gras’ in Edinburgh old
town’s Grassmarket and an Edinburgh Festival Carnival along the beautiful,
new town Princes Street getting the party started over the first few days. EJBF
has now screeched to a halt while some other festivals Edinburgh is famous for
have taken off, and it feels timely to reflect on some of this year’s jazz festival
offerings.

Bigger than ever this year, EJBF encompassed a wide range of jazz and blues
and prompted the feeling that there may have almost been as many bands
coming from overseas as from within Scotland itself.

EJBF

De Beren Gieren

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Voyagers

CD Review: VOYAGERS “Chasing Light”

Artist: VOYAGERS
Title: Chasing Light
Label: Lion Songs Rec
Music Genre: West African trad music

CD Review by Dawoud Kringle

MFM members are familiar with our brother Banning Eyre. (In July 2021, Eyre was the guest on an MFM webinar on bringing African music to the American music scene: https://musiciansformusicians.org/2021/07/report-mfm-zoom-webinar-5-with-banning-eyre/).

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Keyna Wilkins

CD Review: Keyna Wilkins and Jalal Mahamede “Set Me Free” – Musical improvisation to the poetry of a refugee in detention in Australia.

Keyna Wilkins & Jalal Mahamede Artist: Keyna Wilkins & Jalal Mahamede
Title: Set Me Free
Label: Artist release
Genre: Improvisation and spoken word
CD & Digital release:  November 2021

Review by Fiona Mactaggart

“I love my tears as much as my laughter. I need my tears as they ease my pain.”

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