Date: April 18, 2013
Venue: The Tea Lounge (NY)
Review by Dawoud Kringle
My friend Veronique Lerebours (HarmoNYom), after attending one of my performances, advised me to check out the Brooklyn Raga Massive, which is held every Thursday night at the Tea Lounge in Brooklyn. She assured me I would like it. I had not heard of it before; and I knew this was something I needed to see. So; on a spring night I ventured to the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Artist: Wisaal
Title: The Warp and the Weft
Label: self released
Genre: World: Middle East, Contemporary
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
According to the liner notes, the two key components of tapestry weaving are the warp and the weft. The warp threads are the foundation through which the weft threads are weaved to create the design. In the end, the former is hidden by the design revealed by the later. This is the conceptual foundation of Wisaal.
Date: April, 6, 2013
Venue:the Rubin Museum of Art (NY)
Review by Dawoud Kringle, photos and video by Veronique Lerebours
HarmoNYom, and the Rubin Museum of Art presented a weekend long Pt. Ravi Shankar tribute series as part of the MUSIC ROOM FESTIVAL. On Saturday, April 6, I attended a performance of mandolin virtuoso Snehasish Mozumder, with Aditya Kalyanpur on tabla.
Date: April 6, 2013
Venue: The Roulette (NY)
Review, photos and videos by Dawoud Kringle
On a night promising to be the last of the cold weather, Roulette played host to a great master of music, and of life; Yusef Lateef. The very idea tends to inspire awe; a quarter of a century of making some of the most beautiful and sublime music the ear can hear.
Yusef Lateef’s biography and resume read like a Renaissance man’s Renaissance man. Born in Chattanooga TN, he later moved to Detroit where he grew up with musicians like Milt Jackson, Paul Chambers, Elvin Jones, and Kenny Burrell. At the age of 18, he began touring with a number of swing bands led by Hartley Toots, Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, Herbie Fields and Lucky Millender. In 1949, he toured with Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra. It was around this time he converted to Islam. Over the years he’d also worked with Cannonball Adderly, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Curtis Fuller, Grant Green, and others. His association with John Coltrane made deep impressions on both men. He made his first recordings as a leader in 1957. Since then, he has recorded 54 recordings as a leader, toured the world, become a world class virtuoso on several instruments, composed many major works (including several symphonies), wrote several influential textbooks on music, authored two novels, two collections of short stories, and an autobiography. He is an emeritus Five Colleges professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, from which he was awarded a PhD in Education in 1975, and was named University of Massachusetts’ “Artist of the Year” in 2007. In 1985 he became a senior research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, where he did research into the Fulani flute. He has collaborated with other master musicians such as Barry Harris, Kenny Barron, Hugh Lawson, Albert Heath, Roy Brooks, Ernie Farrell, Cecil McBee, Bob Cunningham, Adam Rudolph, Charles Moore, Ralph Jones and Frederico Ramos.
Artist: Marbin
Title: Last Chapter of Dreaming
Label: Moonjune Records
Genre: nu jazz/fusion jazz
Review by Dawoud Kringle
Do you like music that is difficult to define, brings you to familiar places, takes you somewhere you couldn’t expect without losing its continuity? Marbin’s CD Last Chapter of Dreaming is just what you’re looking for.
