Artist: Tirtha (Vijay Iyer, Prasanna and Nitin Mitta)
Title: Tirtha
Label: ACT Music + Vision
Cat.#: ACT 2011
Genre: Nu Indian Jazz (?)
Reviewed by Matthew Rentz
Tirtha is a Sanskrit word that represents a crossable shallow river or stream and a place of pilgrimage. That is exactly what the US based ensemble of the same name provides the listener on their self-titled debut album, a journey where the traveller emerges having experienced a spiritual transformation.
Artist: Sven Kacirek
Title: The Kenya Sessions
Label: Pingipung
Cat.#: PINGIPUNG 20
Genre: contemporary roots music
CD review by Anika Lani
Date: March 5, 2011
Venue: Bell House (Brooklyn, NY)
Concert review and photos by Stephanie Keith
Khaira Arby’s set at the Bell House in Brooklyn started as a praise song to Allah. The first line to the Koran “Bismillalla Allah il Rahman il Rahim”…..reverberated up to the rafters. Arby is paying homage to the female singers of Mali who were historically only allowed to sing religious songs.
Date: March 31, 2011
Venue: Highline Ballroom (NY)
Concert review by Jim Hoey
The Residents still baffle and riddle their audience with questions of identity: Who are these freaks? Where did they come from? How do they turn out such twisted songs? What their fans DO know for sure is that they’ve been around almost as long as the Rolling Stones or Black Sabbath, have put out over 60 albums, and they came out of some swamp or dark lair of Louisiana, before heading to San Fran in the late 60’s. The rest is just hearsay. Although they did release Meet The Residents in 1972, (a parody of Meet the Beatles more in line with Zappa or Captain Beefheart), since that time they have been popping up in different incarnations, with consistently demanding and challenging punk, gothic, and noise releases over the past 3 decades.
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Concert review by Augusta Palmer
Every Friday night between 8 and 11 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, you can be part of a musical tradition that’s almost 1000 years old. That’s the time that Sulieu Suso plays kora every week at Le Grand Dakar, Chef Pierre Thiam’s elegant restaurant.
A native of Senegambia, Mr. Suso has been playing the kora, an instrument made from a hollow gourd fitted with a rosewood neck and with 21 strings, since he began studying with his father at age 8. Sulieu Suso is a descendent of JaliMady Walyn Suso, who is often credited with inventing the instrument, and he’s a serious practitioner of an art that dates back to the earliest days of the Malian empire.
There are few instruments that instill a sense of uplift and peace like the kora, and Mr. Suso plays it masterfully. I’d heard him play twice recently with Randy Weston, and was delighted to hear that he has a regular weekly solo gig just a few blocks from my house.
