Category Archives: Jazz

Mingus: The Chaos and the Magic

Posted on January 9, 2019 by

Charles Mingus in Paris, 1964 “Charles Mingus’s audiences never knew quite what they were going to get, and this kept them coming. Mingus, the bassist, composer, and bandleader who reached the height of his fame in the mid-1960s, was notoriously … Continue reading →

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San Francisco Renaissance

Posted on January 6, 2019 by

“The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde. However, others (e.g., Alan Watts, Ralph … Continue reading →

Posted in Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Books, Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Jazz, Music, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jazzactuel Box Set

Posted on December 11, 2018 by

“Compiled by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and music journalist Byron Coley, Jazzactuel is a three-cd-box collecting free jazz, as well as some psychedelic and avant-garde music from the French record label ‘BYG/Actuel‘. The compilation was issued in 2001; the collected … Continue reading →

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Poetry, Proto-Rap and Soul: The Sounds of the Black Power Revolution

Posted on November 9, 2018 by

Gil Scott Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised “The word ‘revolution’ has lost its edge in the 21st century. Advertisements inform us there’s a revolution in hair care or a revolutionary new driverless car. But when young Americans … Continue reading →

Posted in Angela Davis, Black Power, Bob Dylan, Bobby Seale, Dick Gregory, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, Jazz, Music, SNCC, The Beatles, Vietnam War | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Bridge – Sonny Rollins (1962)

Posted on November 2, 2018 by

“Between 1953 and 1959, the jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins released twenty-one full-length albums. This  kind of prolificacy seems absurd now, during an era in which new musical  material is meted out on a preordained, market-friendly schedule—a few  weeks of recording, … Continue reading →

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The History of Spiritual Jazz: Hear a Transcendent 12-Hour Mix Featuring John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock & More

Posted on September 30, 2018 by

“Jazz has inspired a great many things, and a great many things have inspired jazz, and more than a few of the music’s masters have found their aspiration by looking — or listening — to the divine. But that doesn’t necessarily mean … Continue reading →

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Aquarius Rising

Posted on September 10, 2018 by

A protester at a demonstration against the Vietnam War during the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, 1968 “Certain years acquire an almost numinous quality in collective memory—1789, 1861, 1914. One of the more recent additions to the list is 1968. Its … Continue reading →

Posted in 1968 DNC, Black Power, Books, Che, CIA, Civil Rights Mov., Counterculture, Feminist, Hippie, Jazz, Jerry Rubin, LSD, Lyn. Johnson, Marijuana, MLKJr., Music, Nixon, Pacifist, Paul Goodman, Philip Berrigan, Religion, SDS, Timothy Leary, Tom Hayden, Vietnam War, Weather Underground | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment