Good music is spiritual. Good music is undirected. It’s felt and received. It’s almost natural. Musicians who are on that tip, they make music because they like to connect to the f***ing ether. | | | | Makaya McCraven at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, July 7, 2017.
(Peter Van Breukelen/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Good music is spiritual. Good music is undirected. It’s felt and received. It’s almost natural. Musicians who are on that tip, they make music because they like to connect to the f***ing ether.”
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| | rantnrave:// "Perils," the late great NEW YORK TIMES music critic ROBERT PALMER wrote 35 years ago, await every new generation of jazz young lions who find themselves "mediating between the jazz tradition and the latest innovations." It's a negotiation they frequently lose, according to Palmer, the "eternal verities of jazz" eventually clamping down on them like a well-placed trap. Palmer had two particular young lion generations in mind, the one featuring WAYNE SHORTER in the 1950s and '60s and the one from which WYNTON MARSALIS emerged in the 1980s. Some things never change—do enough googling and you can find an army of players literally called "young lions" in any decade you choose, this one included. But other things do. While Shorter was receiving his KENNEDY CENTER HONOR Sunday night, I had the great privilege of being a couple hundred miles north, in NEW YORK's (LE) POISSON ROUGE, to witness a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of 11 players, led by drummer MAKAYA MCCRAVEN, whose astonishing new album, UNIVERSAL BEINGS, they were celebrating. The eternal verities of improvisational jazz very much do inform the playing of McCraven, vibraphonist JOEL ROSS, saxophonists SHABAKA HUTCHINGS and NUBYA GARCIA and all their stagemates, but so do the verities of hip-hop, dance music and other modern songforms. And they're not mediating all that stuff so much as they're living and breathing and bending and reshaping it. They're in command of the conversation—and of a persistent blitzkrieg of grooves. The New York club was sold out and packed wall-to-wall with a young audience for whom I suspect the difference between these particular improvised saxophone, vibes, harp and electric-guitar solos and, say, a good house-music DJ is academic at best. Just a different amazing flavor of groove. The night's sponsor, RED BULL, served them cans of its drinks on the way out. Sonic and cultural differences are ever-collapsing, and McCraven is a young lion in the best, lower-case sense of the term, mediating his own impulses every time he changes the groove, taking his players and his audience exactly where he wants to, and offering them the next move... But here's some mediating between jazz tradition and the latest innovations: The funk-friendly jam band GALACTIC has bought New Orleans institution TIPITINA's... TENCENT will IPO this year after all, reportedly next week... The GRAMMY nomination announcements have been moved from Wednesday—a national day of mourning for PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH—to Friday... Movies on the docket: KAMASI WASHINGTON will screen a short film based on album HEAVEN AND EARTH at SUNDANCE in January. The MÖTLEY CRÜE autobiography THE DIRT has been turned into a biopic that will premiere on NETFLIX next spring. UNIVERSAL PICTURES is developing a film based on PRINCE's songs that—I am not making this up—the studio does not want to be another PURPLE RAIN but does want to be another MAMMA MIA. I repeat, I did not make that up... THE CHER SHOW opened on BROADWAY Monday night. The reviews were not good. Someone in the audience was on his cellphone... Malibu's high-power, low-key ONE LOVE benefit... RIP JODY WILLIAMS and CARSTEN OTTERBACH. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| On November 2, 2018, a song commissioned by United Airlines, titled "Rhapsody in Blue (United Airlines Rhapsody Remastered)," appeared in Cherie Hu's Release Radar playlist. She has some thoughts, and concerns, on how lines are becoming blurred over what constitutes an "ad" on Spotify et al. | | |
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| Music festivals have always been the bedrock of psychedelic drug taking. Now psychedelic-themed festivals have reached a new high, as more people search for meaning away from their nine-to-five lives. | | |
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| Drummer Makaya McCraven and like-minded collaborators such as Shabaka Hutchings are combining advanced improv with rhythms designed to make audiences move. | | |
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| Music industry leaders comment on the UK Government's lack of direction and clarity, and share their concerns about a post-Brexit future for the sector. | | |
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| Purchased by members of the funk band Galactic, the landmark could be prime for revitalization. | | |
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| The All Songs gang looks back at this year's anthems and unmissable milestones, from Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer to Childish Gambino's mind-blowing video for "This Is America," Rosalía, Mitski and more. | | |
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| Watch the hottest artists as they chart with iHeartRadio through the year. | | |
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| After years of cultish fascination, Amen Dunes gained greater prominence in 2018 with 'Freedom.' Damon McMahon looks back at the year, and forward to what's next. | | |
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| Don’t mute its most bracing notes. | | |
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| Reviewers dismissed Jones' first two albums as Starbucks music, but there's no denying how popular they were. | | |
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| While we're at it, yes "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie and no, rehashing 2013's arguments won't turn back the clock. | | |
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| The pair talk about ambition, writing, creativity-and where they find it. | | |
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| The Houston rapper has both the No. 1 album ('ASTROWORLD') and the No. 1 song ("Sicko Mode") in the country. This is how he got there. | | |
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| An online fan army of Backstreet Boys fans has used everything in its power to try to discredit Melissa Schuman’s rape allegation against Nick Carter, spreading #HisSideToo. | | |
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| Viryl's breakthrough "steamless" tech brings economic and environmental benefits to an outdated industry. | | |
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| From The Fugs to Frank Ocean: meet the key players in the relationship between psychedelic drugs and their soundtrack. | | |
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| The frontman also explores the impetus for his country music career | | |
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| Johan Svanberg of indie distributor Record Union looks at the need for music streaming services to become more diverse and egalitarian; not only where gender and ethnicity are concerned, but also in terms of creation and ownership. The answer, he believes, is to make streaming platforms a more hospitable and profitable environment for independent artists and labels. | | |
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| These Miracles Work: A Hold Steady Podcast |
| Episode 1: Indie rockers The Hold Steady were riding high after the success of 2006's "Boys And Girls In America." They followed it up in 2008 with "Stay Positive," which catapulted them to a new level. | | |
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| When I first decided to write about the Country Cavaleers sometime in early 2014, I knew right away I'd never make a dime off of anything I could come up with about them. | | |
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| | | | | | | With Nubya Garcia, Ashley Henry and Daniel Casimir. From "Universal Beings," out now on International Anthem. |
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