Issue Articles
Lakou Mizik mixes of street-band rara blasts with traditional Vodou drumming
Lakou Mizik will perform in the on the Jazz & Heritage Stage on Saturday, April 30, at 4:20 p.m. There’s a bit of a fuss going on as Steeve Valcourt, […]
Lulu and the Broadsides, Lulu and the Broadsides (Kismet Records)
“That’s a Pretty Good Love” is the opening song on the first full album from Lulu and the Broadsides—the gritty quintet fronted by Dayna Kurtz—that sits at the intersection of […]
Sabertooth Swing, Delta Bound (Fairground Records)
Nothing against the music on Delta Bound, which presents an ambitious illustration of half a millennium of violent racial and cultural conflict shaping the history of the American South. The New […]
Byron Asher & Brad Webb, Little Bigby (ears & eyes Records)
A foghorn blows through the mists enshrouding desolate docks along the Mississippi in the dead of night. And it blows again. It’s not the opening scene of a classic noir […]
Inspired by New Orleans, vocalist Carmela Rappazzo continually hones her style and songs
“I try really hard as a writer to write light and airy songs,” says jazz singer and songwriter Carmela Rappazzo. “And I suck at it.” Rappazzo is trying to identify […]
Leyla McCalla navigates her Haitian identity in multimedia production
A woman twists and gyrates, seemingly deep in a trance, silhouetted behind a screen on which images of other ceremonial dancers are projected. She emerges onto a dark stage and […]
ÌFÉ, 0000+0000 (Discos Ifá)
The compelling, hypnotic second album from percussionist-composer-DJ-producer Otura Mun, a.k.a. ÌFÉ, begins and ends in New Orleans, where he has lived for only a year now after moving from Puerto […]
Boma Bango, Étranger (Valcour Records)
It’s not hard to imagine an only slightly alternate world in which a brand of rumba took root and flourished in the heart of Acadiana, just as it did in […]
Shakespeare & the Blues, e.g. Rhapsodic (Nouveau Electric Records)
With the Tin Men, who bill themselves as “the world’s only guitar-sousaphone-washboard trio,” you can get a pretty good idea of what they sound like from that description alone. With […]
‘I Dare You’: Terence Blanchard expands the language of jazz and explores opera
When Terence Blanchard found himself needing to write something quickly to round out his new album, Absence, he thought about a bit of wisdom given to him by Wayne Shorter, […]
