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Their legendary 1969 collaboration — featuring Whistle Stop, and Airto in full flight.
Testing bossa conventions, encouraged by ACJ’s move to Creed Taylor’s ambitious set-up, abetted by Deodato’s brilliant arrangements. From 1970, with Airto and Ron Carter; and some lovely electric piano.
Half price.
A funky afro-rock classic, his 1969 debut for Ahmad Jamal’s label by this future director of Amandla (the cultural ensemble of the ANC).
Soulful, rootical early set from the great man, with rich, brilliant backing from percussionists Trio Mocoto.
A masterpiece of Guadeloupean jazz, strikingly personal and singular, brilliantly merging gwo ka, jazz funk and biguine, via exploratory production techniques. Deep tunes like Syka — fierce, electric jazz funk with wild clavinet, synth and trumpet solos. A highlight of Koute Jazz, Vini Couté E Tann’ is dazzling, funky biguine, with wicked piano and guitar playing by Patrick Jean-Marie and Gilbert Coco. The percussion-heavy Tipi Fanm is killer gwo ka jazz… The stellar names of Guadeloupean jazz are here: Jean-Marie, Ramon Pirmé, Herbert Lewis, Roger and Gilbert Coco, Germain Cédé, Philippe Dambury, Pierre-Edouard Decimus… Warmly recommended.
‘Amazing record,’ attests Floating Points. ‘One of my top five.’
JM’s mournful, melancholic singing creates a dark, brooding, atmosphere in stark contrast with the prevailing joyfulness and high-spirited rhythms of Brazilian pop at this time. The mood is foreboding but ecstatically hypnotic; the music complexly staggering. A lost masterpiece.
Secret weapon of Madlib, too.
A year after Os Tatuís, José Bertrami returned to the studio, this time stripping back to a trio. Again featuring Claudio Henrique Bertrami on double bass, and with Jovito Coluna on drums, the José Roberto Trio recorded their one and only album in 1966, featuring compositions by Baden Powell, Manfredo Fest, and Marcos Valle. The LP also featured three of Betrami’s own compositions: the wistful Lilos Watts, the groovy Kebar, and the dazzling Talhuama.
Another jewel from the golden age of the Brazilian bossa jazz trio — Bossa Três, Milton Banana Trio, Tenório Jr,, Bertrami’s own Bossa Jazz Trio — ushered in by the Tamba Trio, and nourished along the way by jazz greats from Nat King Cole to Bill Evans,
‘Masterful arrangements, inventive rhythms, rich harmonies, and a perfect balance of flute and saxophone interplay. Funk, Jazz, Gospel, Afro, and traditional elements all merge seamlessly into something unique and timeless.’
“South African spiritual funk gem. slick guitar, banks of horns” - Chris Albertyn (Matsuli).
“Dynamic South African funk. An album that will make you want to dance from start to finish” - Franck Descollonges (Heavenly Sweetness).
The first time out for this buried treasure recorded in 1977 at Columbia Studios in New York with Claus Ogerman.
Featuring fellow Brazilians Mauricio Maestro, Nana Vasconcelos and Tutty Moreno, and in-demand statesiders including Michael Brecker, Joe Farrell and Buster Williams, it kicks off with a sensational eleven-minute version of her anthemic Feminina. Check out Descompassadamente, too. Lovely stuff.
Jubilant eighties cumbia from Peru. Scorcher.
‘Since the 16th century, the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas has been home to a unique Afro-Indigenous culture originating in the integration of the Indigenous Chachi and Nigua peoples with African Maroon communities. Juyungo documents significant Esmeraldan artists and bands playing the Afro-Ecuadorian folklore of the province, as well as including some older field recordings. Based mostly on the marimba, whose origins lie partly in the African balafon, partly in Indigenous percussion instruments, the music is laced with call and response chants, ambient insect and bird noise, the filigree finger-styles of the Andean guitar tradition and the panpipes of the mountains. This is resonant insider roots music at its headiest — the mystic revelation of Esmeraldas, gully deep and lustral.’ Francis Gooding, The Wire.
The fifth in our series of LPs compiling classic music from Ecuador. Customary Honest Jons runnings: a beautiful gatefold sleeve; superior pressing, with vivid, intimate sound; full-size, sixteen-page booklet, in colour throughout, with detailed, fascinating, bi-lingual notes, and stunning photographs.
The music is transfixing, magical; not like anything else. From start to finish, this album is continuously, profoundly immersive; a kind of journeying, trippy meditation about slavery and cultural resistance, identity and mix, places and spaces, futures and pasts. It’s inscrutable to net-surfing, algorithms, Shuffle. But for a taste try the insurgent marimba roller Agua Largo, jet-propelled by Rosa Huila’s rapturous blend of African spiritualist and Christian chant. ‘Healing music,’ Zakia called it on Gilles Peterson’s BBC show recently. And the ravishing pasillo Kasilla Shungulla — ‘calm your heart’ in the Quichua language — a duet between the Peruvian master-guitarist Raúl García Zárate and viola da gamba by Juan Luis Restrepo from Medellin, recorded in a baroque church in Buzbanza, Colombia.