africa

Today’s story is about Ottawa’s groovy Souljazz Orchestra. Now we all know Ottawa is the capital of Canada, and Canada’s primary export is multiculturalism. I’m just kidding!. The Turkish education system never teaches you cool stuff like this, I learnt this by myself on the internet.

Khali is Alejandro Franov’s 6th solo album although we only know 1 because his previous albums were released only in South America and Japan. He was brought to worldwide fame with his collaborations with singer/songwriter Juana Molina. Khali is a pretty dense and emotional instrumental album composed using three “exotic” instruments.

* Waldeck - Ballroom Stories (Dope Noir) : Monsieur Waldeck’s latest installment of noir jazz & downtempo music.
*Radio Luxembourg - Diwrnod Efo’r Anifeiliaid : Short but irresistably cute guitar lead pop songs and English & Welsh hybrid lyrics. Past review on undomondo .
*Old Time Relijun - Catharsis in Crisis (Krecs)

Hey folks, time for a new post today. If you remember the Fanga post, I was talking about a second afrobeat album. Well the time has come to that. Kokolo Afrobeat Orchestra is an 8 piece orchestra from New York. Their debut from 2004 had the fabulous opener “Donkey” which had made me hunt the album back then..

Any search through music blogs or on Youtube these days will show you that The Budos Band have been getting some attention this summer, much much more than is customary for an afrobeat band. They are an 11-strong horn-heavy, all-male, instrumental band from Staten Island, the New York suburb, and were initially, or so the official lore goes, formed through an after-school jazz community program and called “The Barbudos” until one of them got a shave and they had to do some urgent renaming.

Montpellier’s Fanga is one of the two Afrobeat bands that’s released a new album recently (The other being Kokolo). Frankly the selling point for me was the involvement of the legendary Fela Kuti sidekick Tony Allen as I haven’t heard about their 2004 debut “Afrokaliptyik“. Thank God for that because this is an essential piece of modern afrobeat.

* Fabchannel.com is a videosharing site for high quality full concert videos, including artists like Oxbow, Do Make Say Think, You say party! we say die!, Isis, Forro in the Dark, Bebel Gilberto, Comets on Fire, Spank Rock, Oi va Voi, Boris, Benni Hemm Hemm and about a hundred or so more!

In this not so new-but one of the most highly acclaimed albums of this summer so far, Jimi plays the sweet surprise factor as always. I don’t know if it’s because of his broad friend circle of Finnish jazz musicians or the fact that he enjoys dressing like Zeki Müren, or simply because he’s a damn good musician with an open mind, he never loses the surprise factor, always open to experimentation and versatile without losing his own jazzy essence.