Music and Recording Reviews

Michel Petrucciani Trio: Jazz Club Montmartre - CPH 1988; Fred Hersch Trio: The Surrounding Green; Francesco Cafiso: From Then Till When; John Zorn/Dave Lombardo: Memories, Dreams, and Reflections; Joe Farnsworth: The Big Room; David Murray: Birdly Serenade

Wet Leg: Moisturizer; Matt Berninger: Get Sunk; Ty Segall: Possession.

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux: Bloodstains & Teardrops
Whiskey Bayou Records WSK 1006 (CD). 2021. Tab Benoit, Rueben Williams, prods.; Steven Stanley, Michael "Boxy" Howell, Benoit, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

The Africans brought to the Americas to be sold into slavery were denied every vestige of their past except their memories. And yet, they preserved their rituals in dances, songs, and stories, playing the sacred rhythms that accompanied those rituals on whatever found objects they could use to fashion beats. The customs of American peoples from various African regions have been traced to specific destinations in colonial outposts in research detailed by scholars such as John Storm Roberts in Black Music of Two Worlds and Ned Sublette in several of his African-diaspora studies.

Alice Coltrane: Kirtan: Turiya Sings, James Brandon Lewis/Red Lily Quintet: Jesup Wagon, William Parker: Painters Winter and Todd Cochran TC3: Then and Again, Here and Now.

David Bowie: The Width of a Circle, Japanese Breakfast: Jubilee, The Chills: Scatterbrain and Juliana Hatfield: Blood.

Steve Cardenas/Ben Allison/Ted Nash: Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley, Matthew Shipp Trio: World Construct and Tyshawn Sorey Trio: Mesmerism.

Madison Cunningham: Revealer, Black Midi: Hellfire and Porridge Radio: Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky.