In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, pianist Randy Weston and bassist Ahmed Abdul Malik celebrated with song the revolutions spreading across Africa. In Ghana and South Africa, drummer Guy Warren and vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin fused local musical forms with the dizzying innovations of modern jazz. These four were among hundreds of musicians in the 1950s and ’60s who forged connections between jazz and Africa that definitively reshaped both their music and the world.
In this video, as in his new book, AFRICA SPEAKS, AMERICA ANSWERS: MODERN JAZZ IN REVOLUTIONARY TIMES, Robin Kelley gives us a meditation on modernity. He explains how modern Africa reshaped jazz, how modern jazz helped form a new African identity, and how musical convergences and crossings altered the politics and culture of both continents.
To read more about the book, visit http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674046245
(Source: atane.net)
"Bird and Bud play the changes, of course. But it’s how they don’t play the changes that makes them High Bebop. Despite the tempo, their singing melodies honor rhythm, direction, and context ahead of harmony."
(Source: dothemath.typepad.com)
