From jazz to hip hop, Afro-South Asian music collaborations reflect imagined, more liberatory worlds
A conversation with Elliott Powell, author of ‘Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music’. Hip hop singer Missy Elliott at the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux. | Valentin Flauraud/Reuters
Afro-South Asian (American) musical alliances demonstrate an “other side” of Black life, history, and politics, argues Elliott Powell in his new book,
Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music (University of Minnesota Press 2020).
Powell covers over a half-century of Black and South Asian American musical collaborations, starting from the 1960s. Included in this study are John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Rick James, OutKast, Missy Elliott, Truth Hurts, Timbaland, and also Badal Roy, Lata Mangeshkar, Rajé Shwari and others.
News
Gary Bartz Bridges Generations
By Dave Cantor I Feb. 19, 2021
Baltimore native Gary Bartz has remained uniquely engaged both musically and politically throughout his lengthy career. (Photo: The Artform Studio)
Gary Bartz has watched the slow roll of history drag on, first from the vantage point of his childhood home in Baltimore, then in New York and the rest of the world while on tour. The experiences have given the saxophonist perspective and a unique voice, one that’s resonated with generations of musicians and listeners. “They’re our kids the hip-hop generation. Jay-Z, his mom and dad used to come to The East to see me and to see Pharoah [Sanders]. All these kids had those records in their homes. . It’s an extension of what we’re doing I saw that immediately,” Bartz, 80, said during a late-December Zoom call from his current, well-lighted home in Oakland, California.
Open share drawer
Long a collectorsâ holy grail, this 1975 session is the keyboardist and bandleaderâs only known recording: a fierce half hour that pushes the limits of jazz, funk, and R&B to their breaking point.
Nobody is quite sure who Roland Haynes is. As far as anyone knows, the keyboardist and bandleader played on precisely one recordâhis own, this one, from 1975âand then disappeared, leaving behind a half hour of ankle-snapping jazz-funk played so fast and with such meticulousness itâs practically comical. Whatâs more, because Haynes shares duties on
Second Wave with one-time Pharoah Sanders sideman Kirk Lightsey, and nobody thought to write down whose keyboard is whose, we canât even be sure what Haynes is doing
Expansions: Maxwell McMaster @ Avenue des Arts, Los Angeles
Avenue des Arts // December 19, 2020 - January 16, 2021
December 19, 2020 | in Painting
Maxwell McMaster’s new body of work,
Expansions signifies an opening in the artist’s practice, while articulating recurring themes. Prompted by a personal spiritual path, as a guiding principle in life and work, he conceptualizes art as grounded in the immaterial. The birth of a new idea, or a new painting, is envisioned as open and fertile ground. Borrowing
Expansions from jazz keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith‘s 1974 album, McMaster highlights his indebtedness and influence of a spiritual consciousness on the 1970s cultural imaginary. McMaster’s subtle use of sine waves reverberates in each piece, in reference to the energy found in everything around us. Undulating movement from left to right reference a forward direction, uniting humanity with the cosmos. Radiating forms refer to the manifestation of ideas: inner peace to