50 Years of Genre-Bending Music!
By Bill Milkowski
Shakti celebrates its 50th anniversary with a new album and tour as soulmates John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain still bring it after all these years!
By Kira Grunenberg
The gentlemen of U.K. trio GoGo Penguin offer Everything Is Going to Be OK (XXIM Records), the trio’s sixth full-length record reflecting cavalcade of changes that pianist Chris Illingworth and bassist Nick Blacka have endured. Blacka’s mother and brother both passed of cancer within months of one another, and Illingworth’s grandmother, too. The quiet directness of statement-turned-title suddenly takes on immense emotional weight.
By John Murph
Five years ago, Jacques Schwarz-Bart moved away from Harlem, where he had come into his own as a tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader. On his absorbing new album, The Harlem Suite (Ropeadope), he tips his hat to that iconic Upper Manhattan neighborhood that has been an incubator for Black culture for more than a century.
Editor’s Note: We started this issue talking about Indianapolis. Let’s finish it with this classic Blindfold Test featuring that city’s favorite son, the wondrous guitarist Wes Montgomery — who proved to be a tough grader in the June 29, 1967, edition of DownBeat.
