Columns

A versatile musician who can move from contemporary to jazz with ease, the Japanese percussionist fell victim to an intense but short-lived popularity.

On the centenary of the birth of the Massachusetts pianist, a great and neglected genius in the history of jazz, we revisit his long and unusual career, which he carried out in a scientifically "lateral" way, always far from convention and banality.

We discuss the debut album by the creature of Chris McGregor, the legendary South African pianist, and his fellow exiles in 1960s London.

The almost forgotten Baltimore singer (1932-2019) was a significant performer, possessing a plastic and airy phrasing, capable of lightness and rhythmic punctuality, graceful enunciation and intonation, and understated evocativeness: it is fitting to remember her.

We begin with a retrospective on some musicians who were popular in their day, but for various reasons are virtually unknown today.

Hip-hop is to young black people what bebop was to those of my generation (Quincy Jones)

Charley Patton: The Voice of the Delta. A dandy with a huge ego and a mix of Black, white, Cherokee, and Mexican ancestry.

America in the early Blues Era. Splendor and Misery Between Bluesiness, Industrial Boom, and the Great Depression

Traveling musicians and the African tradition of storytelling, from griots to bluesmen. Minstrels, medicine shows, and vaudeville. Guitar techniques, from the bottleneck to the diddley bow.