In a distant galaxy deep in the ancient mists of time, I used to have a daily radio show. I also hosted many long overnight slots.
I played EVERYTHING.
You were as likely to hear opera as trad jazz as Moroccan trance music – and all in the same hour – and if I may be immodest, it worked pretty well.
Of course, there is no room on the radio waves for a program like this.
Everything needs to come in nice neat packages.
Thirty seven years later, I finally found a station willing to give me a one-time-only two and half hour slot.
What do you think?
Is it worth the effort of trying to make this a regular thing?
My benefactor, community radio station WGXC FM, has all the ASCAP etc. licenses that allow me to present music, something I can’t do on the podcasts without getting specific permissions from each artist.
If you think this is worth doing more of, encourage me. (I need another project like I need a hole in the head – but this was fun and maybe it would be a good addition to the world.)
July 6, 2018 on WGXC from 7 PM to 9:30 PM
Music by…
Aurora Nealand
Tom McDermott
Jayne Cortez
James Blood Ulmer
Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden
Jerome Cooper
Los Muñequitos de Matanzas
Bata music from Matanzas
Arsenio Rodriquez
Ignacio Pineiro and Celeste Mendoza
Maria Teresa Vera
What do you get when you combine Broadway’s most complex score from one of America’s greatest and most jazz-friendly composers with some of New York’s finest musicians and most imaginative arrangers playing for one of the world’s hippest jazz orchestras?
“West Side Story Reimagined” by Bobby Sanabria’s Multiverse Big Band.
We’ve followed this project through its debut, its free live streaming from Jazz and Lincoln Center, and now – at long last – the recording is available to the public.
Among other things, it’s a master class in Latin rhythms.
Just get it.
I guarantee you’ll be playing it until the 0s and 1s wear out on the digital recording.
P.S. Our unique programming is made possible by help from people like you. Learn how you can contribute to our efforts here: Support Jazz on the Tube
Thanks.
Music credit: The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!
Bobby started his music career as an opera singer, but switched to popular music working as a vocalist at the legendary Tropicana nightclub and dancing professionally as well.
As a sideline, in 1960, he was Cuba’s champion long distance jumper.
Along the way Bobby also picked up the trumpet, the bass, the congas and the drums.
In 1980, he organized the first “Jazz Plaza Festival”, better known now as the Havana Jazz Festival, which I can tell you without hesitation is today one of the great music festivals on earth.
Rumbibop
Over the years, Bobby’s been a mentor to countless young Cuban jazz musicians – multiple generations worth – and remains a tireless promoter of the music.
He continues to perform, record, create events to help showcase other musicians – and paint. (He just had a gallery show in Havana.)
P.S. Fans: Please write to Downbeat and Jazz Times and ask them to review this and other major albums from Cuba.
Cuba has a globally important jazz scene.
It would be good as a matter of policy for US jazz publications to recognize that due to the vagaries of history, Cuba lacks a well funded jazz music promotion machine and is unlikely to have one anytime soon.
In the meantime, American fans and readers of these magazines worldwide are being deprived of a wealth of great and important music.
Fundraiser for Puerto Rico at the “Cathedral of Kingston”
Screening and post-film party: “From Mambo to Hip Hop”
August 4th, 2 PM in the Old Dutch Church, Kingston, NY
The story of communities coming together and creating beauty, connection, and healing against all odds…
The last nine months have been particularly traumatic for the Latino community in America.
First, the essential abandonment of Puerto Rico by the U.S. government after the twin catastrophes of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Second, the “legal” kidnapping of the children of migrants at the southern border, many of whose parents still don’t know their locations.
What makes such things possible in a democracy?
It’s an old fashioned word and it may not seem to apply to this case, but it does: “segregation.”
In this case it’s segregation of the mind: the dividing of Afro-Americans, Caucasians and Latinos into three separate branches of humanity, each dished out unconsciously prescribed – and limited – allocations of attention, respect, understanding and compassion by our institutions and major media.
This August 4th The Old Dutch Church in Kingston is hosting a fundraiser for Puerto Rico designed expressly to bring the entire Kingston and Hudson Valley community together under one roof in support of Puerto Rico…
Young and old…Spanish speaking and Anglo…Afro-American (which includes many Latinos) and Euro-Americans.
The place: One of great historical significance in Ulster County, the Hudson Valley, and the State of New York: The Old Dutch Church of Kingston.
The occasion: The screening of the documentary “From Mambo to Hip Hop”, a film that tells the story of the massive and mostly unheralded contribution of Puerto Ricans to American popular music.
Rock and rap are the two most popular forms of American music. Few realize they were preceded by the “mambo” culture of the late 40s and 50s and the “hip hop” culture of the late 70s and 80s respectively.
These cultural movements were born in New York City, largely in the Bronx, and the makers were young Afro-American and Latino youth living under what can fairly be called crushingly difficult circumstances.
Decades later, the art forms they helped invent resonate all over the world.
“From Mambo to Hip Hop” tells this story, with special emphasis on the contribution of the Puerto Rican community.
It’s the story of a communities coming together and creating beauty, connection, and healing against all odds…A story we especially need to hear right now.
We hope to bring some of this spirit to Kingston on August 4th with this event as well as practical aid to our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico.
The jazz historian and poet Dave Oliphant reads selections from his epic poem “KD: A Jazz Biography”, his tribute to trumpet great and master musician Kenny Dorham, born August 30, 1924 in Post Oak, Texas. Some reviews:
“From the unquestioned authority on jazz music by Texans comes what is surely the most unusual book any music lover will read this year. KD is a 200-page poem, a verse biography of Texas trumpeter Kenny Dorham, who stands behind only Ornette Coleman as the state’s most gifted jazz artist. The great drummer Art Blakey called him the ‘uncrowned trumpet king,’ and writer Scott Yanow echoed what dozens of critics have noted since Dorham’s death at age 48 of kidney disease in 1972, that he was ‘almost famous for being underrated.’ So it’s poetic justice—in this case, that’s not a metaphor—that Dave Oliphant has crowned Dorham with a peerless tribute.” – Statesman.com
“Trying to put jazz into words can be tricky, like setting James Joyce to music. But Texas author, poet, and jazz expert Dave Oliphant has embraced a novel way to do so that is adventurous, just a little odd, and entirely satisfying. . . . So Oliphant riffs with four lines that rhyme. And like a great musician, he can make a deceptively simple line speak eloquently. . . . Thanks to Dave Oliphant’s slightly quirky but richly rewarding quatrains we have the Rubaiyat of Kenny Dorham.” —Foreword (June 2012)
Dave Oliphant is a native Texan poet, a recently retired professor from the University of Texas–Austin, and the editor and publisher of Prickly Pear Press. He is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Backtracking, Memories of Texas Towns and Cities, and Maria’s Poems, as well as a collection of 16 essays entitled Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Kenny Dorham shows Horance Silver a voicing on the piano at a rehearsal for Dorham’s Afro-Cuban session, the Village Vanguard, NYC, January 1955 The repeat the book order info again AFTER the photo
Check out the line up for the 2019 winter cruise while there are still seats to be had: TheJazzCruise.com
Earlier this year, I had the great good fortune to go on this cruise.
Not only is this the greatest jazz festival at sea, it’s one of the great jazz festivals of the world. Period.
Remember the good old days when you could walk club to club and hear great musicians all playing within a short distance of each other?
That’s what this cruise is like…with great food…with a fantastic and focused audience of fellow jazz fans…with fresh sea air…and with warm balmy weather to cut the winter chill.
Literally as much great music as you can handle…in a wide variety of settings from a beautiful theater to intimate club spaces…all with world class sound systems and techs that do the music justice.
As if that weren’t enough, you can stay on the boat for a second week and catch even more music with Blue Note at Sea.
If I had the job of naming the thing, I’d just call it “Jazz Heaven” and leave it at that.
Check out the line up for the winter 2019 cruise while there are still seats to be had: TheJazzCruise.com
– Ken McCarthy Jazz on the Tube
