Machines have been getting better at mimicking improvisation. But can this distinctly human process serve as a bulwark against the mechanization of life and art?
Charlie Watts was the Rolling Stones’ drummer for almost six decades. A scholar of music – and a Stones fan – describes what he brought to the band.
Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur has worked in many of the world’s best jazz bands and been described as “deserving wider recognition”.
Gunnar Hovgård/Wikimedia
Improvisation asks us to trust that surprise will teach us something. As we enter a new year and a post-pandemic landscape, musical improvisation offers inspiration.
Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces New York, 1947.
William P Gottlieb/Flickr
The Munich-based record label ECM specialises in jazz and Western classical music. The artistry found in its catalogue allows a degree of abstraction that can be energising while enduring a pandemic.
South African lawyer and part-time fashion model, Thando Hopa, at an exhibition of Drum magazine front pages in.
Johannesburg.
Gianluigi Gueracia/AFP via Getty Images
Rap songs from Public Enemy and Ludacris have been heard at marches over the killing of George Floyd. But the history of Black American music as a form of protest dates back to the 19th century.
Nduduzo Makhathini in 2016.
Lerato Maduna/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images
The Tariff Board was told that if women could buy music that was cheap they would buy music that was dirty.
Virtuoso: John Coltrane (tenor sax), Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), Miles Davis (trumpet) and Bill Evans (piano) recording Kind of Blue in 1959.
Pedro Garcia
The politics of Jonas Gwangwa’s music have stayed constant over the years, and are also apparent in the eight albums he has released in South Africa since returning from 30 years of exile.
Michelle R. Scott, University of Maryland, Baltimore County et Earl Brooks, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
From spirituals about the trials of slavery to the fight for civil rights and the modern rhythms of swing music, Duke Ellington told a story about black life that was both beautiful and complex.