The work remains a crowd favorite. But more and more scholars are starting to see ‘Rhapsody’ as a whitewashed version of Harlem’s vibrant Black music scene.
Robin Kelley, University of California, Los Angeles
It took ages for one of African jazz’s hidden masterpieces to be reissued. Still today, four decades later, 1976’s ‘African Songbird’ tells volumes about the politics of the time.