Showing 1 - 10 of 14
Live gem resurfaces
Life, John Clewley, Published on 11/03/2025
» Cameroonian musician, composer and songwriter Manu Dibango passed away in 2020 at the age of 86. His career and life were extraordinary. He was one of the most celebrated African musicians alongside Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Fela Kuti, Frnaco and Youssou N'Dour. He was known as the most sampled of all African musicians.
Remembering soul' s ' Sultans of Sweat '
Life, John Clewley, Published on 21/01/2025
» For twenty years, between 1961 and 1981, the hugely popular US soul and R&B act Sam & Dave, thrilled audiences with their all-action, stompin' soul music. Both singers were brought up singing in gospel choirs at church and they took their 'pleading preacher' call-and-response gospel style to secular audiences.
A deep dive into music history
Life, John Clewley, Published on 07/01/2025
» In 1965, Joe Boyd was stage manager at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan plugged in and went electric, shocking the conservative folk world. And having navigated that seismic shock, he went on to produce Pink Floyd, Nick Drake and Fairport Convention in the 1960s and 1970s.
House of the rising Son
Life, John Clewley, Published on 27/09/2022
» Son House is regarded as one of the greats of early blues, along with early recording stars like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. He made 78rpm records in the 1930s but a spell in penitentiary halted his career and by the 1940s he had abandoned recording. It wasn't until 1964 that Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro "rediscovered" him working at a gas station. He was completely unaware of the interest in folk blues at the time (Skip James and Bukka White were already playing crossover folk clubs).
Songs of hope
Life, John Clewley, Published on 07/06/2022
» The award-winning Canadian-Czech singer and composer Lenka Lichtenberg was going through her mother's effects in 2016 in Prague when she made a startling discovery. She found two small notebooks that belonged to her artist grandmother, Anna Hana Friesova (1901-1987). Inside each notebook, small enough to fit into a back pocket, were poems written while she was imprisoned in the Terazin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp during WWII.
The country king
Life, John Clewley, Published on 01/03/2022
» In July 1973, songwriter and DJ Surin Paksiri organised a pleng luk thung concert at the Ratchadamnoen Boxing Stadium in Bangkok. He wanted to hold the event in a park or at a big cinema, but both of those options were too expensive. He settled on the boxing stadium, and he called the concert "Luk Thung Isan vs. Luk Thung Pak Klang" (Isan Country Music vs. Central Country Music).
Forging his own path
Life, John Clewley, Published on 22/06/2021
» When Ethiopian music maestro Hailu Mergia toured the US with the Ethio jazz and funk Walias Band in the early 1980s, he had no idea he would become a taxi driver in his adopted country.
Mighty Malagasy grooves
Life, John Clewley, Published on 18/08/2020
» Madagascar, which lies just off the coast of East Africa, is in the furthest western part of the Indian Ocean. It's important to understand how contemporary Malagasy (the name for all things from Madagascar, including the language) music was shaped by the cultural flows from the Indian Ocean and from continental Africa.
A tribute to Manu Dibango
Life, John Clewley, Published on 31/03/2020
» Just after the World War II, in 1948, a gangly youth arrived in Strasbourg, France, after a long trip from Douala in Cameroon. He had 3kg of coffee in his luggage and a burning desire to be a saxophonist like Lester Young (later he would don a Young-esque pork pie hat and blow smoke rings like the acclaimed master). His name was Manu Dibango. Sadly, this veteran musician died last week of complications from the Covid-19 virus. He was 86 years old.
Last band standing
Life, John Clewley, Published on 19/11/2019
» I first heard Orchestre Les Mangelepa's seductive and sweet sound on one of their songs from the late 1970s, Embakasi, which was a nationwide hit in Kenya and beyond. Initially, I thought they had recorded the song in what was then Zaire but in fact they were expatriate Congolese musicians who had settled in Nairobi, Kenya, mainly to take advantage of the sophisticated recording industry that had developed around East Africa's biggest commercial centre.