MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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‘They were the heart of an entire nation of musicians’
CHRIS SEARLE speaks with Hazel Miller, founder of Ogun Records
Members of the legendary Blue Notes sextet, trumpeter and flautist Mongezi Feza and saxophone maestro Dudu Pukwana jamming in a basement club in Hillbrow, a district of Johannesburg, 1962
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
IT'S a significant jazz moment: the re-issue of four powerful, vibrant and deeply moving albums on Ogun Records of the Blue Notes, the South African band which fomented so much dynamism and change in British jazz when they released themselves from apartheid and arrived in London after playing at the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival.
Their first appearance in 1965 at Ronnie Scott’s Old Place in Soho’s Gerrard Street introduced astonishing new sounds, new beats, new inspiration, new musical resistance and the inspiration of direct African artistry into the British jazz scene.
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