Referred to as the “Ruler of 6/8 Rhythm,” Brice Wassy has already established a profound influence on the music of Western Africa. The previous bandleader for Manu Dibango and Salif Keita, Wassy spent some time working with both African performers such as for example Miriam Makeba, Mabi Thobejane, Madala Kunene, …

Applying the polka and world-music dance treatment to a most unlikely song lineup (“FOLKS ARE Strange,” “Sixteen Tons,” “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” “O Holy Night”), Daring Combo produced in the late ’70s in the tiny Texas hometown of vocalist and guitarist Carl Finch, documented three albums for the self-owned Four Dots label, and …

Pianist/composer Mike Catalano is a jazz designer having a bent toward melodic soft jazz and a specific fascination with Brazilian music. Created in NEW YORK, Catalano studied traditional piano developing up and finally went to the Five Cities University of Music. During this time period he began composing and carrying …

Perhaps one of the most successful and popular single feminine performers to emerge from England over the last several years from the 20th hundred years, Kate Bush was also perhaps one of the most unusual, with her keening vocals and unusually literate and organic body of music. As a woman, …

Jarman had not been thus accomplished a saxophonist while his reed-playing partner in the Artwork Outfit of Chicago, Roscoe Mitchell. But Jarman’s feeling of color was good, his blunt-edged improvisations projected an psychologically immediacy of their personal, and his desire for poetry and theatre educated the band’s live shows. While …

Drummer/percussionist Jeff Ballard was created in Southern California in 1963 and was raised in Santa Cruz, CA. He recalls laying in bed hearing the documented music his dad would perform on weekends, including Count number Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Sergio Mendez, and Milton Nascimento. Ballard was originally …

The daddy of Turkish rock music, Erkin Koray is a legend by any measure. Possessing an excellent voice, he’s also a distinctive and achieved guitarist, an inventor, a head, a genuine intellectual, and a rebel no matter what. He has combined traditional oriental Turkish music and cultural and Middle Eastern …

Shaped in Boston, Bare Needs perform folk dance music sketching from classical, Baroque, and British music. The quartet can be made up of pianist Jacqueline Schwab, flutist Peter Barnes, and violinists Earl Gaddis and Mary Lea. Two albums have already been released on two brands — English Nation Dances made …

A FRESH York program guitarist who backed a number of the city’s top artists, Larry Dale also produced a small number of okay singles being a singer through the 1950s and early ’60s. Acquiring initial motivation on his electric guitar from B.B. Ruler through the early ’50s, Dale produced some …

The heavy, psychedelic acid rock of Iron Butterfly might seem dated for some today, however the group was among the first really difficult rock bands to get extensive radio airplay, and their best-known song, the 17-minute epic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” established that even more extended compositions were viable entries in the air …