The Fania All-Stars player and record-label impresario worked with Latin music giants including Celia Cruz and fostered a more intense, political salsa sound
Johnny Pacheco, the co-founder of trailblazing salsa label Fania Records, has died aged 85. The cause was complications from pneumonia.
A representative for Fania said Pacheco was “the man most responsible for the genre of salsa music. He was a visionary and his music will live on eternally.”
Continue reading...Heilung jam with Siberian shamans and play with human bones, while Wardruna record songs submerged in rivers and on burial mounds. Now this vibrant undergound music scene is finding a wider audience
In 2002, holed up in an attic studio on the majestic Norwegian coast, Einar Selvik had a vision. He would create a trilogy of albums based on the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, the world’s oldest runic alphabet. The multi-instrumentalist’s epiphany kicked off what is now one of the world’s most vibrant underground music scenes.
Calling on vocalists Lindy-Fay Hella and Gaahl, with whom Selvik had played in black metal band Gorgoroth, he created the band Wardruna and the first instalment of the trilogy arrived in 2009. It was called Runaljod: Gap Var Ginnunga (Sound of Runes: The Gap Was Vast) and had taken seven years to research, write and record. Each song told a story behind Nordic culture and traditions, via dark and ambient folk, played on ancient string and horn instruments, as well as animal hide drums.
Continue reading...Maraj, 64, was walking along a road on Long Island at on Friday when he was hit by a car that kept going, police say
The 64-year-old father of the rapper Nicki Minaj has died after being struck by a hit-and-run driver in New York, police said.
Robert Maraj was walking along a road in Mineola on Long Island at 6.15pm on Friday when he was hit by a car that kept going, Nassau county police said.
Continue reading...In the singer-songwriter’s simplistic directorial debut, a cartoonish portrayal of autism clashes with a tale of addiction
For many years, Australian pop star Sia has hidden behind a fringe that covers her eyes. Using actors instead of starring in her own music videos, she has preferred not to centre herself. Yet her directorial debut appears to draw from her own experiences with addiction; its protagonist Zu (a near-bald Kate Hudson) is a recovering alcoholic. This is confusing, given that the film’s title refers to her non-speaking, neurodivergent younger sister Music (Maddie Ziegler), whose main purpose is to absolve Zu from her troubled past.
Ziegler, who appeared on the reality TV show Dance Moms, and features in some of Sia’s best-known videos (including Chandelier and Elastic Heart), is not herself on the autistic spectrum. It’s a problem, especially given the cartoonishness of her portrayal, which sees her gurning, grimacing and mumbling through her scenes. Music uses an augmentative and alternative communication device to translate rudimentary expressions such as “I am happy” and “I am sad”. Her interior world is just as simplistic, conveyed via goofy musical interludes rendered in childlike primary colours and abstract shapes. The lyrics, jaunty platitudes about Music’s “magic mind” and failing body, are offensive too. These self-consciously upbeat moments clash horribly with the wider redemption narrative.
Continue reading...From flights of sublime abstraction with Miles Davis to virtuoso jazz fusion, Corea’s artistry was irresistible to the last
A certain melodic sparkle and an irresistible rhythmic vitality were the elements that allowed Chick Corea to move beyond the restricted audiences of the jazz world to capture listeners from other spheres. In so doing, he inspired generations of musicians, not just with the notes he played and the ideas he explored, but with his ability to communicate those often complex elements in an approachable way.
Corea’s background in jazz, classical and Latin music provided the ingredients for a career that went in many directions, from influential solo piano recordings and watercolour duets with the vibraphonist Gary Burton to jazz-rock explosions with his Elektric Band. If his keyboard skills set standards, his spirit of inquiry encouraged others to remove barriers and cross musical frontiers.
Continue reading...The composer, keyboardist and bandleader, who won 23 Grammy awards, has died of a rare form of cancer
The jazz pioneer Chick Corea has died at the age of 79.
According to a post on his Facebook page, the musician died from “a rare form of cancer which was only discovered very recently”. In his career, Corea won 23 Grammys and was the fourth most-nominated artist in Grammys history.
Continue reading...The singer recalls the joy of 60s California pop, being enthralled by Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and the Go-Go’s first gig
I grew up in Burbank in southern California. Music played a huge part in my life. I loved California radio – every summer, I would lie in front of the big speakers at my friend’s house. Her mother would go off to work and we would just sing along to the radio from 9am to 6pm every single day, every summer. When I was about 10, I saved up my babysitting and chore money to buy Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by the 5th Dimension on 45rpm. It was so joyous and still sounds fresh to this day.
Continue reading...From Sheffield to Tokyo via New York and rural France, the DJ recalls his adventures with friends and family – and the music that accompanied them
We didn’t travel as kids, partly because my dad hated flying and also because it was festival season and his job meant our summer holidays were spent being dragged off to muddy fields. It sounds like I’m complaining. I am a bit. This was long before it was commonplace to see kids at festival: we got cold, and drunk people pointed at us. On the odd occasion we went on “holiday”, we were squashed into a car and driven around Europe with seemingly no real destination. We once drove all the way to Germany to see where our lawnmower was made. The only joy in these journeys were the mixtapes my dad would spend weeks painstakingly preparing for the journey. A few records for the kids and lots for him. Lonnie Donegan was one of the few tracks on there we all loved. Many years later we got to see him play the Glastonbury festival. I stood in awe. He did a weird amount of encores, double figures.
Continue reading...New documentary on legal arrangement, which gives singer’s father control over her estate, has prompted fresh calls to #FreeBritney
A Los Angeles judge has denied a request by Britney Spears’s father to retain some of his rights over the pop star’s estate, the latest twist in a protracted court struggle over the singer’s finances and guardianship.
Continue reading...The co-founder of the Motown group was overshadowed by Diana Ross but won her battle to protect the group’s integrity
• Mary Wilson: Supremes co-founder dies age 76
In November 1969, Diana Ross announced her departure from the Supremes. It was not an entirely unexpected turn of events for anyone who knew about the internal workings of Motown Records. From the moment in 1963 when label boss Berry Gordy began taking an interest in the trio – whose seven singles to date had met with such commercial indifference they’d become known around Hitsville USA as the No-Hit Supremes – it was obvious who he thought the group’s star was. First Ross became the de facto lead singer on all their singles, with her fellow members Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard relegated to occasional leads on album tracks or on stage.
It was clearly unfair – Ballard and Wilson were fine singers, the latter’s soft-toned version of Come and Get These Memories from The Supremes A’ Go-Go (1966) is delightful – but you couldn’t argue with the commercial results: they had five No 1 singles in 12 months. In 1967, the band’s name was changed to Diana Ross and the Supremes, precipitating the departure of the increasingly troubled Ballard. From that point on, the Supremes were a Diana Ross solo vehicle in all but name: subsequent singles, including Love Child and I’m Living in Shame, featured Ross backed by session singers.
Continue reading...As a black girl growing up in 1970s Glasgow, poet Jackie Kay developed a passion for Bessie Smith. In this extract from her new book, she remembers the wild spirit who helped her find her true self
I was adopted in 1961 and brought up in a suburban house in a suburban street in the north of Glasgow. A small, semi-detached Wimpey house. Outside our house is a cherry-blossom tree that is as old as me. It doesn’t seem the most likely place to be introduced to the blues, but then blues travel to wherever the blues lovers go. In my street and in the neighbouring streets to Brackenbrae Avenue, I never saw another black person. There was my brother and me. That was it. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker were all white. (Although I never actually met a candlestick-maker – has anyone?)
So the first time I saw Bessie Smith, it really was like finding a friend. I saw her before I heard her. My father – a Scottish communist who loved the blues – bought me my first double album. I was 12. The album was called Bessie Smith: Any Woman’s Blues and produced by CBS Records ( John Hammond and Chris Albertson; Albertson went on to write her biography). I remember taking the album off him and poring over it, examining it for every detail. Her image on the cover captivated me. She looked so familiar. She looked like somebody I already knew in my heart of hearts. I stared at the image of her, trying to recall who it was she reminded me of.
Continue reading...Singer says she did not have the confidence for a ‘big career’ such as her father, Frank, enjoyed
The singer Nancy Sinatra has said she lacked the confidence to pursue a “big career” in showbusiness as her father, Frank, did.
The singer established herself as a musical force in her own right during the 60s with her signature hit These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ and the title song of the James Bond film You Only Live Twice.
Continue reading...Singer calls for return to negotiation as touring artists face red tape and new costs, with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood adding fresh criticism of UK government
Elton John: I learned by touring Europe in the 60s. Young artists need the same chance
Elton John has said that the UK’s Brexit negotiators “screwed up” a deal for British musicians and the broader music industry, and is calling for the government to re-enter negotiations.
Writing in the Guardian, John said: “Either the Brexit negotiators didn’t care about musicians, or didn’t think about them, or weren’t sufficiently prepared. They screwed up. It’s ultimately down to the British government to sort it out: they need to go back and renegotiate.
Continue reading...A family from Kent who shared a video of their living room performance of a third lockdown-themed Totally Fixed Where We Are has gone viral. Ben and Danielle Marsh and their four children first found fame with their version of a Les Misérables song, when they changed the lyrics of One Day More to reflect common complaints during the Covid-19 lockdown. The full rendition is available on the family’s YouTube channel
Continue reading...Robert Del Naja, of the Bristol pioneers, talks about the power and danger of nostalgia as well as his work collaborating with Adam Curtis
Musicians have been faced with an impossible puzzle since March 2020: with gigs and festivals mothballed for the foreseeable future, how to maintain a profile? For Massive Attack, a solution was probably less of a reach than for many artists. After all, for the Bristolian pioneers, sound and vision have been interacting in unconventional ways for decades.
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Continue reading...Radical rewirings and weird new realms – reinterpretations of old classics can give us hope for the future, says the film-maker
Much of modern culture has become like an ageing ghost that constantly haunts us and refuses to allow us to move on into the future. It is extraordinary that we now still listen to music from bands in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Beatles. It is the equivalent of people in the 1960s still dancing to music from the 1890s. One of the most powerful symbols of this frozen culture is the cover version – a symptom of a static world where people constantly rework the material of the past. Just as they do in sampling, and with people constantly reusing and re-editing archive film from the past. But every now and then, people do covers of songs that break out to create something genuinely new. They show that invention is still possible – and that gives you hope we might move on from this static moment in time.
Continue reading...As her debut album turns 50, we select the best work by a songwriter with a standout talent for finely drawn character studies
As an album, Hello Big Man was all over the place: reggae tracks recorded with Sly & Robbie, very early 80s world music experiments, slick MOR. Its one undisputed gem is It Happens Every Day, a careworn song about divorce, set to music that, beneath the 80s veneer, is like a lush late-50s ballad.
Continue reading...The singer and actor has had a productive pandemic – and gone viral from her kitchen. She talks about escaping her childhood, sexual harassment and persuading her rock star husband to dress in a tutu
Of all the celebrity offerings that have come out of the pandemic, the gloriously weird videos made by Toyah Willcox and her husband, Robert Fripp, are surely the most compelling. It is possible, within each short clip, to cycle through every feeling from wanting to cover your eyes while being unable to look away, to the dawning realisation you may be watching a profound piece of performance art. Mostly, it is impossible not to laugh. There they are in their cosy Worcestershire kitchen, perhaps with the dishwasher open in the background, with Willcox, accessorised with mouse ears, tap-dancing, bouncing off the Aga. Both dressed in black tutus at the end of their garden, the pair dance across the screen to music from Swan Lake. Fripp lies on the floor of the hallway, while Willcox – dressed in red PVC and devil horns – performs the Kinks’ You Really Got Me on the stairs. It’s joyous.
Willcox has been uploading their Sunday Lockdown Lunch videos since April last year; they also do a weekly agony aunt session, and Willcox does her own Q&A, talking about her life and long career as an actor, pop star and general cultural fixture for the past 40 years. It started, she says, as a way to occupy Fripp, the musician and founder of the prog rock band King Crimson. “Here I am in this house with this 74-year-old husband who I really don’t want to live without,” she says. “He was withdrawing, so I thought: ‘I’m going to teach him to dance.’ And it became a challenge.” They posted a video, and it took off. “It was: ‘Wow, I’ve never experienced the power of that connection.’”
Continue reading...With 12 Grammy nominations since her 2008 debut, the US singer is already a genre leader – and her new EP seals her reputation with a cinematic portrait of six women commodified by their beauty
“Did you see the message from Issa?” Jazmine Sullivan asks me excitedly. For all the acclaim and Grammy recognition the R&B star has accrued over the past 12 years, she still reacts to starry praise with joy and disbelief. A hopeful tweet suggesting Insecure’s Issa Rae turn Sullivan’s latest EP into a short film elicited a positive response, and later in the week, the pattern repeats with Mary J Blige. “Wait … wtf?! I’m so happy man!” Sullivan tweeted after the soul legend signals her eagerness for a guest spot.
To onlookers, though, there was little surprise about the Philadelphia native – also picked to sing the national anthem at this year’s Super Bowl – being treated as one of the modern greats of R&B. When Sullivan arrived on the music scene in 2008, a much-touted 21-year-old protege of Missy Elliott, her USP was familiar in the genre: a vocal force of nature, honed in church, who drew on personal experience to deliver raw soul in the lineage of Blige (with whom she toured in 2010) and Keyshia Cole.
Continue reading...Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono’s song denouncing “looting” in Mnangagwa’s regime has inspired a host of follow up versions
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono has taken his fight against corruption to the ears of thousands around the world via reggae with a new song entitled “Dem Loot”.
The reporter, who has been arrested three times in six months for his work challenging the current government, released a short video on Twitter singing against what he says is an endemic rot in Zimbabwe – and it has sparked a flurry of follow up versions under the hashtag #demlootchallenge.
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