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Xhosa Cole

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3
Album Review

Balimaya Project: When The Dust Settles

Read "When The Dust Settles" reviewed by Chris May


Formed in 2019 by London-based drummer and percussionist Yahael Camara Onono, the sixteen-piece Balimaya Project blends traditional West African Mandé music with modal jazz and other sounds out of modern Black London. The ensemble's closest comparator, albeit at some remove, is the veteran Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab who, in the 1980s, were hugely popular at home and abroad. But Baobab's repertoire, although it included Mandé folk music, was based chiefly on the Wolof tradition. There is more ...

6
Radio & Podcasts

Xhosa Cole, Lakecia Benjamin, J.D.Hive, Jason Yaeger & More New Releases

Read "Xhosa Cole, Lakecia Benjamin, J.D.Hive, Jason Yaeger & More New Releases" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


A playlist built around the work of impressive emerging saxophonists (Lakecia Benjamin, Xhosa Cole, Jason Marshall, and Alex Hitchcock), and guitarists (Ant Law and David Doruzka). Together with a tribute to Kurt Vonnegut, the reissue of an Acid Jazz classic, and much more, this is an hour of music that should keep you happy and full engaged.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Mother Earth “Stoned Woman" Stoned Woman ...

11
Album Review

Xhosa Cole: Ibeji

Read "Ibeji" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


Few places on the global jazz scene are enjoying the enthusiastic resurgence of the genre more than the UK. Names that are becoming more familiar—Binker Golding, Nubya Garcia, Idris Rahman, Shabaka Hutchings and others—have triggered something of a youth movement. Emerging in that group is yet another top-notch saxophonist, Xhosa Cole. Cole's sophomore release, Ibeji is full of terrific music, wrapped in a missed opportunity. Ibeji takes its name from the Yoruba religion, and features six percussionists individually ...

8
Album Review

Xhosa Cole: K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us

Read "K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us" reviewed by Chris May


When tenor saxophonist Xhosa Cole won the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year prize in 2018, Britain was introduced to a young player with formidable technique and a solid grasp of the post-John Coltrane African American tradition. Cole was then little known outside Birmingham, his hometown in England's Midlands, and he had developed independently of London's alternative jazz scene. His classic as opposed to radical aesthetic brought a refreshing vibe. So too did that of saxophonist Alex Clarke, a ...

3
Album Review

Rachel Musson: I Went This Way

Read "I Went This Way" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Let's agree that, by a consensus of one, Debbie Sanders recital of saxophonist Rachel Musson's thought-through and through-read play-by- metaphoric-play/lecture on improvisation gets annoying as all hell so quickly that one may find oneself searching madly for a bonus instrumental version. But the music on saxophonist Musson's I Went This Way is an ambitious, teasingly ambiguous album, all shift, riddle, and hijinks. And that's a really good thing because it takes a lot for anyone to be so sure of ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Ibeji

Self Produced
2022

buy

K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us

Stoney Lane Records
2021

buy

I Went This Way

577 Records
2020

buy

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