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- Saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who shaped the sound of contemporary jazz for over half a century, died on Thursday at age 89. His career spanned decades: He came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers; in the 1960s, he joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet and released a number of now-classic solo recordings. He then helped pioneer jazz fusion and co-founded the band Weather Report. At the start of the new millennium, he formed the Wayne Shorter Quartet, featuring a handpicked group of much younger musicians whose recordings showcased intense improvisations on Shorter compositions old and new.
- For all the millions of songs on streaming platforms, available to anyone anywhere 24/7, the NPR Music team often finds ourselves talking about the gaps in the platforms’ discographies — and a major one that has come up again and again is the work of De La Soul, the giants of “golden era” hip-hop. This week, that changed. The group’s catalog is finally available to stream, and in honor of the occasion, we asked writer, scholar and DJ Oliver Wang to write a guided tour through the group’s discography, to help new fans get familiar with the singular arc of its career and give veteran listeners a reintroduction to its most influential recordings. And writer Matthew Ritchie wrote about how it feels to listen to these albums with fresh ears — especially if you’re part of the literal generations who have never had access to the group’s music — and why De La Soul’s output still feels prescient and rejuvenating, even decades after its initial release.
- Who would have thought Curtis Mayfield would pair nicely with the hardcore subgenre powerviolence? According to Anaiah Lei — the founder, vocalist and songwriter for Zulu, whose debut record A New Tomorrow came out this week — powerviolence is a perfect conduit for classic soul samples. Zulu’s music uses carefully curated samples to acknowledge past freedom fighters, speak to moments of social protest and provide windows of hope — without sacrificing the savage riffs, disembodied screams and pummeling bass you might expect from the genre.
- In Senegal, a cultural center is creating a safe space where artists can use their platform to speak about climate change while also finding opportunities in the art and music scene. “I'm fighting the system, but I don't fight it alone,” says Babacar Niang, a hip-hop artist who founded the center in 2006.
- How do you make the expected unexpected? That’s the challenge director Edward Berger faced in his recent adaptation of the 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front. He got a substantial lift from the film's score by composer Volker Bertelmann, better known as Hauschka, who told my colleague Robin Hilton that he focused on one primary aim: He wanted his score to "destroy the film.” He explains what that means in a recent conversation on All Songs Considered.
- This week, our friends at KUTX shared a video of the long-running indie duo Quasi performing live in the station’s Studio 1A.
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The Afro-fusion singer and songwriter Omah Lay rose to prominence during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — a bittersweet and extraordinary feat, considering that clubs were closed at the time. He recently made a special trip from Nigeria to Washington, D.C., just to perform a Tiny Desk concert — and though the Tiny Desk is about as far from a club atmosphere as you can get, his performance proved how much his songs resonate even when they aren’t booming in the big speakers. Also this week: Jazz drummer Antonio Sánchez and his pals in Bad Hombre performed a set of songs that explore the rhythm of language. |
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The deep psychological themes of the now half-century-old Dark Side of the Moon |
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