Noah Sparkes

The course of Brazilian popular music in the latter half of the 20th century can be broadly split into two ma…

By the summer of 1967, the US counterculture was in full swing. The anti-Vietnam War movement was gaining tra…

Following a US-backed military coup in 1964, many young artists in Brazil - disillusioned with the apolitical…

In the humid, rural environs of Mississippi, at some point between 1912 and 1923, John Lee Hooker was born to…

In a 1980 interview with the late jazz cellist Abdul Wadud, speaking on his pioneering use of the cello, Wadu…

One of the many great injustices of the climate crisis is the disproportionate effects that will be inflicted…

There is a clear absurdity at the heart of modern capitalism. With an increasingly baffling level of inequali…

Saxophonist, composer, and leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Marshall Allen is now 98 years old. Nearly 30 years…

The cover of 1972's perfectly encapsulates the music and the context that surrounds it. In the photograph, tw…

Following the release of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001, the music press proclaimed the album to be the…

To listen to much contemporary jazz is to hear a confluence of different musics and cultures, all gathered un…

There is an observable trend within modern filmmaking that becomes clearer with each passing year. With few e…

Over the span of two weekends in August, the reliably great All Points East Festival returns to Victoria Park…

The Metropole Orkest's recent performance of classic South African jazz provokes some interesting questions a…

In Lagos, 1972, in the offices of Decca West Africa (DWA), an aspirational sales manager named Dave Bennett do…

From hip-hop to illbient, we trace Coltrane's huge musical footprint from 1965 By 1965, John Coltrane had mas…

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's music is a fascinating amalgam of different influences. But in order to see how th…

1957 was a big year for Blue Note Records. On top of releasing John Coltrane's first major solo outing, Blue T…

There is strikingly little written about the creators of 1975's . Jiro Inagaki and his band's legacy remains …

Jazz and gospel are close relatives. From the mid-19th century to the early-20th century, each developed from…

A retrospective on Winston "Mankunku" Ngozi's landmark album, "Yakhal' Inkomo".

Elucid has had a busy few years. Since 2018, the prolific New York rapper has released an excellent record as…

Nduduzo Makhathini is an artist with a deep commitment to a sonic exploration of ancestry, the past, and a ki…

Musicians tend to make a kind of sacrifice in the course of expanding their music to bigger, more dramatic he…