By the early 1980s, artists had too much freedom to express themselves through sound. The consequences of avant-garde experimentalism were too esoteric. The fusing of jazz with rock was somehow too mainstream. No, we needed an art form that would still appeal to exactly slightly less than 1% of the market. No more no less. […]
Computer scientist Alan Kay once noted, “Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.” Despite consistently recurring alarmist narratives, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will never truly supplant humanity. While the emerging technology will present […]
Western music is built around concepts of melody and harmony – the idea that one form of sonic expression should come to the fore and the other to sit behind in support. But what if those concepts are not as important as we are led to believe? What if, instead, there is a dynamically evolving […]
Many define “jazz” as the meeting of African rhythms and European harmonies. In a sense, this narrative is accurate – if you remove the influence of the church, songs of the field, or cues from the homeland – the form would cease to exist. But, in another sense, this effort to identify broad sources subjugates […]
Michel Petrucciani exploded onto the North American consciousness in 1982 when he persuaded Charles Lloyd to come out of a self-imposed retirement. The French pianist was a sensation and quickly found himself on a New York-bound Concorde to become the first European artist signed by Bruce Lundvall to a Blue Note Records contract. The label […]
The process of mining – digging deep into the earth to find an essential material – dates back at least forty-three thousand years. However, the process was not modernized until the adoption of rail in the 1550s. Carts would accumulate the laborers’ findings and move them to the surface. Two centuries later, James Watt used […]
Far too often, people tend to compartmentalize and localize matters of concern. However, such an approach minimizes the true scale of what is before us. Only in perceiving the big picture of an issue can truly substantive and meaningful reform occur. As one example, slavery in America and its vestiges are frequently removed from the […]
[Editor’s Note: We are excited to have Anthony Dean-Harris join us again for our year-end lists. Anthony is a longtime friend to the site, a Downbeat contributor, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Nextbop back when that site was both enjoyable and relevant. He’s also a great broadcaster. After many years at KTRU in San Antonio, […]
In pieces reviewing a year past, writers often try to find a few narratives and blanketly apply them. The problem with this approach, however. While providing some coherence, such simplification completely overlooks much of what happened that year. One can posit how, through albums like Mary Halvorson’s ‘Cloudward’ or David Murray’s ‘Francesca’, avant-garde music was […]
In the late 1850s, two decades before Thomas Edison’s phonograph, French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville created the first sound recording device. In the generations since, the interrelation between recorded sound and new creation have continually been a matter of great controversy. When recorded music first emerged, many musicians became dismayed that it would end […]
