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Lorin Sklamberg - the Klezmatics' lead vocalist - sang lead for several tracks on Byron's Mickey Katz album. Jerry Gonzalez is on it, too - he's not somebody I associate with having played up in the Catskills (where Latin bands used to be extremely popular), but I'm willing to bet that he's been on gigs at some of the old resorts... Also, re. jazz/klezmer clarinet crossover, wasn't Andy Statman already playing klezmer in NYC when Byron's album came out? (Err... yes. he predates Byron by quite a few years. His 1st klezmer LP came out in 1979...)

I did a search on the author - Michael Patrick Welch. He's a local musician and has written a book on NOLA. Whether that does (or does not) have anything to do with the accuracy of the article, well... I wonder what would show up via the NOLA newspapers (online) re. these issues?

Looking forward to it!

I normally hate linking to Wikipedia, but this article is very good! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_jazz And this one, titled "What is Cape Jazz?" might be helpful, I'm thinking... http://www.jazzrende...?artcl=00000029 Series titled "The Development of Jazz in South Africa" - looks very comprehensive - http://www.jazzrende...e2006062701.php More from Cape Town - on local goema music and goema + jazz - check the vid at the bottom of the page; at the end there will be links to lots of other vids - http://www.capetownmagazine.com/news/Hello-Cape-Town-tell-me-how-youre-grooving/10_22_17567

Also re. this, "coloured" people were township-ized, too... sometimes together with people who were classified as "black" under apartheid, sometimes not. One thing that the SA government did several decades back (prior to the end of apartheid) was to deliberately destroy - as in, physically demolish - neighborhoods where black and coloured people lived together and force them into other, more segregated, neighborhoods. *That* did a lot to destroy peoples' lives (and friendships) as well as their culture. And it really is varied - we don't get to hear much music from, say, the Cape Coloured community (which is how they still refer to themselves), or from black people from the Cape... but it's a different world to what's been made and played in Johannesburg, in many respects. I *have* founds some folk and pop music (other than Cape Jazz) from the Cape on emusic.com, but am blanking on names and other details right now. Will add them to this post (or to the thread) if/when I can dig them up.

Yep - he's really good! an old palm wine-style player from back in the day.

Again re. SA music, did you know that some of the members of the earliest lineups of the Fisk Jubilee Singers went to SA to teach singing, choral conducting and arranging? SA (also Zimbabwe) has a long history of its own styles of choral singing (both small and large ensembles) as well as all-male and all-female singing groups that did close harmony work (like the Manhattan Brothers and Miriam Makeba and the Skylarks). That stuff was *big* back in the 50s and 60s, even with the rise of maskanda and other styles. But I am absolutely *not* an expert on SA music, and would rather someone like the gent who runs the Matsuli Music blog (and who is currently involved in getting some real SA treasures reissued) take over from here... (I wonder if he knows about this forum?) Another thing to keep in mind is that SA doesn't have the big percussion ensembles that you find in, say, Guinea, Mali and Senegal, as well as in former British colonies like Ghana and Nigeria. (Though marimbas are big these days in Zimbabwe.) SA, Botswana, et. al. have a different aesthetic re. percussion than I've heard in most W. African music. So that makes for a big difference as well, and is, imo, one of the reasons that even the earliest SA jazz (popular) groups took to the kind of 4/4 beat that you hear in American popular music of the period (including jazz).

SA music was much more influenced by American jazz than is the case in other African countries - and I'm not talking politics here. They grabbed onto the beat and incorporated it into their own music and then spun new music out of it. And yes, I agree that some W. Africans could, did and still can play what we'd think of as "pure" jazz, but even with that, those big ensembles like Bembeya were - to my ears - playing something other than jazz. Is it jazz-influenced? yes. Is it Cuban and Nuyorican-influenced (in the use of horns, etc.)? Absolutely. Sylla produced a couple of killer "Afro-charanga" albums where he got some of his crew together with top NYC Latin (Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc.) musicians back in the 70s. If you don't have them, I think you should hunt them down, because they literally are fusion music (where African musicians play with musicians whose styles are African-derived, but definitely "diasporic") and it all works beautifully. Cuban violinist Alfredo de la Fé (who mostly played plugged-in back in those days) was one of the many luminaries who played in those sessions. The albums are titled "Afro-Charanga" (with, iirc, the numeral 2 or II for the second one). *Way* more successful aesthetically, imo, that what Ry Cooder did with the BV Social Club albums. (While I love the Cuban artists on those recordings, I don't like the way Cooder tried to graft his own musical sensibilities onto Cuban music... but that's just me.)

South Africans see their "jazz" (I mean the popular music that started back in the 50s, with groups like Father Huddlestone's Band and the Jazz Dazzlers, African Jazz Pioneers, etc.) as jazz - their own adaptation of American music. Abdullah Ibrahim comes from that - and I do think he is both a "jazz" player in the S. African sense, as well as a musician who plays "jazz" in the US/international sense as well - but it's all driven by his immersion in the S. African pop and jazz scenes of his youth, as well as Ellington, like ejp said. (I hear a lot of Ellington in his more recent work, not just his older material, but it's definitely his take on Ellington - or maybe transmutation of some aspects of Ellington is more accurate?) TMG, I have my doubts as to whether a lot of the West African bands with "jazz" in their names were/are playing jazz, though equally, I think there's a lot of jazz influence there - along with Cuban, NYC Latin pop music (from the 50s-60s onward), etc. EMI sold tons of Cuban recordings all over Africa, and I know that Francis Bebey (the late Cameroonian musician, writer, ethnomus guy) said that Cuban music was everywhere when he was young - inescapable. He is of the same generation as the original Bemebeya Jazz lineup, and the other bands you've mentioned as well. The thing is... people in Africa (and Brazil, and Puerto Rico, and...) take in influences in stride, but they end up adapting them to suit their own tastes and preferred musical styles. So I'm hesitant to want to label anything, really, though with someone like Johnny Dyani or Abdullah Ibrahim, I think you can fairly say that American jazz has had a lot of influence (since it took root in southern Africa in a way that it didn't in other parts of Africa), but still - they play it in their own way. Americans can learn from that and even imitate it, but there's no way - imo - that someone like Blueitt is *ever* going to sound like he's African-born. Though all bets are off for those who were raised in Africa, regardless of their national origins. (This is also a very interesting thing re. music from Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique - and even parts of Nigeria and Benin, because people who had been enslaved in Brazil often repatriated to those countries - there was a Brazilian section of Lagos back in the 19th century, for example, and I've read statements by Nigerian musicians re. how that community's music - which they say was quite distinct - influenced indigenous styles, even juju.)

So sorry to hear this - she was amazing. The 1995 gospel album mentioned in that obit - "No Ways Tired" - is well worth tracking down.

The thing is... there is a *lot* of Venezuelan influence in their music - looking at a map shows why. Same with Lionel Belasco. (As I'm sure you guys already know.) About half of the instruments mentioned in that video clip come from Venezuela. You can hear the melding of Brazilian and N. American styles in many early choro recordings as well, though my understanding of that is more that the Brazilians adapted what they heard to their own genres/styles, rather than the other way around. (i.e., that the N. American styles somehow transformed Brazilian music.) But then, the late 19th-early 20th c. = lots of people everywhere playing waltzes, mazurkas, polkas, etc. The Venezuelans are pretty adamant about the Venezuelan waltz being a distinct musical form, and Brazilian waltzes sound - to me, at least - distinctly Brazilian., anyway...

They sometimes had very hard-to-find titles from other countries, like Brazil. In those cases, it seemed worth it to buy (occasionally), but I didn't buy any US releases from them. I am sad to see them go, for reasons others have expressed - it's so hard for small retailers of music and books to make a go of it now, and I feel for them. (Being a former music and book retail employee myself.) My favorite record store - Melody, in D.C. - closed early this year. Truly the end of an era.

I guess I don't view Moacir's US albums as having much of anything to do with "international jet set" music. To me, that's more of a yé-yé girl-type thing, or Claudine Longet, or...

Well, there's also suinge (swing, though pronounced more like "swing-e"); musicians who are really, really good are sometimes referred to as craque(s) (pronounced "crack-ee"), which comes from the English word "crack," as in "crack shot" (at futebol). And there are lots more words like these... though there will never (I'm convinced) be a way to render balanço (Braz. Portuguese word for the kind of "swing" found in samba and other Afro-Brazilian music) into English. Banda Black Rio: I like them a lot! fwiw, I've asked a Brazilian friend - someone who's very interested in both music and language - to see if they can find out why the word "negro" is used in "ouro negro" (black gold/oil). It's an interesting question, and one that might be somewhat difficult to answer, I'm thinking... Edited to add: sure, the "negro" in the disc title is a reference to black Brazilian music and culture, but it's a pun on the term for oil, since Petrobras (Brazilian Petroleum) paid for the recording sessions, concert, etc. There are a lot of great recordings made in Brazil via corporate commissions that aren't, sadly, available to the general public, though occasionally they get reissued (albeit usually in bits and pieces). Corporations give copies to clients, etc.

Yes, but for whatever reason(s) - probably something I know nothing about - they chose "negro" for that title. I would have thought "preto" as well, since that's used to refer to skin color, or, at least, to black people. Will have to see if i can get some more info. from friends. Edited to add: I think "negro" is probably a regionalism and/or reference to where Moacir came from (Pernambuco state, in NE Brazil) ... oil was 1st discovered in Alagoas (next door to Pernambuco), as you can see in this synopsis for a film about its discovery in Brazil, titled Ouro Negro ( http://www.ouronegrofilme.com.br/sinopse.php ) I did a quick Google search and have a sneaking feeling that it might also be the name of a river up in the NE.

Re. Ouro Negro - It's all Moacir's compositions, but he did not play on any of the tracks (also true of Choros & Alegrias). It's a tribute album, and (from what a friend told me) was accompanied by a terrific live gig, with Moacir and his wife in attendance. I'm very glad that he got at least some of the recognition he deserved before he died. As for the title, Ouro Negro (black gold) is something of a play on words. A lot of large corporations in Brazil sponsor recordings and concert series, and in this case, the sponsor was Petrobras. (Big Brazilian oil/gas company.) And since Moacir was black and drew on a lot of Afro-Brazilian musical forms in his own work, the title refers to that as well. I think his Blue Note albums are good, but not anything like as good as the Brazilian recordings he made. The musicians there didn't have to work to "get" the rhythms and overall feel, for one...

Coisas, Ouro Negro and Choros e Alegrias (the latter two on Adventure Music) are the discs to get. There admittedly isn't much in English, but I'm wondering if you've checked Chris McGowan & Ricardo Pessanha's book The Brazilian Sound? I think that's one of the best English-language sources - brief, but succinct, too. Moacir had a big influence in Brazil as both a composer and arranger, and my hunch is that there are bari sax players down there who took up the instrument because of him. Per McGowan and Pessanha, more than a few N. American arrangers were informally tutored by him.

I'm in - download, please.

I guess everyone's attention span was shorter back when 78s were the only recordings available. ; )

All the best on the move!

I really like what I've heard of William's music - he has so many projects going, it's not funny. (fwiw, trombone is big in certain kinds of samba as well.) Enjoy!

I have no idea, but William could probably tell you!

I think William Cepeda's work is right up your alley - Afro-Puerto Rican music. Zenon can be tough, I admit, but his playing is (imo) beautiful, and I love the tone he gets from the alto. There are a lot of live recordings for streaming/download on his site (some might be more to your taste), plus the extensive liner notes (not included with the disc) that he wrote for his 1st CD are there, too. they might be really interesting to you, in terms of his descriptions of the different folkloric forms that he's using, and their history. Here's a nice Cepeda vid - the music all comes from his home village, Loiza. (The familia Cepeda are very well-known as keepers of the Afro-Rican flame, as are another family from Loiza, the Ayalas.)

I really love a lot of Fania releases from the 70s... but Miguel Zenon is doing something different; he plays bomba and plena (which you've likely heard), but also uses other kinds of folkloric music that's not all that well known outside of PR. Same for trombonist William Cepeda, who grew up surrounded by folkloric music.

I think Latin American societies are very different than ours - and not just because of the amount of poverty, etc. Music simply is more integrated into daily life... it's nothing to do with gadgets. Playing an instrument well is very important and I've seen plenty of S. American immigrant parents who were extremely gung-ho about having their kids take music lessons - even people who really couldn't afford it. About samba, etc.: I think you will find that all the Brazilian jazz musicians (here and there) have pretty deep roots in their own popular and folkloric music. That's why I made the suggestion per getting into samba, etc. - that's where you'll get the feeling for the music, I'm thinking. I could make similar comparisons with people like alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon, who writes and plays a lot of pieces that are based in Puerto Rican folkloric music. It really helps to hear what he's drawing on.