On stage, South African pianist/vocalist Nduduzo Makhathini is less interested in playing music than in repairing the world, performing sonic rituals that nurture, heal and transform audiences and ...

The centennial of pianist, NEA Jazz Master, composer, and arranger Randy Weston is a big deal that has already begun.

Since black music didn’t start here in the United States during slavery, it makes sense for the study of the art form to reach across the Atlantic to its roots in Africa. This is what Ghana-born ...

Just before Christmas, I received in the mail a CD from Germany. Titled “Transfigured Tchaikovsky,” the recording features 16 piano transcriptions of the Russian composer’s songs for solo voice. The ...

They say that music is an international language and no matter where you’re from you know good music when you hear it. For musicians, winning coveted awards is one of the greatest acknowledgement of ...

On December 19, the first African musician ever awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award was announced. The honor goes to Fela Kuti, the Afrobeat pioneer and activist who died in 1997. He joins an ...

Duke Ellington rejected it, Charles Mingus was ambivalent about it, and Wynton Marsalis is okay with it. For many African American musicians the word “jazz” is a double-edged term, sometimes ...

Weston, who died in 2018, had a 60-year recording career, during which he lived in the U.S., Morocco and France. He was influenced by Duke Ellington's regal bearing, but Weston also had his own style.