In a world of “acceptable musical nihilism”, Clinton Fearon is a citizen-musician, in the ideal sense of the word. He produces music that goes beyond expressing the sun, mountains, rooms, etc, associated with his native Jamaica (he now lives in Washington State), and instead is a troubadour, open to the...
All posts by Adolf Alzuphar
Nicola Cruz is to put it simply, a fantastic musician. In my humble opinion, his music speaks of more than just the seeking of pleasure, but to the pursuit of life. His tracks offer themselves to the human condition, that we are born and die alone, and in between, we’re...
![Daymé Arocena – Cubafonia [Brownswood Recordings, 10th March 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/dayme-arocena-cubafonia-335x335.jpg)
Caribbean societies are often subject to a certain gaze, in search of exotica. The cultural region’s best musicians are those who break with fulfilling the expectations of such a gaze, and produce music rooted in artistry. Daymé Arocena is such a musician, and with Cubafonia, invites us into the realm...
IRL’s double album, Terraforming In Analogue Space – IRL Remixes 2000 – 2015 celebrates 15 years (2000-2015) of the unique, Aztec, spiritual sound for which they are so well known. With a tunnel-like soundscape for the listener to pass through, all the while marvelling at the journey. The very best...
There is this trademark groovy, danceable, lightness to Sinkane’s songs that make them either deeply political music, in the same vein as Fela Kuti for example, or the music of a Mozart of our times, a bourgeois genius producing songs that amaze those who are both refined and style savvy....
![Album Review: Shadow – Sweet Sweet Dreams [Analog Africa, 10th December 2016]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/a1015998077_10-335x335.jpg)
Sweet Sweet Dreams begins with clarity: “we gonna have a party,” put plain and simply; five words that manifest Trinidadian Shadow’s soca, party here being both a metaphor for social and cultural prosperity, and what the world means in the everyday. There is beauty to lyrical simplicity, isn’t there? Slogans...
A reception to Fronteras, a performance by Philippe Baden Powell and Cecilia Zabala we covered at the Americas Society & Council of the Americas in New York, was held right after the show, in an adjacent room. It was a room with large windows, and two tables purposed for consumption: one...
![Album Review: Bargou 08 – Targ [Glitterbeat Records, 17th Febaruary 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/a2748431087_10-335x335.jpg)
When you think of Tunisia, nothing less than the ruins of a great civilization, those of Carthage for example, come to mind. Think of a barren valley and a village, instead, between the mountains Northwest Tunisia and its border with Algeria, when contemplating Targ, by Nidhal Yahyaoui and his band...
![Album Review: Gilles Peterson Presents Sonzeira – Tam… Tam… Tam…! Reimagined [Brownswood Recordings – July 15, 2016]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/a0234754268_10-335x335.jpg)
Tam Tam Tam Reimagined, well, reimagines a classic Brazilian music, from Jose Prates’ Tam Tam Tam, into the second volume of Gilles Peterson’s Sonzeira project (the first release was Bam Bam Bam.) The original Tam Tam Tam was an album of lively drumbeating, band playing, and singing, that sounds like...
![Review: Cecilia Zabala & Philippe Baden Powell – Fronteras @ Americas Society & Council of the Americas (New York, U.S. – 26th January 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/zabala_02-2-335x223.jpg)
Hidden away, there is an old Beaux-Arts mansion at 680 Park Ave in New York City wherein members and non-members congregate for various cultural activities. To attend, one first walks through the old mansion’s black gates, into a lobby that could be an art gallery, surrounded by very white walls....