![Album Review: Welcome to Zamrock! Volume 1 & 2 [Now-Again Records; June 2017]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/welcome-zamrock-335x335.jpg)
As Gleb Anfilov put it, our planet has always been a giant atelier of music creation, of instruments, songs, and also an immense concert hall. The history of West African music and of mid-20th-century rock in particular, as is the subject of this review, is of this planet and both...
All posts by Adolf Alzuphar
The Republic of Haiti was founded as a utopian ideal. Haiti meaning ‘country of mountains’, its name in homage to the native Taíno who developed the revolutionary culture alongside maroon slaves that led to the victory that was the Haitian Revolution. Haiti’s liberator and first emperor Jacques 1er did not...
![Album Review: Calexico – The Thread That Keeps Us [City Slang/Anti- Records; January 2018]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/calexico-335x335.jpg)
Chicano / Mexican rock today is a long list of formidable bands which have produced memorable albums and songs. Calexico, a band from Arizona on LA’s Anti- Records, is such a band – one that has outed itself from the shadow of typical mass-rock to sculpt marvel works. Their new...
![Album Review: Chris Dave and The Drumhedz – s/t [Blue Note Records; January 2018]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/chris-dave-and-the-drumhedz-335x335.jpg)
The line “mi chiedi dove trovo i miei occhi chiari” from the poem ‘Ricordami Cosi’ composed by Italian poet Alfonso Gatto and translated by Jack Hirschman as, “you ask me where I got those clear eyes of mine”, manifests after several listens of this album; clarity is what I hear...
![Album Review: Femi & The Inrhythms – Pressure to Pleasure [Joyful Noise Recordings, January 2018]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/capture-335x293.jpg)
With headlines around the world of famine, inequality, racism, and Donald Trump, we go the other side of life, the good side, as Femi & The Inrhythms plays to spring us forth with their studio album: Pressure to Pleasure released by Joyful Noise Production. Rhythm’s effect on humans is Kafkaesque and...
![Album Review: Sibusile Xaba – Unlearning / Open Letter to Adoniah [Mushroom Hour Half Hour]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/sibusile-335x335.jpg)
Although we are supposedly perpetually infatuated with the ‘new’ in music, we seem to fall in love with tradition, in the same way that a hummingbird chooses to nest high up, like its parents did. Pirates, and those given the opportunity to mass communicate, often lie about the human species...
![Album Review: Elida Almeida – Kebrada [Lusafrica]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/600x600bf-1-335x335.jpg)
Elida Almeida: a beautiful name of rhythm. Kebrada, Elida’s latest release, is named after the village where she grew up in Cape Verde. Elida Almeida’s Kebrada is beautiful. Whoever is the architect of Kebrada’s songs is fearless and a visionary. Welcome, folks, to song after song of a splendid blend...
Tropicália Fest began at an impromptu bus stop for yours truly, as it did for most other attendees. I parked and then boarded a free shuttle bus to one’s desire. The shuttle bus was a classic yellow school bus in my case. Sitting behind a starry-eyed couple, with whom I...
![Album Review: Gael Faye – Rythmes et Botanique [Caroline International, 4th April 2017]](https://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/810zwruwy9l._sl1181_-335x335.jpg)
Rwanda’s Gael Faye is perhaps one of the very few living rappers today with a very successful novel, published in the midst of releasing impressive rap albums. In both literature and music, he is a raconteur of straightforward tales and opinions, sure to bedazzle. With Rythmes et Botanique, he’s produced...
On Saturday November 11, Long Beach California’s Queen Mary Park will play host to a very well-curated music and taco festival, Tropicalia Fest. Los Tigres del Norte is the headlining act, a gig the Tigers deserve given how accomplished the group is. Os Mutantes will also be present and sure...
