Thank God for Brazil, that land, full of artists who believe in there being splendour in their differences, producing music that is the stuff of mythology. First came samba, then samba grew into bossa nova, samba cancao, tropicalia, samba torta, add a hip-hop flavour, and we start to get an...
All posts by Adolf Alzuphar
![Album Review: Sweet As Broken Dates [Ostinato Records, 25th August 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/a0375294703_10-335x336.jpg)
It was a time of hip “big band” music, thanks to the ingenuity of New Orleans, forever socialized by life once upon a time in Faubourg Treme. The French language was an ideal for all urbanites around the world, as was clean urbanism and a society of gestures. It was...
![Album Review: Oddisee – The Iceberg [Mello Music Group, 24th February 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/a2735827702_10-335x335.jpg)
Welcome to Oddisee’s The Iceberg, where the obvious is not a third of what is not obvious: Look under cold water and you will encounter miles of commentary, innuendos, etc. His album is pleasantly loud but lacks in the originality of big-budget hip-hop, perhaps because he didn’t have the money...
![Album Review: Brother Ali – All The Beauty In this Whole Life [Rhymesayers Entertainment, 5th May 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/a3157084551_10-335x335.jpg)
Have you ever seen The Battle of Algiers? Released in 1966, it’s a great movie about war waged by Algerian freedom fighters, the FLN, against their colonizers, the French. The Casbah, a traditional Algerian quarter, was where the FLN was headquartered. In the film, the Casbah plays host to a...
![Album Review: Les Amazones d’Afrique – République Amazone [Real World Records, 10th March 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/les-amazones-dafrique-335x335.jpg)
République Amazone, is a work, crafted by a supergroup of ten divas of African music – Les Amazones d’Afrique, the most well known of them being Beninese international superstar Angelique Kidjo. The album, lively from beginning to end, is primarily concerned with melding rhythm, elegance, and a message against the...
Tamikrest always play pretty cool, eclectic music, with intricate layers of artistry. They blend rock and native music, native that is to West Africa. Their most recent album Kidal (released in March by Glitterbeat) is as cool as their music has ever been: a unique blend of poetry and instrumentals rocking out...
![Album Review: Boogat – Neo-Reconquista [Maisonette Music, 5th May 2015 / 28th March 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/boogat2-335x335.jpg)
Straight out of Canada is Neo-Reconquista, an album (recently re-released in Europe) of Spanish-language big band hip-hop, all rap to the tune of simplistic but well executed instrument playing. Boogat is the MCs name, and protest (but also orchestra music) mostly the game, produced to feel infinitely liberating, music for...
![Album Review: Inna de Yard – The Soul of Jamaica [Chapter Two Records, 10th March 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/163755-335x335.jpg)
Reggae was born as an attempt at offering a mass of people tired of pretending to be a rational, liberal, colonial society, a new direction for feeling and human relations and it provided the cement for a new socios (partnership.) Inna de Yard (inside of the yard,) made of reggae...
![Interview: Las Cafeteras [April 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/cafeteras-final-357-copy-1024x683-335x223.jpg)
There is a time proven bond between music and reincarnation, of birth and rebirth, and of historical ancestry (Aztec soldiers, for example; who died in battle, were thought to be reincarnated into hummingbirds.) With jarana, requinto jarocho, zapateado, tarima, quijada, and several other instruments, Las Cafeteras, a band of six,...
![Album Review: Residente – s/t [Sony Music Latin, 31st March 2017]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/residente_cover_final_bleed-335x343.jpg)
I am writing this review at the Santa Monica Pier in LA, surrounded by sea, sand, a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., street singers of oldies, families, skaters; plunged in living a visually and sonically loud setting. I’ve chosen to pick a shade and to live it until I leave. Others...