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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love South African Jazz

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      The country has a rich, original relationship to jazz, with American techniques layered into regional traditions and rhythms. Explore 50 years of recordings picked by musicians, poets and writers.We’ve spent five minutes each with stars like Shirley Horn, Sarah Vaughan, Max Roach and John Coltrane. We’ve traveled together to New Orleans, and to the outskirts of the avant-garde. But we haven’t jumped past the boundaries of the United States. Let’s change that.Perhaps no country outside North America has as rich, or original, a relationship to jazz music as South Africa. In the 1950s and ’60s, as the apartheid government enforced an increasingly brutal code of racial hierarchy, South African musicians, poets, artists, radical clergy and organizers found in this music a symbol of Black cosmopolitanism, interracial experimentation and free thought — all anathema to the regime.Taking the swinging bravado of American beboppers as their model, young musicians in the mixed neighborhoods of Sophiatown, Johannesburg, and District Six, Cape Town, found their own uses for the techniques of jazz, layering them into regional traditions. In Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape, the vocal tradition of isicathamiya and the steady, Zulu and Xhosa dance rhythms of the regions exerted strong influence. In Cape Town, improvisers picked up on the carnival music of the townships’ Coloured population, a mix of Malaysian, Indian, Dutch, Khoisan and Black African heritages.Many of the country’s greatest musicians wound up in exile, and figures like Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Dorothy Masuka, Johnny Dyani and Abdullah Ibrahim became de facto ambassadors for their country’s repressed population. But back home, the music continued to develop in the hands of figures like Kippie Moeketsi, Robbie Jansen and Dolly Rathebe.After apartheid crumbled — three decades ago this spring — a new wave of musicians, in the so-called “born free” generation, came to jazz with their own set of questions, curious to feel out the meaning of the tradition when its ideals were no longer illicit. Since then, South African society has continued to evolve, and so has the music. (Not covered on this list: the amapiano boom that’s swept the world of late, and that’s definitely worth another five minutes of your time.)Below you’ll find a sampling of South African recordings from the past 50 years, picked out for you by a mix of musicians, poets and scholars. You can find a playlist at the end of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Margo Guryan Died in 2021. Her Music Keeps Getting Rediscovered.

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      “Words and Music,” a new anthology, shines light on a little-known but increasingly beloved master of pop and jazz songwriting.In the late summer of 1970, Elton John arrived at Los Angeles International Airport for his debut U.S. shows and was greeted by another wildly talented piano-playing singer-songwriter: Margo Guryan. Her husband, David Rosner, worked for the company that signed John, and together they helped him get sorted in the run-up to his legendary performances at the Troubadour, kicking off a long, spectacular career.Guryan’s career proved less of a spectacle. After modest success as a jazz-pop songwriter, she recorded one album of her own, with Rosner’s encouragement. “Take a Picture” was alive with dazzling melodies, lyrical wit, strikingly intimate vocals and marvelously florid arrangements — a small masterpiece of the microgenre known as sunshine pop. But Guryan was reluctant performer who refused to tour, and her album, released in 1968, was a commercial flop, after her label barely promoted it.And yet, in a unique twist on a familiar story, the 11 songs of “Take a Picture” became a shared secret around the world; pirate pressings overseas earned her the sobriquet “The Soft Pop Queen of Japan.” In 2000 the LP was officially reissued, followed by others collecting her demo recordings — lean performances that could pass for 21st-century indie-pop. Her work caught the ears of music supervisors in TV (“Minx,” “I Think You Should Leave”), film (“Sam & Kate”) and advertising (Tag Heuer). Her demo of “Why Do I Cry” became a TikTok meme, spurring thousands of video clips by (presumably) nostalgia-loving sad girls and sad boys; at last check, the song had 23 million streams on Spotify.Guryan’s 1968 album, “Take a Picture,” was her only studio LP. via Jonathan RosnerThe apotheosis of this snowballing rediscovery — or “discovery,” as Guryan, who died in 2021, preferred to say — arrives this week with “Words and Music,” a lavish collection of recordings, many previously unreleased, from the boutique label Numero Group. The archival flush, illuminated with a historical essay by the music critic Jenn Pelly, shows the scope of Guryan’s talent to be even wider than fans have known.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Celebration of Frank London’s Music Will Be Missing One Thing: Him

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      The trumpeter, composer and bandleader who helped revitalize klezmer is battling cancer. But his work hasn’t slowed, and his longtime associates are rallying around him.Frank London is one of those musicians who somehow seems to be everywhere, participating in a bit of everything. At 66, the trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader has collaborated with everyone from Mel Tormé to LL Cool J. A founding member of the Klezmatics, a band that helped to revitalize the klezmer style during the late ’80s, London has worked for decades at a fertile crossroads where Jewish music meets downtown jazz. With two new albums involving both styles arriving imminently, he arranged to throw a party, and invited dozens of friends and colleagues to play.The celebration, happening on Monday at the Brooklyn venue Roulette, features the Klezmatics alongside three of London’s bands: Conspiracy Brass, a buoyant, funky horns-and-percussion aggregation; the Elders, a soulful, hard-swinging quintet of seasoned jazzers; and Klezmer Brass Allstars, who meld traditional Yiddish and Hasidic music with electronic beats.The only thing missing will be London himself, now hospitalized for treatment of a rare cancer he became aware of four years ago. During unrelated medical testing in 2020, doctors detected signs of myelofibrosis, a chronic leukemia characterized by a buildup of scar tissue in the bone marrow. The median survival rate for the disease is six years.“I didn’t tell anyone much about it, because this is a very weird disease,” London said during an interview before his hospitalization, in the cozy East Village apartment he shares with his wife, Tine Kindermann, an artist and musician.“Some people die within a year,” he said. “Some people live with it for 30 years. I’m in this statistical norm where it’s like, after three to five years it starts to get worse. So for the last four years, I’ve just been leading my life.”For London, that meant taking care of business. In addition to wrapping up his two new albums, “Brass Conspiracy” by Conspiracy Brass and “Spirit Stronger Than Blood” by the Elders, he delivered a Klezmer Brass Allstars album, “Chronika,” last December. He wrote music for an independent film, completed a score for a forthcoming Karin Coonrod production of “King Lear,” and recorded a commissioned set of niggunim — Jewish spiritual melodies — with a starry ensemble of fellow iconoclasts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Esperanza Spalding’s Latest Surprise, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear the jazz musician’s team-up with the Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, plus tracks from Saweetie, Omar Apollo and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding, ‘Outubro’The ever-surprising bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding persuaded the mystical and ingeniously tuneful Brazilian songwriter Milton Nascimento, 81, to collaborate on a full album that was recorded in 2023 and is due in August. Its preview single is “Outubro” (“October”), a song that Nascimento originally wrote and recorded in the 1960s. Its asymmetrical melody carries lyrics that reflect on solitude, mortality and the possibility of joy. Nascimento no longer has the pure, otherworldly vocal tone of his youth, but Spalding bolsters him, singing in Portuguese alongside him and probing the harmonies with springy bass lines. Near the end, she comes up with a leaping, scat-singing line that he eventually joins, still enjoying what his composition can inspire. JON PARELESCassandra Jenkins, ‘Delphinium Blue’The Brooklyn singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins delivers “Delphinium Blue,” the second single from her upcoming third album, “My Light, My Destroyer,” with a slow, cleareyed poise. Among glacially paced synthesizers and gentle percussion, she describes the sensory overload of working in a flower shop, and daydreaming about someone special when business is light. “I see your eyes in the delphinium, too,” she sings, as beauty blooms all around her. “I’ve become a servant to their blue.” LINDSAY ZOLADZOmar Apollo, ‘Dispose of Me’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Sanborn, Saxophonist Who Defied Pigeonholing, Dies at 78

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      He was best known as a jazz musician, but his shimmering sound was also heard on classic albums by David Bowie, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen.David Sanborn, whose fiery alto saxophone flourishes earned him six Grammy Awards, eight gold albums and a platinum one, and who established himself as a celebrity sideman, lending indelible solos to enduring rock classics like David Bowie’s “Young Americans,” died on Sunday. He was 78.He died after a long battle with prostate cancer, according to a statement on his social media channels. He had received the diagnosis in 2018 but had maintained his regular schedule of concerts until recently, with more planned for next year.The statement did not say where Mr. Sanborn died.Drawing from jazz, pop and R&B, Mr. Sanborn was highly prolific, releasing 25 albums over a six-decade career. “Hideaway” (1980), his fifth studio album, featured two instrumentals written with the singer Michael McDonald as well as “The Seduction,” written by Giorgio Moroder, which was the love theme from “American Gigolo,” the ice-cool Paul Schrader film starring Richard Gere.“Many releases by studio musicians suffer from weak compositions and overproduction, including some albums by Sanborn himself,” Tim Griggs wrote in a review of that album on the website Allmusic. In contrast, he continued, “Hideaway” had a “stripped-down, funky” quality that showed off his “passionate and distinctive saxophone sound.”Mr. Sanborn’s albums “Hearsay” (1994), “Pearls” (1995) and “Time Again” (2003) all reached No. 2 on the Billboard jazz chart.Mr. Sanborn joined Miles Davis onstage at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1986. He worked with a long list of musicians, both in and out of jazz.Keystone/ReduxWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bill Holman, Whose Arrangements Shaped West Coast Jazz, Dies at 96

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      His economical, linear writing helped define the sound of Stan Kenton’s band. He also led his own 16-piece ensemble for many decades.Bill Holman, an arranger and composer whose work with Stan Kenton, Gerry Mulligan and other jazz greats established him as a transformative figure in the cool jazz sound associated with 1950s California, died on Monday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 96.Kathryn King, his stepdaughter, announced the death.Mr. Holman’s longtime collaboration with Mr. Kenton, first as a saxophonist in his band and later as an arranger, provided the foundation of his reputation, but he also went on to arrange for Maynard Ferguson, Count Basie, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé and many others, and to lead his own 16-piece ensemble.He won three Grammy Awards — for his arrangements of “Take the A Train” (1988) for Doc Severinsen’s band and “Straight, No Chaser” (1998) for his own, and for his original composition “A View From the Side” (1996) — and contributed compositions and arrangements to seven other Grammy-winning records, including Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” (1991). He received a total of 16 Grammy nominations.Mr. Holman was known for his economical, linear arrangements, which used elegant counterpoint and dissonance to enliven both old standards and his own works. Reared on the big bands of the 1930s and ’40s, he helped Mr. Kenton and others from that era make the transition to a more energetic sound in the postwar years.He was already an innovative arranger when he was in his 20s, creating new avenues that jazz would pursue over the following decades. And yet, while he was often imitated, his unique style remained easily recognizable, even on pieces that he ghostwrote for other arrangers.Mr. Holman in 1999. He won three Grammy Awards, two for arrangements and one for his original composition “A View From The Side.”Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Post Malone Goes Country With Morgan Wallen, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Raveena, Willow, John Cale and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen, ‘I Had Some Help’The ever-adaptable Post Malone moves into country with this duet with Morgan Wallen. It’s jovial on the surface, with cheerful steel-guitar hooks. But it’s deeply surly at heart, as Malone and Wallen take turns lashing out at an ex who blames them after a relationship crumbles. “It ain’t like I can make this kind of mess all by myself,” they insist. “Don’t act like you ain’t helped me pull that bottle off the shelf.” Personal responsibility? Nah.Willow, ‘Big Feelings’Willow embraces her outsize emotions in the full-tilt finale of her new album, “Empathogen,” which veers from her old pop-punk into jazz and prog-rock. Her voice sails over choppy piano chords as she announces her “big feelings,” and when she sings, “Yes, I have problems, problems,” she turns “problems” into a six-syllable arpeggio. In the bridge she tells herself, “Acceptance is the key,” and eventually it sounds like she’ll make peace with those problems, or even flaunt them.Raveena, ‘Pluto’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On Andra Day’s ‘Cassandra (Cherith),’ a Soaring Voice Reaches Inward

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      After playing Billie Holiday onscreen, the singer brings jazz virtuosity to songs of her own.The tart, bluesy quaver in Andra Day’s voice has a long heritage. It bends the well-tempered notes of the European scale into idiosyncratic microtones and mocks any inflexible rhythm. It reaches back through Jazmine Sullivan, Amy Winehouse, Erykah Badu, Esther Phillips, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith and of course Billie Holiday. Day won a Golden Globe portraying Holiday in the 2021 film “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” and recorded a full album of Holiday’s repertoire. She also learned deeply from her bittersweet amalgam of vulnerability and flintiness.Throughout the history of American music, blues, jazz and soul singers have used the jazzy quaver for the subtlest nuances of emotion: for tension, playfulness, defiance, flirtatiousness, ache or just blithe ornamentation. Day deploys it all those ways, and more, on “Cassandra (Cherith),” her second album of her own songs.Her first, “Cheers to the Fall,” was released back in 2015. It displayed her agility and power in dramatic, retro-flavored tracks, and it featured a resolute ballad, “Rise Up,” that became an anthem of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Day followed “Cheers to the Fall” with a Christmas EP in 2016 that included a duet with Stevie Wonder. Since then, she has released soundtrack songs and singles and recorded some guest appearances. But “Cassandra (Cherith)” makes clear that Day has been stockpiling material; she is a writer and producer, alongside many collaborators, on all of its 16 songs.Day’s 2015 debut album had a reverberant, widescreen, retro sound. By contrast, “Cassandra (Cherith)” favors focused close-ups; it heightens details, making Day’s voice more exposed and even more daring. Throughout the album, her delivery feels questing and improvisatory. She’s so sure of her melodies that she can embellish them at any moment, stretching or rushing or wriggling them as the impulse strikes.She breezes across styles and eras. From a base in neo-soul, with hip-hop beats underpinning sinuous R&B melodies, Day also touches on jazz, Motown, jazz, bossa nova, piano rock and vintage-sounding orchestral pop. But the most important sound on Day’s album is her voice. It’s precise but uninhibited, sometimes carefree and sometimes fiercely intimate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More