Monthly Archives: April 2011

Video feature: Sven Kacirek’s (Germany) new video!!

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

A new video by Sven Kacirek! The video for ” Paper Flowers ” (from his recent released album SVEN KACIREC, THE KENYA SESSIONS) with images of the Ali Khamed Orchestra in Kenya and Sven playing at his studio in Hamburg (Germany). Cool video: sound and images match very well!

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Sven’s album is nominated for this years prestigous German “Prize of the German Record Critics’ Award“!!

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Khaira Arby: Desert Punk performed by a Grand Dame!!

Date: March 5, 2011
Venue: Bell House (Brooklyn, NY)

Concert review and photos by Stephanie Keith

Khaira Arby’s set at the Bell House in Brooklyn started as a praise song to Allah. The first line to the Koran “Bismillalla Allah il Rahman il Rahim”…..reverberated up to the rafters. Arby is paying homage to the female singers of Mali who were historically only allowed to sing religious songs.

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The Residents will never die, they are what they were!!!!!

Date: March 31, 2011
Venue: Highline Ballroom (NY)

Concert review by Jim Hoey

The Residents still baffle and riddle their audience with questions of identity: Who are these freaks? Where did they come from? How do they turn out such twisted songs? What their fans DO know for sure is that they’ve been around almost as long as the Rolling Stones or Black Sabbath, have put out over 60 albums, and they came out of some swamp or dark lair of Louisiana, before heading to San Fran in the late 60’s. The rest is just hearsay. Although they did release Meet The Residents in 1972, (a parody of Meet the Beatles more in line with Zappa or Captain Beefheart), since that time they have been popping up in different incarnations, with consistently demanding and challenging punk, gothic, and noise releases over the past 3 decades.

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Salieu Suso: a serious practitioner of an art that dates back to the earliest days of the Malian empire.

Concert review by Augusta Palmer

Every Friday night between 8 and 11 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, you can be part of a musical tradition that’s almost 1000 years old. That’s the time that Sulieu Suso plays kora every week at Le Grand Dakar, Chef Pierre Thiam’s elegant restaurant.

A native of Senegambia, Mr. Suso has been playing the kora, an instrument made from a hollow gourd fitted with a rosewood neck and with 21 strings, since he began studying with his father at age 8. Sulieu Suso is a descendent of JaliMady Walyn Suso, who is often credited with inventing the instrument, and he’s a serious practitioner of an art that dates back to the earliest days of the Malian empire.

There are few instruments that instill a sense of uplift and peace like the kora, and Mr. Suso plays it masterfully. I’d heard him play twice recently with Randy Weston, and was delighted to hear that he has a regular weekly solo gig just a few blocks from my house.

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