Ammar Kalia

T he architect of the bestselling jazz album of all time, 1959’s Kind of Blue, trumpeter Miles Davis is a towering figure in the history of the genre. Possessed of a piercing tone, innate melodic sensibility and a singularly uncompromising approach on the bandstand, Davis spent his five-decade career presiding over numerous stylistic shifts: bebop to “cool” jazz, modal jazz, electronic fusion, jazz funk and even hip-hop. Always honing his ear for fresh talent, he turned his b

Toni Geitani – Wahj A rabic electronic experimentalism is thriving. In recent years, diaspora artists such as Egyptian producer Abdullah Miniawy, singer Nadah El Shazly and Lebanese singer-songwriter Mayssa Jallad have each released records that combine the Arabic musical tradition of maqam and its slippery melodies with granular electronic sound design, rumbling bass and metallic drum programming to create a dramatic new proposition. Beirut-born and Amsterdam-based composer

10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already A 40-minute suite of continuous, repetitive drumming might not sound like the most accessible music but south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar’s latest album, There Is Beauty, There Already, turns this concept of insistent rhythm into strangely alluring work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive language throughout the record’s 10 movements, channelling Steve Reich’s phasin

Between the ages of 16 and 21, the big night out wasn’t just a hobby, it was a calling. Getting together with friends, getting drunk, being blasted by music, meeting new friends in the smoking area, getting more drunk, somehow making it home eight hours later – these were things I excelled at, the precious moments where I could try to lose myself and avoid the anxiety that inevitably came with daybreak. The escapism wasn’t just selfish fun. It felt like a necessary avoidance

“We’re always trying to make the most interesting thing we can,” Doug McCombs says. “We figure if it’s interesting to us, it will probably be interesting to someone else. That’s the only thing we think about when we write and play as a group.” Since co-founding the instrumental quintet Tortoise in Chicago in 1990, McCombs and his band have attracted a slew of descriptors – “interesting” among them – for their genre-hopping, amorphous sound. Variously labelled “pioneers of pos

By turns frenetically fast and hulkingly heavy, yet somehow nimble and tender, tabla player Zakir Hussain ’s percussive sound was one of a kind. Over the course of his five-decade career, Hussain was renowned globally for his capacity to blend Indian classical tradition with jazz, electronica, folk and psychedelia.  Bestowed with the honorific of Ustad, meaning a master of his craft, Hussain collaborated with artists across genres, from West Coast psychedelic pioneers the Gra

In every coming of age story there is an awakening, a revelatory moment where our protagonist transforms from child to adult. It might be an instance of first love, first loss or fresh knowledge. For Bangladeshi British film-maker, composer and visual artist Imran Perretta , his real-life awakening was a racially motivated police stop and search when he was just 13. “It was after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, I was a kid and I was dragged into the back of a police car because of

In the room is where it happens. On an icy November night in London, drummer and producer Makaya McCraven is commanding the dark club space of KOKO, pounding muscular grooves behind his kit while bassist Junius Paul interlocks with rooted rhythm, Matt Gold provides wafting reverb-laden melodics through his guitar and trumpeter Marquis Hill punctuates with soaring harmony. Each drum-hit, note-strike and button-push is attuned to the specificity of the present moment, improvisi

“Le Trio Joubran is no longer a project about myself or my two brothers,” Adnan Joubran says. “It has become about the people of Palestine. It belongs to us all now.” Since the release of their debut album, Randana, in 2005, Palestinian brothers Le Trio Joubran have received international acclaim as the world’s first professional three-person oud ensemble, selling out New York’s Carnegie Hall and bringing their virtuosic interpretations of Arabic classical music to the United

Words are more than just a means of communication for Yasir Razak, they are a way to experience the world. As the frontman of the Arabic indie band Nabeel and a teacher of English as a second language, this thread runs through most every aspect of his life.  “There’s a unique quality to all languages and they each colour the feelings we express,”  says Razak, 35. “My parents moved from Iraq to the US when I was a kid and so I grew up speaking Iraqi Arabic at home. When I spe