Black Flower

Black Flower is the striking, international-sounding project of saxophonist/composer/pivotal figure/multi-instrumentalist Nathan Daems. Greatest source of inspiration is quite definitely Ethiopische jazz by Mulatu Astatke and the Afrobeat of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti. There are also echoes of Masada (see: John Zorn) as well as dub and more Eastern influences than ever.

Young-ha Kim succeeds in telling a little-known story of 1033 Korean immigrants who buy passage on the British ship Ilford to sail to Mexico, avoiding the Russo-Japanese war that claimed the Korean Empire in 1905. Asian literature is often too lyrical for me, but perhaps the translation of this work is what makes this story very believable in any language. This story is worth a read.

Solemnoire's "The Black Sea Workbook" is an intimate experience of distance and longing. Inspired by a magic summer in Varna, it conjures up the vision of a primordial world, an imagined Black Sea as it might have been millions of years ago.

"YOU DESERVED SO MUCH MORE, LITTLE FLOWER. YOU DESERVED A WAKANDA THAT CHERISHED YOU." Writer ROXANE GAY (Bad Feminst, Hunger) spins a Wakandan love story — its tenderness matched only by its brutality. You know them now as The Midnight Angels, but in this story they are just Ayo and Aneka, young women recruited to become Dora Milaje, an elite task force trained to protect the crown at all costs. What happens when your nation needs your hearts and minds, but you already gave them to each other?

Osborne artfully blends blues, funk, soul, and classic R&B to create his own distinctive synthesis of styles. Osborne's most widely available early album is 1995's Which Way to Here, recorded for OKeh/Sony; two other independent label releases from the late '90s and early 2000s may still be around for those willing to search: Live at Tipitina's appeared on Shanachie in 1998, followed by Living Room the next year. The introspective Ash Wednesday Blues was issued in early 2001. In 2002, Osborne cut his final two albums for Shanachie, the wonderfully raucous, enigmatic collaboration Bury the Hatchet with Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Mardi Gras Indian Tribe the Golden Eagles, and the blues- and Americana-drenched Break the Chain.

“EXOTICA” was an idea generated by myself, jazz legend Noel Jewkes, and piano genius, Grant Levin. I was looking for something unique, my own voice, where I could incorporate my full vocal range and theater background, my Mediterranean musical heritage, with polyrhythms and unusual scales, and my passion for jazz. One afternoon as we met for a session at my home in San Francisco, we brainstormed on ideas–Grant came up with “Slow Hot Wind”, and Noel remembered he had arranged a medley of that with Key Largo. Then Noel suggested a Ray Brown feel on “A Night in Tunisia”, and a Miles Davis chordal progression for “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, incorporating abrupt tempo changes. The ideas were bursting forth–Grant tried them out on my piano, Noel played tenor, and I sang and recorded.