Tag: Music
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The Horse Did Have a Name
‘Sure you don’t want a ride?’ We’d been walking for weeks and he hadn’t said a word until now. ‘Nah, but thanks kindly.’ I wanted a ride, but it just felt weird, especially since he’d just started talking out of the blue like that. Maybe if he hadn’t done that, I could have given it…
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Post-Proximal Woman
In 2004, I was in the basement, working away on some music mix or other, putting song sets on floppy discs for later burning onto CDs, downloading from sources that will go unnamed here but that were sort of okay then. It was before we had a mad panic to move from that house, which…
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Rays
I’m still on my Pharoah Sanders kick. I’d forgotten the forlorn wailing of his horn, the grounded flexibility of his Sun Ra Orchestra, his connectedness to Mother Africa and planet, moon, star that evidences in every note. I cried when I listened to ‘Astral Traveling’ the other day; the tendrils of sound touched my inside…
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Walk On to the New Frontier
It was a morning for music in my head. I think I may have been delirious since I didn’t turn on my fan last night. I didn’t realize it until the room was starting to grow lighter that something was amiss. I had tossed and turned for a bit and after stickily making my way…
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Must Be the Music: Day Eleven
One thing that goes well with gospel music from the 1950s and 1960s is organ music. It is true: I am a fan of the pipe organ and take great pleasure in hearing one that is well-played, as they often are in churches. Robert Götzfried offers a photographic exploration of some (as it seems to…
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Must Be the Music: Day Ten
Back when jazz was my second heartbeat, gospel was likely my first. My Nana, my dad’s mom, was my caregiver before I started school. She often sent me upstairs to put a stack of records on for her. She liked it when I made a mix (I guess I was destined to be in radio…
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Must Be the Music: Day Nine
I mentioned Donald Fagen yesterday, which made me go back in time. Do you remember the library? I mean, when we had card catalogs and dusty books with moth-eaten pages and a section just for kids and storybook time and the library lady who wore her glasses on a chain and shushed everyone? The library…
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Must Be the Music: Day Eight
I think this will be the last hip-hop related post in the series. No promises, but that’s how it feels today. It seems the 1980s were quite the era for hip-hop from all over. It’s likely because that’s when television got in the mix with cable and MTV. However, I first saw the video for…
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Must Be the Music: Day Seven
Speaking of hip-hop and DJ Premier, Gang Starr became a favorite along the way as well while I was at WRSU. It was an interesting time; there weren’t many DJs of color on air outside of weekend specialty programming, so most of the world music, hip-hop, jazz, and gospel went to those shows. I did…
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Must Be the Music: Day Six
I mentioned discovering Wynton Marsalis’ other musically inclined relatives after digging into his discography. However, I came to know his brother Branford from a different path. The name Buckshot LeFonque goes back farther than the group B. Marsalis put together to Cannonball Adderly. However, as my love of hip-hop continued to fuel the vestiges of…
A New Bloom 