The second track to be taken from Zara McFarlane’s showstopping third album Arise, “Pride” is a tightly tuned, rhythmic waltz, matching killer jazz chops with pitch-perfect, standout vocals. Building up to a blowout crescendo, it sees Moses Boyd on drums sparring with Binker Golding’s tenor sax. This new record sees Zara’s most open-armed embrace of her British-Jamaican heritage, with this track – including a turn on the bass clarinet from Shabaka Hutchings – being part of a broader exploration into the connections between jazz and reggae.
An ode to Santería’s god of the crossroads, ‘Eleggua’ combines sacred Afro-Cuban rhythms with horns-driven, steady grooving jazz. Filmed in Daymé’s home of Havana, it sees her striking profile shot in silhouette; framed against the backdrop of her stunning city, her performance is cut-and-spliced with a dancer who – in parallel with the woman he dances around – explores the act of spiritual communication with Eleggua.
Havana Cultura Mix “The Soundclash” is released !! Twelve brilliant tracks included You Knew Before, by producer Raumsjaya with the EXCELLENT Cuban singer Dayme Arocena. Here she is live from the Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Basement :
The man with the best job in the world aka Gilles Peterson premieres Malkovich – Kenyatta :
“Almost three years after giving up his home and all his possessions to travel indefinitely, homeless traveling rapper Malkovich presents Pre-Boarding, his new mixtape mixed by DJ Spinna.
Iranian/British-blooded, Italian-born, and raised across the Middle East, Europe and Africa before moving to Los Angeles, Malkovich raps over African, Caribbean, Brazilian, Indian and Cape Verdean world music classics from Alice Coltrane, Shaan, Serge Gainsbourg, Rob, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Contonou Dahomey, Mulatu Astatqe, Augustus Pablo, Tim Maia, and Orquesta Joe Cain, as well as two compositions from L.A. producer Computer Jay.
Omni, Sum, Chris Clarke and Ali Baba Abnormal also guest on the mixtape, which Malkovich wrote during his travels through the Dominican Republic, Belize and Jamaica.
Pre-Boarding is Malkovich’s second full-length release since throwing away all his possessions to travel the world; the first being 2013’s Great Expectations, which received support from DJ Premier, The Source and the Wake Up Show.
His 2011 mixtape Ayatollah Presley – mixed by deejay/producer House Shoes – featured Dibia$e and Prince Po of Organized Konfusion, and his verse from “NOLA Redux” kicked off Gilles Peterson’s 2009 Best Of HipHop Mix.
Malkovich recently began #1BAG, a multimedia project where he finds producers across the world on Twitter, collaborates with them in their countries, and documents the experience through music, video and articles. Pre-Boarding marks “the true beginning of my career,” Malkovich says when asked about the mixtape’s title. “I always dreamed of documenting my world travels through music, and after 20 years of rapping, my dream’s my reality.”
69 Musicology 