Sweet Honey in the Rock
A lesser known piece from the legendary acappella group
Billy Bragg
O.V. Wright, Deep soul specialist from Lenow, Tennessee
Frasey Ford
Ms. Ford recorded her solo record on hiatus from The Be Good Tanyas with Al Green’s band and you can tell
“Foday Musa Suso born 1953 – kora, vocals
Hamid Drake born 1955 – Percussion
Adam Rudolph born 1955 – Percussion
Joe Thomas – bass (I don’t recall whether he was with the band at this time)
Summer 1980 in a courtyard of a downtown Section 8 housing development built in the 1970’s, the Mandingo Griot Society, the first band to blend traditional African music with R & B and jazz, surprised many of the diverse community of residents with an afternoon concert.
The group leader was Foday Musa Suso, a Gambian oral historian and musician who came to Chicago in 1977. His 1985 duet album with Herbie Hancock, Village Life is a great place to witness his expertise on the kora. In 1996 he edited a book and a CD named Jali Kunda - Griots of West Africa & Beyond, on the Ellipsis Arts label that was produced by Bill Laswell. It is a journey through traditional kora music with three original meetings: kora and piano (“Spring Waterfall” by Foday Musa Suso and Philip Glass); kora and synthesizers (“Lanmbasy Dub’”, with Bill Laswell, bass, and Jeff Bova, synthesizers); kora and saxophone (“Samma”, a duet with jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders).
The kora is a twenty-one nylon or leather (cow or antelope) stringed harp lute of the Malinke people of western Africa. Eleven strings are played with the left hand and ten with the right.
For Drake and Rudolph, their careers were just getting going. In the 90s, Drake became a leading drummer in jazz and improvised music. He recorded with many well-known artists including Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock and nineteen recordings with German saxophonist Peter Brotzman.
Rudolph, called a “pioneer in world music” by the New York Times, spent 25 years playing with jazz giant Yusef Lateef.
While the band should have been playing to a standing room only audience at Mechanics Hall, the three or four dozen people who happened upon the event were moving and smiling to the infectious rhythms that were being produced”
The second lp is out from the contemporary folk supergroup, The Bonny Light Horseman. The inside of a barrel adorns its cover, I guess referencing its title, “Rolling Golden Holy.” New, old, acoustic, electric, carefully designated, paced with care by an all-star trio, captained by the next big thing who keeps staying around, the Vermont chanteuse dreamer, Anais Mitchell.
Ms. Robinson
““I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us.”
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