I am a sucker for Malian singers. I have been ever since I made a couple of films there at the end of the 1980s. According to ancient tradition, the jalis, and other singers have a mission: to open the hearts of those who hear them, and to fill them with healing and courage. Thirty years on, Rokia Koné keeps the flame going and touches me in the same way. Her first solo album, the highpoint of the year for me is, a collaboration with US producer Jacknife Lee, who brings to the combination exquisite taste and a profound complicity with West African soul.
When local filmmaker Steven Bognar captured Steve Schwerner doing his WYSO jazz show in 2007 it was just a year before Steve and his wife Nancy left Yellow Springs and moved to Brooklyn. Watch the film now.
The man who turned bebop upside down with Ornette Coleman went on to work with artists from Sonny Rollins to Ian Dury – and the London jazz festival is set to show he’s still inspiring
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Reverend Gary Davis (1896-1972), guitar virtuoso and folk-blues giant, moved from Durham, N.C. to NYC, where he struggled for years as a blind street singer and storefront preacher. An instructor at Brownie McGhee’s Harlem-based folk music school, Davis served as a mentor to a generation of acoustic players, including Happy Traum, Eric von Schmidt, Patrick Sky, David Bromberg and Bob Dylan.