An amazing early album from Brazilian guitar virtuoso Luiz Bonfa – originally recorded by the audiophile Cook Laboratories on a Nagra recorder – in a spare, stripped-down, "in the field" sort of style! There's an intimacy here that's missing from some of Bonfa's studio sessions from the same period – and Luiz responds wonderfully by playing some of his most intricate lines on guitar – all recorded here with amazingly precise sound. Despite the lack of a proper studio, the fidelity is superb – and honestly, the album's got a quality that ranks it with Bonfa's best records ever! Titles include "Luzes Do Rio", "Shearing", "Murder", "Variacoes Em Violao", "Seringueiro", and "Song De Orpheo". Plus, the CD features 14 bonus tracks, great remastering, and a wonderful 32 page booket! CD

... LP, Vinyl record album

A huge dip into the history of hip hop – in a set that's something of a groundbreaking effort from the folks at the Smithsonian! If we're honest, we'll tell you that we're old enough to remember a time when folks thought that hip hop was just a fad – when it was a musical style that would disappear in just a few short years. But now, all these many decades later, the form has had such an impact on American culture that the Smithsonian Institute is giving it some official sort of due – something we never would have believed back in the 80s! The package is huge – 9CDs with a whopping 129 tracks in all, and a 300 page book that supports the recordings with an insane amount of notes, photos, and all sorts of other information – alongside a track list that was put together by folks who include Questlove, 9th Wonder, Chuck D, Jeff Chang, and MC Lyte! The set is especially great on old school tracks up through the golden era hip hop years – but also moves into the 21st century too – and artists include Treacherous Three, Afrika Bambaataa, Fearless Four, Cold Crush Brothers, Herbie Hancock, Run DMC, Fatback, Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Funky Four +1, T La Rock, Schoolly D, Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, LL Cool J, Eric B & Rakim, Mantronix, Stetsasonic, Audio Two, Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte, Marley Marl, Tone Loc, Jungle Brothers, NWA, Public Enemy, Slick Rick, 3rd Bass, De La Soul, Queen Latifa, DOC, 2 Live Crew, Dr Dre, Sir Mix A Lot, Digable Planets, Positive K, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Naughty By Nature, Black Sheep, Tribe Called Quest, Geto Boys, Pharcyde, 2Pac, Warren G, Gang Starr, Notorious BIG, and many many more! CD

A really unique document of the struggle and story of Angela Davis – recorded in 1971 by ABC news, and packaged together here as kind of a sonic program by Folkways! The record works like a short news program – starting out with a statement by Angela, then moving to a narrated introduction, then a long interview conducted by Joe Walker of Muhammad Speaks. Side two continues with a panel discussion on the case, then ends with some very cool "man in the street" style interviews! Capped off with a really great cover photo of Angela too! CD

A fantastic record from Nancy Dupree – a hip poet with a mission towards raising social consciousness and increasing a sense of pride and power in the younger generation – all of which comes through very strongly in this classic Folkways Records set! The album is way more than just another album of poetry – as Nancy introduces all of her writing before reading things direct – with a voice that's very down to earth, and which, in reaction with the small audience on the recording, provides this fantastic context of the material – most of which is still amazingly relevant all these many decades later. Selections include "Self Praise", "Black Success", "Letter To Young Sisters", "Tears", and "Bulletholes". CD

A very cool record! Langston tells the story of jazz, using snippets of work from the Folkways catalog – like tunes by Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodd, Ma Rainey, Leadbelly, and others – all sewn together in a rich narrative on the history of the music, delivered with some surprising illumination by Hughes! His voice is always a treat, and even though his narration of the material is designed for an audience of newcomers to jazz, it more than held our attention throughout – and the record's got almost as much appeal as some of his own jazz poetry work. CD

A wonderful collection of work from Langston Hughes – material pulled from a handful of albums recorded for the Folkway labels in the 50s, all of which are pretty darn great and long out of print! Hughes' writings are well known – part of a rich tradition of African-American expression in the 20th Century – but his readings of his own work are equally great – performed at a level that really illuminates the text, and balances them with all the right stress and meaning that can sometimes be overlooked given the simple nature of his language. Most of the sides here feature Hughes alone, reading his work – but a few also feature bits of music too – touches of jazz or gospel that further set the scene, and point to Langston's later experiments with Charles Mingus. Titles include "Breath Of A Spiritual", "Homesick Blues", "The Weary Blues", "I Too", "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers", "Simple Prays A Prayer", "Rhythms Of The World", "The Struggle", "Youth", and "Mother to Son". CD

A really beautiful record from Ann McMillan – one of the lesser-known talents in the female legacy of electronic music – but one we'd put right up there right next to Daphne Oram for her inventive genius! The set was recorded at the legendary Princeton Center For Electronic Music – and has a great approach in which McMillan mixes together sounds from nature with some acoustic instruments – then creates a blend through creative electronics, so that air, sea, traffic, and nature sounds are combined with percussion and other elements. One song is completely created from The Gong sound sculpture by artist Frederick Kiesler; another mixes New York Harbor sounds in an amazing way; and still another reworks a variety of unusual sonic emanations from a harpsichord. Titles include "Gateway Summer Sound", "Gong Song", "Amber 75", "Syrinx", and "Episode". CD

Very righteous work from this obscure 70s poet – a contemporary to Nikki Giovanni, Camille Yarbrough, and others – but not nearly as widely recorded! The album features no instrumentation, just Sonia reading her poems – and the work itself is pretty progressive, very much in the spirit of other hip female poets of the time, although perhaps a bit more personal in some of the subject matter – especially given that the album is introduced by Sanchez as "talking about love – a black woman's love for her man, children, nation." Titles include "A Black Woman Speaks", "Listen To Big Black", "Liberation Poem", "A Needed Poem For My Salvation", "When We Come", "It's A New Day", and "To Anita". 24 tracks in all. CD

Tony Schwartz must have been one of the coolest cats working on the New York scene in the 50s – not a musician, or a singer – but instead a sound artist whose legacy was dedicated to documenting the city in a very poetic way! This album may well be Tony's masterpiece – a long tone poem love letter to New York – narrated by Tony, but filled with sounds that he captured on his travels around the city – people, ships, machines, animals, vehicles, and lots lots more – all with a keen ear for the vibrancy of the New York story at its best – the kind of true promise the city has to offer, captured here in an array of actual sounds from the postwar years! CD

An extremely righteous bit of soul jazz – originally issued in a very small pressing by Folkway Records, at a time when the label was doing some great underground recordings! The sound is loose and free – spiritually building in a manner that recalls the work of Ahmed Abdul Malik, Phil Cohran, and some of the AACM – and the album has a style that's exploratory, but never goes too far out, or loses its sense of rhythm and swing. Tracks are longish, and the core group features soprano sax and Korean reeds by Bilal Abdurahman and vibes by Ameen Nuraldeen – plus guest work on bass by James Smith, and appearances by a lot of different world percussion players. There's a nice Eastern feel to some of the tracks, and titles include "Mevlana", "Ti Ti", "Sun Flower", and "Bent El Jerusalem". CD

A wonderful early bit of psychedelia from an academic perspective – a record that features Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert – all reading from the book The Psychedelic Experience A Manual Based On The Tibetan Book Of The Dead! The album's divided up into two sections – "Going Out" and "Coming Back" – and there's a nice "scientific" feel to some of the work, especially striking given the early date! Vocals are recorded in a stark sort of way – almost dream-like at times – and there's a bit of Tibetan bells which further adds to this quality of the record. CD

Kenneth Patchen, like Kenneth Rexroth, was one of the few poets who really understood what it meant to read and write in a jazz idiom – as you'll hear on this excellent set of beatnik jazz tracks! The album features Patchen reading in a great style – angular, cynical, really working the words of his poems perfectly over backings by the Alan Neil Quartet. The poems are set to music written by George Wallington, Charlie Parker, and others – and tracks include "There's A Place", "They Won't Let You In There", "Do I Not Deal With Angels", "Not Many Kingdoms Left", "The Lonesome Boy Blues", "As I Opened The Window", and "A Sight Is Little Altered". CD

West coast Latin jazz legend John Santos digs even deeper than usual here – serving up a set of tracks that trace the roots of the Cuban descarga style, but all with some of the warmth and personality that have made his previous records so great! John's core group features the leader on percussion, Melecio Magdaluyo on saxes, John Calloway on flute and piano, Marco Diaz on trumpet and piano, Saul Sierra on bass, and David Flores on drums. But there's plenty of contributions from older Latin legends – like Jerry Gonzalez on trumpet, Orlando Maraca Valle on flute, and Orlando Torriente on vocals – part of an expanded lineup that also changes up the sound a bit too, in way that isn't strictly a recreation of the late 50s/early 60s descarga modes – but instead shows how much those roots have evolved to inform the modes of Latin jazz. Titles include "14 Mission", "Juego De Ajedrez", "Lo Tuyo No Va", "Descargarara", "Tichin", "Descarga Con Changui", and "Los Misterios". CD

An album from the 80s, but one that echoes a much older tradition of folk and blues – with a vibe that hardly fits the dated spelling of the duo's name! Serious Bizness is the team of Jaribu and Ngoma Hill – who harmonize together on some very message-oriented music, in a way that was often a bit overlooked in the generation of beatboxes and keyboards, but which has all the pride and power of acoustic sessions from the Civil Rights generation! Instrumentation is just acoustic guitar on most numbers, but Jaribu and Ngoma have a way of really making the songs ring out with a great deal of power – on titles that include "High Tech", "Southern Shame", "Down Underground In A Company Town", "Stolen Dreams", "Stop The Bosses", and "Malcolm Lives". CD

The second Folkways album from trumpeter Charles Shaw – and even more wonderful than the first! This one changes up the groove a bit – still sticking in Shaw's spiritual jazz vein at times, but also tripping things out a bit more with use of electric guitar and the ultra-cool "bag flute" – which is almost like a wah-wah sort of reed instrument, and which makes for some really funky moments! The electric touches are totally great – and mix with rougher acoustic jazz elements in ways that remind us of earlier 70s work from Luther Thomas and Joe McPhee – also both avant players who could show a funky side like this at times. Shaw plays trumpet, flugelhorn, and the bag flute – and other instrumentation includes guitar from James Greggo and Tom Lee Harris, alto from Brian Ross, tenor from Glenn Spears, bass from Ronnie Boykins, and drums from Art Blakey Jr. Titles include "Kid Zorro", "Postage Paid", "Mr Zip", "Chain Reaction", and "Melted Soul". CD