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djscuffs · 1 year

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New Mix! Live at Cabana Pool Bar, Summer 2023. 2 hours of Dance, Pop, House, Baile Funk, Jersey Club, and more mixed by DJ SCUFFS. Featuring music from Doja Cat, Rihanna, Avicii, Jengi, Central Cee, and more!

Playlist

Barbatuques – Baianá – DJ Larry-T Remix Diplo, Charli Xcx, Herve Pagez – Spicy Jamelia – Superstar – Stavros Martina & Kevin D Remix Nelly – Hot In Herre – Da Phonk vs Lules & Naken Remix Doja Cat – Woman Doja Cat – Woman ft. Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, Dua Lipa, Missy Elliott (Remix) Timbaland ft. Keri Hilson & D.O.E. – The Way I Are – Stavros Martina & Kevin D Remix Bell Biv DeVoe – Poison – Bastian Bell Remix Timbaland ft. Justin Timberlake & Nelly Furtado – Give It To Me – Le Boeuf Remix ACRAZE – Do It To It FT Cherish Dillon Francis – Goodies Kanye West – Mercy – FOMO Remix Bruno Mars vs. Timmy Trumpet & Kastra – Uptown Funk (HMC 2019 Bootleg) Rihanna – Rude Boy (AANSE Remix) Jain – Makeba – Jerry Wallis Remix Shenseea & Megan Thee Stallion – Lick – Anthem Kingz Finer Things Edit Crystal Waters – Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless) – Anthem Kingz Don’t Stop Moving Edit Jorja Smith – Little Things x Gypsy Woman (L BEATS MASHUP) David Guetta/Kid Cudi – Memories (feat. Kid Cudi) – 2021 Remix Avicii – Levels – RICHIE ROZEX Remix Daft Punk – One More Time – Lambue, Guztav & Siëma Remix Tag Team – Whoomp! There It Is – DJ Serg Remix LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem – Tony B & Vocalteknix Remix Eve ft. Gwen Stefani – Let Me Blow Ya Mind – Anthem Kingz Work My Body Edit Central Cee – Doja – Vunzige Deuntjes SoundSystem Remix LMFAO – Sexy And I Know It – Richastic Remix Barbatuques – Baianá – Rogerson Remix Jengi – Bel Mercy Rihanna – Rude Boy (Klean Remix) Nina Sky x CHAMOS – Move Ya Body Shenseea & Megan Thee Stallion – Lick – ETX Coolie Dance Riddim Edit Bob Sinclar ft. Big Ali – Rock This Party (Everybody Dance Now) – MIKIS & ZING Remix Richastic – The Roof Is On Fire – Tall Boys Clap Intro Don Omar ft. Lucenzo – Danza Kuduro – Kevin D & Sven & Rolf Remix Farruko – Pepas (Smoothies Baile Funk Remix) Pitbull – Give Me Everything (BeatBreaker ‘Barranquilla’ Banger) Mark Ronson – Uptown Funk FT BRUNO MARS (Club Breakerz x Medy Landia Mambo Edit) DJ Katch – Banga Black Eyed Peas – My Humps – Stavros Martina & Kevin D Remix Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell – Blurred Lines – Stavros Martina & Kevin D Remix Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris – We Found Love – DSM League Remix Delirious & Alex K ft. Max-A-Million – Sexual Healing – Anthem Kingz Closer Edit Koffee – Toast (262 Remix) James Hype/Miggy Dela Rosa/Oliver Heldens – Ferrari – Oliver Heldens Remix Axwell Λ Ingrosso – More Than You Know (Extended Mix) Avicii – Levels – DJ Serg Remix Technotronic – Pump Up The Jam – Sico Vox Remix Tag Team – Whoomp! There It Is – Lincoln Baio Money Edit Salt-N-Pepa x Megan Thee Stallion – Push It Flamin Hottie (Jonney Miles Segue) City Girls – Twerkulator – MarkCutz Remix Megan Thee Stallion – Thot Shit – DJ Serg Sniper Move Shake Drop Edit Rihanna – Only Girl (In The World) – Stavros Martina & Kevin D Remix Rihanna – Don’t Stop The Music – Trayze Carnival Remix Taio Cruz – Dynamite – ZIGGY & Replay M Remix Flo Rida ft. Sesman – Low – Richastic Remix DJ Crell/Silez – Do it To it – Baile Funk Remix J Balvin & Skrillex – In Da Getto Barbatuques – Baianà – Jack Back Remix Steve Aoki Daddy Yankee Play-N-Skillz and Elvis Crespo – Azukita (CloudNine Intro Edit) Deorro – Bailar (Afro Bros Bootleg) Steve Aoki & Willy William ft. Sean Paul, El Alfa – Mambo Jengi – Bel Mercy – Richtanner Remix Wiley & Sean Paul & Stefflon Don feat. Idris Elba – Wale – Boasty (Grandtheft x Wuki Dub) Rihanna – Don’t Stop The Music – Richastic Remix

#mix #cabana pool bar #toronto #dj scuffs #baile funk #house #dance #music #dj #rihanna #central cee #doja cat #SoundCloud

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xolta · 2 years

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anime recommendations list

Ted's Big ass anime recommendation list

(probably will update when i remember more) Tv series/ovas: Ghost in the shell stand alone complex(mystery cyber punk/ political thriller/ techno babel simualtior) Trigun(Space western) FLCL(Coming of age/ wacky mind fuckery) Panty and stocking with gaterbelt(comdey) Kill la Kill(action) Fist of the north star(action) Gin Sliver fang(action/ DOGS) Hunter x hunter(adventure/ never ending series) Cowboy bebop (space adventure/sadness) Space Dandy(comedy) Jojo's bizarre adventure(depends on the part okay) Revolutionary Girl Utena (face slaping action/drama) The Rose of Versailles( Drama) Blood plus(vampire bullshit) Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac(action) Tiger Mask(wrestling) Ultimate muscle (wrestling) Lupin III(adventure/comdey) Neo Human Casshan(super hero) Charge men ken(Trash fire/ master class in shitty anime) Getter Robo(mecha) G Gundam(mecha) Yatterman(super hero) Cyborg 009 *The 2000s version i remember more(super hero) Gigantor(mecha) space pirate cobra/Space Cobra(space adventure) Armored Trooper Votoms(mecha) Kinnikuman(comdey/superhero/ wrestling) Golgo 13(manly spy action) Dragonball and dragon ball z(action) Sherlock Hound(furry comdey mystery) Bestars(Furry bullshit) Dirty Pair(space adventure) MD Geist (action) Wanna-Be's(female wrestling/ trash but fun trash) Kaiba(mind fuck/mystery) Ultraman USA(super hero/kaiju fighting) inuyasha( romance drama/rumikos wild ride) ranma 1/2(romance drama) Mad★Bull 34(fun trash) Shin Chan(comdey) Dragon half(comdey/fansty)

Dirty pair flash(scifi action) Iria: Zeiram The Animation(scifi action) Future GPX Cyber Formula Zero(future racing) Slayers(comdey fantasy) Card captor sakura (magical girl) xxxholic(drama) speed racer/mach no go go(racing/fun trash) Berserk(dark fantasy) Record of Lodoss War(fanstay) Steam Detectives(steam punk/mystery) Great Teacher Onizuka(drama/comdey) The Super Milk-Chan Show(comdey) Pokemon seasons 1-4(adventure/monster collecting) Big O (mecha/bullshit ending) Digimon season 1 (monster iskeai) RahXephon(mecha/mind fuckery) Wolf's Rain(drama mystery/ bullshit ending) Fullmetal Alchemist and brother hood(action) F-Zero: GP Legend(future racing/action adventure) Paranoia Agent(mystery/mind fuckery)

Eureka Seven(mecha) Akagi(thrilling drama) Gurren Lagann(mecha/badass) Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor(thrilling drama/) Afro samuri(action) Hellsing and hellsing ultimate(vampire tiddy sim/fun trash) Spice and Wolf(romance/drama/economics 101) Soul Eater(action) Birdy the Mighty: Decode (super hero) Puella Magi Madoka Magica(magical girl/sadness/magical girl Valhalla ) Tiger & Bunny(super hero/dilfs) Inferno cop(comdey/ stupidity) Love, Chunibyo, & Other Delusions(romance/comdey) Parasyte(action horror) My Love Story!!(romance/comdey) SHIMONETA(comdey/dirty jokes) KonoSuba(iskeai parody) Mob Psycho 100(action/supernatural) Yuri!!! on Ice(sports/romance) Made in Abyss*i only seen season 1(adventure/child endangerment) Megalo Box(sports) Banana Fish(crime drama) SSSS.Gridman(kaiju fighting super hero) Dororo 2019 version(action) Ranking of Kings(fantasy adventure/drama)

Movies: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind(fantasy adventure) Locke the Superman(super hero) Nora & twinkel rock nora( trash fires/ master class in shitty anime) Ghost in the shell(cyberpunk) Vampire Hunter D(action horror/vampire bullshit) Castle in the Sky(fantasy adventure) Guyver: Out of Control(super hero) Black Magic M-66(action) Grave of the Fireflies(drama/ why am i crying so much em up) Akira(scifi action) The Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor(super hero) Kiki's Delivery Service(drama) Only Yesterday(drama/romance)

Princess Mononoke(Drama)

Howl's Moving Castle(Drama)

Spirited Away(drama)

Pom poko(comdey)

Perfect Blue(Mystery thriller)

Paprika(Thriller)

Princess Mononoke(Drama) Howl's Moving Castle(Drama) Spirited Away(drama) Pom poko(comdey) Perfect Blue(Mystery thriller) Paprika(Thriller) The Girl Who Leapt Through Time(sicfi/drama) Redline(racing) Little Witch Academia (fantasy) Marry and the witches flower(fantasy) Promare (action) Belle(musical/drama)

#anime #series recommendations

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parkerbombshell · 2 years

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aagdolla · 4 years

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#aagcurlyhair #nyc #newyork #street style #curly hair #aagdolla photography #aagdollaheadshot #curls #curlz #street portrait #Afro Punk 2019

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elg1n · 5 years

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marcmystyle · 5 years

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Day 1

#afro punk #afro punk 2019

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coutureicons · 5 years

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portraits at afropunk by braylendion

#like/reblog if you save #like/reblog if using #icons #braylen dion #model icons #site model icons #models of color #black models #site models #photography #portraits #afropunk 2019 #afropunk atlanta #afropunk #afro punk #fave #underrated

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kounterclockwise · 4 years

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Stream all 7 Kounterclockwise albums now on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/7pyCrXcG8kLgAQ2zktYQ6N Plus be on the lookout for 4 NEW Kounterclockwise music projects dropping this year. 1.The Kounterclockwise EP "Live Without A Net" 2.The Kounterclockwise self titled album "Kounterclockwise"3.The Kounterclockwise Beat Tape Vol 1 "The Washing Machine" 4.The Kounterclockwise Beat Tape Vol 2 "Litter Box"Cover artwork by #jimlujan & #borixcomix Please show your support follow stream & spread the word!!!

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morgue-ndorffer13 · 5 years

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Miles at Blerdcon 2019

https://www.instagram.com/miss_morguecosplay/

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talesoftacobella · 5 years

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Rico in Paris ✨

#rico nasty #sugar trap #nasty mob #📸: kyojino #custom fit by: weirdbrain_creation #style by: kyojino #the scott edit #talesoftacobella #Afro Punk Paris 2019

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sinceileftyoublog · 3 years

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Georgia Anne Muldrow Interview: Rhythm Is A Form of Gravity

Photo by Antoinette A. Brock

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“The people keep you fresh. They keep you on your toes,” Georgia Anne Muldrow told me over the phone last month. The prolific L.A. musician, whose output ranges from experimental hip-hop to neo soul to jazz and everything in between, is releasing her fifth record in four years on Friday, and the third overall in her beats series. VWETO III (FORESEEN + Epistrophik Peach Sound) follows last year’s Mama, You Can Bet! (released under the name Jyoti), 2019′s collaboration with Dudley Perkins and VWETO II, and 2018′s acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Overload. Unlike any of the previous albums, it was put together with some “calls to action” in mind.

Thought some of the songs were around for longer, VWETO III as an entity was made last year, “over a course of time where things were changing in terms of different recording techniques I was trying,” said Muldrow, harking back to techniques and inspirations from her early years of music making. The record was also, obviously, formed during a global pandemic that caused folks to lock down, and Muldrow is conscious to giving listeners opportunities to reach out on her very active Instagram account. Each of the album’s singles have been paired with those aforementioned calls to action. “Unforgettable”, which combines 80′s-sounding synths with 90′s G-funk, calls for vocalists to submit performances to go along with Muldrow’s vocals on the song. “Mufaro’s Garden”, inspired by an illustrated folktale book called Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, asks for visual artist submissions. On the day of the album’s release, Muldrow will ask for dance submissions to “Slow Drag”, a throwback Hammond-guitar-piano ditty named after the juke joint dance of the same name. Next month, it’ll be “Action Groove”, with calls for turntable scratch ‘n’ sampling remixes from DJs. And it’s not just the singles that exemplify Muldrow’s desire to connect with listeners on a granular level. Many of the songs on VWETO III refer to or are inspired by specific eras, from the Afrofuturist jazz of “Afro AF” to the genre tribute “Boom Bap Is My Homegirl”. That the titles are clearly referential, too, like “Old Jack Swing” or “Synthmania Rock”, shows that Muldrow’s not winking and nodding or trying to fool us, earnestly inviting us to dive in.

Moreover, VWETO III is coinciding with what Muldrow’s calling the Teacherie, classes she’s trying to develop to spread knowledge of what she’s learned throughout her own career, everything from philosophy to instrumental-specific classes. Right now, from her saved Instagram story called “Teacherie!,” you can take an assessment to fill out what you’re interested in. “It helps me to see what skill levels people have and what they want to learn in the class,” Muldrow said. “I seek to continue to stay open enough to make relevant music and have relevant things to share with people.” Overall, Muldrow is the type of artist that uses online platforms the way they’d be used in an ideal world. Her use of NFTs, too, is noble; the album art by Cape Town-based Breeze Yoko is being auctioned off, with 50% of proceeds going to prison abolitionist organization Critical Resistance. Even when the offline world returns--Muldrow’s slated to play Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, September 11th--Muldrow’s created a blueprint for navigating an increasingly isolating digital world, by seeking out real connections.

Below, read my conversation with Muldrow, edited for length and clarity, as she discusses making the record, being inspired by African rhythms, the influence of Digital Underground, and why her work logically extends into prison abolition. You can also catch her tomorrow on Bandcamp Live at 8 PM CST.

Since I Left You: Why did you decide this was a good time to revisit your beats album series?

Georgia Anne Muldrow: The people love it, you know? I always like to post beats on Instagram and share my poetry or state of mind of what’s going on in the world according to my people, and provide a place of joy and uplift. The voice of the people kind of determined what songs were on there. There are some songs that nobody’s ever heard. Different ideas, something a little bit more energized.

Something for the people. It’s really great that I have direct contact with them. Some of the songs are things I like to try based on the vibes I get from their feedback. It’s great; it’s a beautiful thing for me. I’ve gone through phases where critics love me, but the voice of the people that really support your work is really cool to hear. It’s like a little focus group. I just like sharing my music with folks because it’s my way of contributing love energy to the world in a direct, immediate way.

SILY: A lot of folks are still staying home and needing that connection. You’re connecting with them but also providing a platform for them to connect with each other.

GAM: Yes. I’m way into that and seek to be expanding that in an even more literal sense with my classroom project [Teacherie], like a live webinar sort of thing, that enables folks to speak amongst themselves. A more extended form of what I do on social media. An intimate look at what’s really going on in music. They can see where my emotions end and the music begins and try to make things seamless within their own music. Teach what I’ve picked up along the way, because I won’t be here forever. Spreading the love but the knowledge, too, with the music that I share. There’s a certain quality that you can achieve if you have patience.

SILY: Did you always know you wanted to do these calls for action, like for vocalists on “Unforgettable”? And how did you decide which tracks you wanted to do them for?

GAM: It’s definitely my way of trying to promote some sort of hip hop jam in lieu of the isolation that folks are weathering...I’m really inspired by the early age of hip hop where everyone had different dances. They brought their art books to the hip hop jams. The jackets with the art on it, the MCs rapping. The breakdancing, the DJs. All of the different things in place for it to be complete. That’s part of what got me hooked on production. One night years ago, [when I first played] my stuff, and folks started to dance, it got me hooked--to make somebody move. Somebody can rap over this, somebody can dance to this or draw to this. That’s the reason for the calls to action. Opening up a hip hop jam all over the world. I hope it gains some momentum. That would be nice, for more people to put themselves out there. But I do understand we live in different times right now and people are trying to get by. I still have to post some of the artists from “Mufaro’s Garden” and these rap videos from “Unforgettable”.

SILY: You’re giving people an opportunity, even if they’re just trying to get through the day, to take a break or have a beneficial creative exercise.

GAM: Yeah. Being creative together, and togetherness. The thinking that the songs aren’t complete without dance. Lyrics are a certain kind of fulfillment of music. But the movement of the body is another one. [It] goes back to gravity. Drummers harness the power of gravity and manipulate it so things can fall at a certain time. Same thing with dance--[dancers] don’t manipulate gravity, but interact with it and create an interdependence with it. When somebody’s dancing, they come back down to the ground, and you could let that go and let gravity guide what your dance looks like. Rhythm is a form of gravity--a form of gravity engaging with life. I feel like movement is the fulfillment of all the arts. I just seek to do my part.

SILY: You mentioned being inspired by a specific early era in hip hop, and there’s a lot on here inspired by genre or era-specific trends, like the G-funk in “Unforgettable” and “Boom Bap Is My Homegirl”.

GAM: [Boom bap] is one of the things that I specialize in. It’s a home base for me. In my experience, it’s a very African point of access. A lot of the boom bap rhythms are straight from Africa. Most of them are. Off the shores of West Africa. I heard so many of them, from The Gambia, Senegal, Mali. Over there, you hear so much of it. I want to be part of that. At the same time, I might wake up and make a free jazz record. I don’t feel like a traditionalist; I just want to preserve the culture of Black music from this hemisphere. I love traditional ideas, but it’s not like I’m gonna do this one idea for the sake of staying in a lane. There’s no place that Black music hasn’t influenced, molded, shaped, nurtured.

SILY: When was the last time you were able to perform in Africa?

GAM: I believe it might have been 2017. These years have started to run together. I don’t mind it, though. Keeps me young. [laughs]

VWETO III cover art by Breeze Yoko

SILY: How did the songs on here with vocals come together, whether the ones with your singing or the ones with featured artists? Did the words or beats/melodies come first?

GAM: The beats came first except for “Shana’s Back”. Shana Jensen is my sister; she’s the mother of my niece. Every time she’d come over and I had an idea to compose songs around her, they’d end up being huge songs. She’d be like, “Bye!” [laughs] I guess she wanted something a little more understated. I’d always end up doing big Motown sounds. There’s a song on The Blackhouse called “Shana’s Groove”. It’s a like a reoccurring situation and character. It’s kind of funny at this point.

The other ones, like “Unforgettable”, I’m very much matching the vibe, the punk-funk aesthetic. Sometimes a little hook just pushes it over the edge and gets them into the mindset I was in when thinking about it. Other songs like “Love Call” I just wanted to sound like it was in an arena. Arena rock, funk, Digital Underground-inspired, all the way.

SILY: Are you a big Digital Underground fan?

GAM: I think it shows in a lot of the music I make. I don’t think I can hide it. This record has so many examples of that. I love Shock G so much. He was so bad, as a thinker, a philosopher, a community builder, artist, pianist, maestro. The “Love Call” groove, “Unforgettable”, “[Old] Jack Swing”, you can hear it. I was raised with that kind of music in my head as a child. Unashamed to be funky and make a groove have extra grease on it. That’s what distinguished our sound from other region’s sounds. Getting greasy. While still doing the boom bap and all that other stuff. For me, it was always a goal to represent where I’m from in my music in a non-traditional way. Bringing what I love about the West Coast to whatever I was working on.

Shock G lives in all of us. He brought so many different vibes. A rhythmic pocket that breathes. Somewhat right under "Atomic Dog”. It keeps you moving. It has a breath of life in it. I’m so thankful to have lived in an era where I could hear and experience his work.

SILY: How did “Ayun Vegas” come together?

GAM: Ayun is my little brother. I think I’ve known him since 2014 or ‘15. He’s quite a talent. I love his style. He’s from [New] Jersey. I love his sense of rhythmic dynamic. His use of metaphor, double entendre. I feel like he’s really a gifted poet. He can do all types of different things. He’s an amazing MC--he just released a project with Jacob Rochester called Slaps & Hugs. I’m gonna lean towards people who are creative themselves and insert themselves into everything they do.

Ayun is very secure in being different. He came out to Vegas, and I had this song. Usually, when I play leftfield stuff, MCs want that beat they can crush and not feel challenged by. This song is really old. I feel like it was made in 2016. I feel like that was the first time when somebody was willing to rap on an idea that was out of the ordinary. It’s not just in your face. It’s something different, but I want you to rap for your life on this. Something more like a movie score, where you find your character. He did it! He didn’t leave one beat behind.

He’s rhythmically gifted and quite the poet. He almost went into pro football but he chose music. He’s a very enterprising brother, doing all types of apparel. He was working in the visual artist community, in the videographer community. Any time I can showcase what it is that he got to share, I’m there. He’s not afraid to speak the truth. This verse is impressionistic. It’s like somebody is taking a really big brush and making a beautiful image, strong-arming it. It’s dope. I love it.

We did another song together on the Overload album, but it didn’t make the cut. The Japanese version of Overload has a song called “What Can We Do Now”, and it has Ambrose Akinmusire, Ayun, and me. I’d love for that to be heard stateside, because it’s definitely about what’s happening over here.

SILY: Why did you choose to have the proceeds for this record go to Critical Resistance?

GAM: I’ve always wanted my music to be a tool for the motion of people. It doesn’t stop with dance and rapping and singing and drawing. It begins with that. Where it ends up, the movement of people coming into their powers, truths that in order to have a more humane society, we are going to have to throw some of this bullshit away. The spoils of enslavement. We’ve got to get rid of those spoils so we can get to a more realistic place of folks being cognizant of the activities that they take a part in. Jails ain’t gonna help people feel like they’re part of the community. They cage people and endanger their lives and run the risk of ruining somebody’s mental, emotional, and spiritual state even if they did commit the crime they’re in there for.

There’s a sense that all crime is committed from a place of fear. Many crimes people are locked up for is just folks trying to find a way. I don’t see how more fear is going to rehabilitate. The idea that punishment leads to enlightenment. People in the public school system are taught about some of the baddest people that ever lived--mass murders. But they’re not the type of people held accountable. They’re who brought over the imprisonment systems from their failed nations.

I don’t believe in reform at all. Critical Resistance seeks to abolish prisons as we know them. I love that their resolve is so sure and bold.

Photo by Antoinette A. Brock

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trevorbarre · 3 years

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Don Cherry: “It’s Not My Music”

“It’s not my music” asserts Don Cherry, in a 1978 documentary about the man himself and his music, which was his way of contradicting the very idea of ‘owning’ music, a very Tibetan Buddhist-like idea from this most stylistically-liberated of musicians. (”How can you cling to something? Life itself is not permanent”.) I came across the film on YouTube last night, originally downloaded in October 2019, my interest in the trumpeter having been piqued by a blog about him that I posted a few weeks back (Don Cherry: Down to The Wire). It was a documentary originally made for Swedish TV, and the narration moves back and forth from the Cherry family’s converted school house in that country to the environs of New York’s Long Island.

Cherry has never especially been on of my absolute favourite musicians, but I found this film to be a fascinating introduction to his variegated career, and would recommend it to anyone new to his music or, who, like me, has sat on the fence somewhat. (Given the sheer stylistic incontinence offered here, it might be more appropriate to ask “which Don Cherry are you referring to?”) The opening salvo is a shot of Cherry playing duck calls in the woods on a carved wooden ‘duck flute’. We see shots of the Cherry family at the airport, with his son, Eagle Eye (born 1968) and his gum-chewing teenage step-daughter Neneh (born 1964) - their future successes as recording artists in their own right serve as a tribute to Don’s parenting. There are shots of his wife, Moki, working on her textiles and tapestries (one of which graces the cover of Relativity Suite). All in all, Don is presented as all round ‘family guy’, gentle and playful (’puckish’ is a word that I have seen describing his playing and his personality), but he is an articulate, trenchant and informative commentator on jazz in fifties New York and beyond. Moving to Los Angeles from Oklahoma in 1940 (like so many of his race) at the age of four, he outlines the decision to make his eventual move to New York, with the Ornette Coleman Quartet in 1959. And jazz history was made.

There is some great footage of the trumpeter playing at Ali’s Alley, in Greenwich Village, with (Rashied) Ali himself and James Blood Ulmer, which must be one of the earliest film stock of the guitarist before he found fame with Ornette (on Blood’s own Tales of Captain Black) and on Rough Trade Records (with Are You Glad to be in America?). The sound is blues-informed, and Cherry points out the importance of the blues, by playing same on his doussn’gouni, the African hand-made stringed instrument. His Afro-Indian influences are further expressed through his karnatic vocalising (south Indian in origin), and his featured chants, as well as the percussion pieces, reminded me somewhat of what Sun Ra was trying to achieve at around the same time. Ulmer’s ‘space blues’ (for want of a better expression) or ‘SoHo Funk’ (as Don describes it in the documentary) took me back to circa 1980 - does anyone remember ‘punk jazz’, which both Ulmer and Ornette got somehow caught up in with Are You Glad... and the latter’s Of Human Feelings, which emerged in that year? Thankfully, this faux-genre was soon put to rest alongside the likes of James Chance/Black and Material and the other awful No Wavers, with final coffin-nails re-hammered in, just to make sure, with such doozies as The Blue Humans, Drive Like Jehu and The Nation of Ulysses in the 90s. John Zorn’s ‘hard core Ornette tribute’ Spy Vs Spy was particularly awful. in its attention-seeking ‘transgression’.

Several American improvisers liked to play in Sweden and Denmark - Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, John Tchicai, Dexter Gordon, for example - and the contrast between the Scandinavian countryside and the streets of New York is made much of, and there is a particularly resonant (in both senses of the word) section where Don plays the pocket trumpet in the Swedish woods and fields. To me, it resembled his playing on the wonderful ‘Rawalpindi Blues’ and ‘A.I.R’ on Escalator Over the Hill, with the addition of an added avian background chorus. The school house is a NY loft transposed into, basically, a ‘hippie communal space’ (or a ‘free space’ as Don describes both his music and his home), and I was reminded of Faust’s similar communal arrangements in their Wumme ex-school dwelling. I’d recommend Bill Shoemaker’s ‘Jazz in the 70s’ and Michael C. Heller’s ‘Loft Jazz’ as accompanying texts to this film, but the sight of Eagle Eye playing a harmonium under Don’s tutelage (”it’s all in there!”) is worth the price of admission alone.

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