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African Jazz Pioneers
The African Jazz Pioneers is a South African group that espouses the music of the 1950s, fusing big band jazz with township marabi sounds. Band leader and saxophonist Bra Ntemi Piliso, who wrote most of the Pioneers' songs, opened the field of composition to the band's younger musicians. History The background of the African Jazz Pioneers stretches back to the 1950s when jazz was in fashion and big bands enjoyed prominence in South Africa. The band was founded in the 1980s and played 1950s and 1960s South African jazz in an attempt to recreate the fun of that era's live performances. During the 1950s and 60s, Dorkay House provided a haven for South African music legends, including artists like Dollar Brand, Kippie Moeketsi, Miriam Makeba, Ntemi Edmund Piliso, Dudu Pukwana, Hugh Masekela, Wilson Silgee, Zacks Nkosi, and Jonas Gwangwa. These musicians were at the cutting edge of South Africa's music scene, blending American big band sound with traditional Majuba tempos and Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992. Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between musical genres, producing pop hit records for Lesley Gore in the early 1960s (including " It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie in the same time period. In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film '' Banning''. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film ''In Cold Blood'', making him the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Ranglin
Ernest Ranglin (born 19 June 1932) is a Jamaican guitarist and composer who established his career while working as a session guitarist and music director for various Jamaican record labels including Studio One (record label), Studio One and Island Records. Ranglin played guitar on many early ska recordings and helped create the rhythmic guitar style that defined the form. Ranglin has worked with Theophilus Beckford, Jimmy Cliff, Monty Alexander, Prince Buster, the Skatalites, Bob Marley and the Eric Deans Orchestra. He is noted for a chordal and rhythmic approach that blends jazz, mento and reggae with percussive guitar solos incorporating rhythm 'n' blues and jazz inflections.Larkin, Colin (ed.) (1998) ''The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae'', Virgin Books, , p. 235. Early life Ernest Ranglin was born in Manchester, Jamaica, Manchester, Jamaica. His family moved to Kingston, Jamaica, Kingston, where he attended the Providence Primary School, Kingston Senior School and Bodin Coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thabo Mbeki
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki KStJ (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who was the second president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress (ANC). Before that, he was deputy president under Nelson Mandela between 1994 and 1999. The son of Govan Mbeki, a renowned ANC intellectual, Mbeki has been involved in ANC politics since 1956, when he joined the ANC Youth League, and has been a member of the party's National Executive Committee since 1975. Born in the Transkei, he left South Africa aged twenty to attend university in England, and spent almost three decades in exile abroad, until the ANC was unbanned in 1990. He rose through the organisation in its information and publicity section and as Oliver Tambo's protégé, but he was also an experienced diplomat, serving as the ANC's official representative in several of its African outposts. He was an early advocate for and leader o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Ngubane
Baldwin Sipho "Ben" Ngubane (22 October 1941 – 12 July 2021) was a politician from South Africa. He held multiple positions in the post-apartheid government of the country. In particular, he was Premier of KwaZulu-Natal from 1997 to 1999 and Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology from 1994 until 31 August 1996 and from February 1999 until April 2004. Early life and career Baldwin Sipho "Ben" Ngubane was born in 1941 at Inchanga Roman Catholic Mission in Camperdown outside Pietermaritzburg in what later became KwaZulu-Natal province. After attending St Francis High School, a mission school in the Durban suburb of Marianhill, he went to the Durban Medical School at the University of Natal in Durban, where he obtained an MBChB in 1971. He subsequently obtained diplomas in Tropical Medicine in 1982 and Public Health in 1983 from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He furthermore received a master's degree of Family Medicine (M Prax Med) fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Count Basie
William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison, plunger trombonist Al Grey, and singers Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams. Biography Early life and education William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's " Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed multipl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chick Corea
Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", " 500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era. Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 27 Grammy Awards and was nominated more than 60 times. Early life and education Armando Corea was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts on June 12, 1941, to parents Anna (née Zaccone) and Armando J. Corea. He was of southern Italian descent, his father having been born to an immigrant from Albi co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone (), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop. The sixth of eight children born from a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where, despite a well received audition, she was denied admission,Liz Garbus, 2015 documentary film, ''What Happened, Miss Simone?'' which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree. To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simone" to disguise herself ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gilberto Gil
Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira (; born 26 June 1942), is a Brazilian singer-songwriter and politician, known for both his musical innovation and political activism. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Brazil's Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Gil's musical style incorporates an eclectic range of influences, including rock, Brazilian genres including samba, African music, and reggae. Gil started to play music as a child and was a teenager when he joined his first band. He began his career as a bossa nova musician and grew to write songs that reflected a focus on political awareness and social activism. He was a key figure in the Música popular brasileira and tropicália movements of the 1960s, alongside artists such as longtime collaborator Caetano Veloso. The Brazilian military regime that took power in 1964 saw both Gil and Veloso as a threat, and the two were held for nine months in 1969 before they were told to leave the country ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Youssou N'Dour
Youssou N'Dour (, wo, Yuusu Nduur; also known as Youssou Madjiguène Ndour; born 1 October 1959) is a Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, composer, occasional actor, businessman, and politician. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine described him as, "perhaps the most famous singer alive" in Senegal and much of Africa. From April 2012 to September 2013, he was Senegal's Minister of Tourism. N'Dour helped develop a style of popular Senegalese music known by all Senegambians (including the Wolof) as ''mbalax,'' a genre that has sacred origins in the Serer music njuup tradition and ndut initiation ceremonies.Sturman, Janet''The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture'' SAGE Publications (2019), p. 1926, . Retrieved 13 July 2019.Connolly, Sean, ''Senegal'', Bradt Travel Guides (2009), p. 27, (Retrieved 13 July 2019) He is the subject of the award-winning films '' Retour à Gorée, Return to Gorée'' (2007) directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud and '' Youssou N'Dour: I B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
