Wadada Leo Smith
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Wadada Leo Smith
Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith (born December 18, 1941) is an American trumpeter and composer, working primarily in the fields of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation. He was one of three finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music for ''Ten Freedom Summers'', released on May 22, 2012. Biography Smith was born in Leland, Mississippi, United States. He started out playing drums, mellophone, and French horn before he settled on the trumpet. He played in various R&B groups and, by 1967, became a member of the AACM and co-founded the Creative Construction Company, a trio with Leroy Jenkins and Anthony Braxton. In 1971, Smith formed his own label, Kabell. He also formed another band, the New Dalta Ahkri, with members including Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis and Oliver Lake. In the 1970s, Smith studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. He played again with Anthony Braxton, as well as recording with Derek Bailey's Company. In the mid-1980s, Smith became Rastafarian and began ...
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Leland, Mississippi
Leland is a city in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. It is located within the Mississippi Delta, on the banks of Deer Creek. The population was 4,481 at the 2010 census. It was once a railway town and had long been a center of cotton culture, which is still an important commodity crop in the rural area. It was once considered the second-largest city in Washington County in 1920 due to its rapid growth of residents, businesses, and schools. Since before the Civil War, farming has been the basis of the local economy. There are several privately-owned farms within and around the boundaries of the town. Mississippi State University and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintain an agriculture research station at Stoneville on Leland's outskirts. Other agricultural companies in the area are Lauren Farms BASF Stoneville Cotton, Bayer Crops Science, GreenPoint Ag, Azlin Seed Service, Corteva Agriscience™, Pettiet Agricultural Services, Inc., Nutrien ...
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Anthony Davis (composer)
Anthony Davis (born February 20, 1951) is an American pianist and composer. He incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, gospel, non-Western, African, European classical, Indonesian gamelan, and experimental music. He has played with several groups and is also professor of music at University of California, San Diego. Davis is perhaps best known for his operas; he has been called "the dean of African-American opera composers." His better known compositions include '' X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X'', which was premiered by the New York City Opera in 1986; ''Amistad'', which premiered with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997; and '' Wakonda's Dream'', which premiered at Opera Omaha in 2007. His opera '' The Central Park Five'' premiered on June 15, 2019 at the Long Beach Opera Company in California. It won him a Pulitzer Prize for Music on May 4, 2020. Biography Davis was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1951. He has a 1975 degree from Yale University, and ha ...
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Henry Kaiser (musician)
Henry Kaiser (born September 19, 1952) is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "second generation" of American free improvisers. He is married to Canadian artist Brandy Gale. He is the son of Henry J. Kaiser Jr. and the grandson of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser. Biography In 1977, Kaiser founded Metalanguage Records with Larry Ochs (Rova Saxophone Quartet) and Greg Goodman. In 1979 he recorded '' With Friends Like These'' with Fred Frith, a collaboration which continued over the next 20 years. In 1983 they recorded ''Who Needs Enemies'', and in 1987 the compilation album ''With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friend''s? They joined with fellow experimental musicians John French, and English folk-rocker Richard Thompson to form Fr ...
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Graphic Notation (music)
Graphic notation (or graphic score) is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation became popular in the 1950s, and can be used either in combination with or instead of traditional music notation.Pryer, Anthony. "Graphic Notation." ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', edited by Alison Latham. ''Oxford Music Online''. 12 April 2011 Graphic notation was influenced by contemporary visual art trends in its conception, bringing stylistic components from modern art into music. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. Other uses include pieces where an Aleatoric music, aleatoric or Indeterminacy (music), undetermined effect is desired. One of the earliest pioneers of this technique was Earle Brown, who, along with John Cage, sought to liberate performers from the constraints of notation and make them active participants in the creation ...
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Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Togo in the east.Jackson, John G. (2001) ''Introduction to African Civilizations'', Citadel Press, p. 201, . Ghana covers an area of , spanning diverse biomes that range from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests. With nearly 31 million inhabitants (according to 2021 census), Ghana is the List of African countries by population, second-most populous country in West Africa, after Nigeria. The capital and List of cities in Ghana, largest city is Accra; other major cities are Kumasi, Tamale, Ghana, Tamale, and Sekondi-Takoradi. The first permanent state in present-day Ghana was the Bono state of the 11th century. Numerous kingdoms and empires emerged over the centuries, of which the most powerful were the Kingdom of Dagbon in the north and ...
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Atenteben
The ''atenteben'' ''(atɛntɛbɛn)'' is a bamboo flute from Ghana. It is played vertically, like the European recorder, and, like the recorder, can be played diatonically as well as chromatically. Although originally used as a traditional instrument (most often in funeral processions), beginning in the 20th century it has also been used in contemporary and classical music. Several players have attained high levels of virtuosity and are able to play Western as well as African music on the instrument. The instrument originated with the Akan ethnic group of south-central Ghana, particularly in the region of the Kwahu Plateau. It was first popularized throughout the nation by the Ghanaian musicologist Ephraim Amu (1899–1995). It was also featured in the Pan-African Orchestra led by Nana Danso Abiam, and Dela Botri, a former member of the Orchestra, is among Ghana's foremost exponents of the instrument. Since 2004, Botri has combined the atenteben with hiplife music on his re ...
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Kalimba
Mbira ( ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at minimum), the right forefinger (most mbira), and sometimes the left forefinger. Musicologists classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. A modern interpretation of the instrument, the kalimba, was commercially pro ...
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Koto (musical Instrument)
The is a Japanese plucked half-tube zither instrument, and the national instrument of Japan. It is derived from the Chinese and , and similar to the Mongolian , the Korean and , the Vietnamese , the Sundanese and the Kazakhstan . Koto are roughly in length, and made from Paulownia wood (''Paulownia tomentosa'', known as ). The most common type uses 13 strings strung over movable bridges used for tuning, different pieces possibly requiring different tuning. 17-string koto are also common, and act as bass in ensembles. Koto strings are generally plucked using three fingerpicks (), worn on the first three fingers of the right hand. Names and types The character for ''koto'' is , although is often used. However, (''koto'') is the general term for all string instruments in the Japanese language,(jaKotobank koto/ref> including instruments such as the , , , , , and so on. When read as , it indicates the Chinese instrument . The term is used today in the same way. The term ...
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California Institute Of The Arts
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the visual and performing arts. It offers Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees through its six schools: Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater. The school was first envisioned by many benefactors in the early 1960s, staffed by a diverse array of professionals including Nelbert Chouinard, Walt Disney, Lulu Von Hagen, and Thornton Ladd. CalArts students develop their own work, over which they retain control and copyright, in a workshop atmosphere. History CalArts was originally formed in 1961, as a merger of the Chouinard Art Institute (founded 1921) and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (founded 1883). Both of the formerly existing institutions were goi ...
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Rastafari Movement
Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control of the movement and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as Rastafari, Rastafarians, or Rastas. Rastafari beliefs are based on a specific interpretation of the Bible. Central is a monotheistic belief in a single God, referred to as Jah, who is deemed to partially reside within each individual. Rastas accord key importance to Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia between 1930 and 1974; many regard him as the Second Coming of Jesus and Jah incarnate, while others see him as a human prophet who fully recognised Jah's presence in every individual. Rastafari is Afrocentric and focuses attention on the African diaspora, which it believes is oppressed within Western society, or "Babylon". Many Rastas call for this diaspora ...
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Company (free Improvisation Group)
Company was a collection of free improvising musicians. The concept was devised by guitarist Derek Bailey, in order to create challenging and artistically stimulating combinations of players, who might not otherwise have had an opportunity to work together. Company included a wide variety of jazz, avant-garde and modern classical musicians during its existence, including Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Tristan Honsinger, Misha Mengelberg, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Jamie Muir, Johnny Dyani, Wadada Leo Smith, Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Buckethead, and Georgie Born. “Company Weeks”, annual week-long free improvisational festivals organised by Bailey, ran from 1977 until 1994. Discography *1976: ''Company 1'' - Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Tristan Honsinger, Maarten van Altena *1976: ''Company 2'' - Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker *1976: ''Company 3'' - Derek Bailey, Han Bennink *1977: ''Company 4 ...
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Derek Bailey (guitarist)
Derek Bailey (29 January 1930 – 25 December 2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company. Career Bailey was born in Sheffield, England. A third-generation musician, he began playing guitar at the age of ten. He studied with Sheffield City organist C. H. C. Biltcliffe, an experience he disliked, and with his uncle George Wing and John Duarte. As an adult he worked as a guitarist and session musician in clubs, radio, and dance hall bands, playing with Morecambe and Wise, Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse, Kathy Kirby, and on the television program '' Oppor ...
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