Franck Biyong
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Franck Biyong
Franck Biyong (born 1973 in Cameroon) is a Cameroonian musician, bandleader and record producer. He plays the electric guitar, bass as well as percussion and keyboards. Biyong is the creator of the "Afrolectric" genre, which melds Afrobeat, jazz, and electronic funk. As of 2024, he has released 20 albums. Early life and education Franck Biyong was born in France but grew up in Gabon, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. His father went to France as a student, graduated, became an English teacher and moved his family back to West Africa. Biyong and his siblings attended the Institut National Supérieur des Arts et de l'Action Culturelle in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He originally studied piano but dropped it in favour of drums, percussion and eventually, guitar. Biyong's fondness for African-American Jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery's "Canadian Sunset" got him interested in electric guitar. At age 14 Biyong moved to England, where he started working with various bands and recording demos influenced by ...
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Alternative Rock
Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge subgenre in the United States, and the Britpop and shoegaze subgenres in the United Kingdom and Ireland. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many Arena rock, corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a Culture, cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative music. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or arena rock, commercial rock or pop. The term's original meaning was broader, referring to musicians influenced by the musical style or independent, DIY ethic, DIY ethos of late-1970s punk rock.di Perna, A ...
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Fela Kuti
Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti; 15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997) was a Nigerians, Nigerian musician and political activist. He is regarded as the principal innovator of Afrobeat, a Nigerian music genre that combines West African music with American funk and jazz. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers". AllMusic described him as "a musical and sociopolitical voice" of international significance. Kuti was the son of Nigerian women's rights activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. After early experiences abroad, he and his band Africa '70 (featuring drummer and musical director Tony Allen (musician), Tony Allen) shot to stardom in Nigeria during the 1970s, during which he was an outspoken critic and target of Nigerian military juntas of 1966–1979 and 1983–1999, Nigeria's military juntas. In 1970, he founded the Kalakuta Republic commune, which declared itsel ...
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Manu Dibango
Emmanuel N'Djoké "Manu" Dibango (12 December 1933 – 24 March 2020) was a Cameroonian musician and songwriter who played saxophone and vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. His father was a member of the Yabassi ethnic group, while his mother was a Duala. He was best known for his 1972 single " Soul Makossa". The song has been referred to as the most sampled African song in addition Dibango, himself, as the most sampled African musician in history. He died from COVID-19 on 24 March 2020. Early life Emmanuel "Manu" Dibango was born in Douala, Cameroon in 1933. His father, Michel Manfred N'Djoké Dibango, was a civil servant. Son of a farmer, he met his wife travelling by pirogue to her residence, Douala. Emmanuel's mother was a fashion designer, running her own small business. Both her ethnic group, the Douala, and his, the Yabassi, viewed this union of different ethnic groups with some disdain. Dibango had only a ...
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Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music, 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a roughly five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born into an upper-middle-class family in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis started on the trumpet in his early teens. He left to study at Juilliard School, Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, while addicted to heroin, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music under Prestige Records. After a ...
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Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all time. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 as a part of his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the institution describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music." Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires. Hendrix moved to England in late 1966, after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his ma ...
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AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Musical ensemble, bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All-Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar, and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as compact discs (CDs) replaced LP record, LPs and cassette (format), cassettes as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he res ...
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Montréal Jazz Festival
The Festival international de Jazz de Montréal is an annual jazz festival held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the world's largest jazz festival. Every year it features roughly 3,000 artists from 30-odd countries, more than 650 concerts (including 450 free outdoor performances), and welcomes over 2 million visitors (12.5% of whom are tourists) as well as 300 accredited journalists. The festival takes place at 20 different stages, which include free outdoor stages and indoor concert halls. A major part of the city's downtown core is closed to traffic for ten days, as free outdoor shows are open to the public and held on many stages at the same time, from noon until midnight. The "festival's Big Event concerts typically draw between 100,000 and 150,000 people", and can occasionally exceed 200,000. Shows are held in a wide variety of venues, from relatively small jazz clubs to the large concert halls of Place des Arts. Some ...
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SOB's
SOB's is a live world music venue and restaurant in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan. S.O.B.’s is an abbreviation of Sounds of Brazil. Larry Gold opened SOB's in June 1982 with the purpose of exposing the music of the Afro-Latino diaspora to as many people as possible. It has a standing capacity of 450, and a seating capacity of 160. Gold remains the owner of the venue. In its early days, SOB's existed on a barren stretch at the corner of Varick Street and Houston Street, just above the Houston Street subway station. The area, now known as Hudson Square, soon became trendy due to its proximity to the SoHo neighborhood. The venue's reputation began to grow with performances from Latin legends like Tito Puente, Marc Anthony, Celia Cruz and Eddie Palmieri. Brazilian artists including Seu Jorge, Jorge Ben, and Astrud Gilberto have performed at the venue, as well as more contemporary artists such as Isaac Delgado, Orquesta Aragon, Los Papines, Manolito Simonet, Sept ...
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Electronica
Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that came to prominence in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to refer to electronic music generally. History Early 1990s: Origins and UK scene The original widespread use of the term "electronica" derives from the influential English experimental techno label New Electronica, which was one of the leading forces of the early 1990s introducing and supporting dance-based electronic music oriented towards home listening rather than dance-floor play, although the word "electronica" had already begun to be associated with synthesizer generated music as early as 1983, when a "UK Electronica Festival" was first held. At that time electronica became known as "electronic listening music", also becoming more or less synonymous to ambient techno and intelligent techno, and was considered distinc ...
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AfroBeat
Afrobeat (also known as Afrofunk) is a West African music genre, fusing influences from Nigerian (such as Yoruba) and Ghanaian (such as highlife) music, with American funk, jazz, and soul influences. With a focus on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion,Grass, Randall F. "Fela AnikulaThe Art of an Afrobeat Rebel". ''The Drama Review''. MIT Press. 30: 131–148. the style was pioneered in the 1960s by Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who popularised it both within and outside Nigeria. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers." Distinct from Afrobeat is Afrobeats, a combination of sounds originating in West Africa in the 21st century. This takes on diverse influences and is an eclectic combination of genres such as hip hop, house, jùjú, ndombolo, R&B, soca, and dancehall. The two genres, though often conflated, are not the same. History ...
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The Jazz Cafe
The Jazz Cafe is a music venue in Camden Town, London. It opened in 1990 on the former premises of a branch of Barclays Bank and has had several owners throughout its history as a music venue. The venue holds 450 people across both floors. The music venue also curates Jazz Cafe Festival, a London day festival which takes place in Burgess Park. History The original Jazz Cafe was founded by Jon Dabner and Jean Marshall in the 1980s in Newington Green, Stoke Newington, and moved to Camden Town in 1990. Mean Fiddler took over bookings in 1992. In 2008 MAMA & Company acquired the Mean Fiddler Music Group and continued to operate the venue until it was purchased by The Columbo Group in January 2016, reopening with a new look, a technical upgrade, a revamped food and drink menu plus a ‘reinvigorated bookings approach’. Throughout its various owners the club has continued to showcase performers from the genres of jazz, hip hop, electronica, blues, world, reggae, Latin and sou ...
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Songlines (magazine)
''Songlines'' is a British magazine launched in 1999 that covers music from traditional and popular to contemporary and fusion, featuring artists from around the globe. ''Songlines'' is published 10 times a year and contains album reviews, artist interviews, guides to particular world music traditions, concert and festival listings and travel stories. Every issue comes with an accompanying compilation CD featuring sample tracks from 10 of the best new releases reviewed in that issue and five additional tracks. The founding editor is Simon Broughton, co-editor of '' The Rough Guide to World Music''. It is now edited by Russ Slater Johnson. The name was chosen based on the aboriginal mythological concept of songlines. History In 2008 ''Songlines'' was expanded to include Songlines Music Travel, a music tourism service offering excursions to renowned world music locations and festivals. This is now on indefinite hiatus. In 2009 ''Songlines'' launched Songlines Digital, an online ...
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