Ari Brown hasn’t often sought the spotlight, but his blend of bebop rigor and avant-garde daring puts him on par with the likes of Fred Anderson and Von Freeman.
Tag: The Awakening
Posted inMusic
A barely documented 1989 Chicago rap record gets a surprise reissue
Original copies of Me & E’s Rap have sold for hundreds of dollars, but Canadian archival label Mixed Signals is about to burst that bubble.
Posted inMusic
Bless the Mad share their private pantheon of Black Chicago music
Production duo Bless the Mad discuss the classic hip-hop, soul, gospel, and jazz records that inspired the reverent sonic collage on their debut album.
Posted inMusic
The Awakening’s reissue of 1972’s Hear, Sense and Feel still uplifts through jazz and R&B
When the Awakening formed in the early 1970s, they combined veterans of Chicago’s R&B sessions and jazz players affiliated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. The sextet drew on these diverse sources for its 1972 debut album, Hear, Sense and Feel, which is being reissued domestically this month as part of Real […]
Posted inBlogs
“Bertram Cope’s Year”: Chicago’s forgotten gay masterpiece
This is a repost, ’cause I think it’s interesting In the early 20th century Henry Blake Fuller was one of Chicago’s most famous writers, with a number of prominent realist novels under his belt and friendships with leading lights such as Thornton Wilder, Jane Addams, and Carl Van Vechten. He worked for the Saturday Evening […]