For the past six decades, Weston has been a pioneering jazz musician incorporating the vast rhythmic heritage of Africa. His most famous compositions include, “Little Niles,” “Blue Moses,” and “High-Fly,” and his 1960 album, “Uhuru Afrika,” was a landmark recording that celebrated the independence movements in Africa and the influence of traditional African music on jazz. The record, which began with a freedom poem written by Langston Hughes, would later be banned by the South African apartheid regime, along with albums by Max Roach and Lena Horne. In 1961, Randy Weston visited Africa for the first time as part of a delegation that also featured Nina Simone. The trip would transform Weston’s life and lead him to eventually moving to Africa in 1967. In 2001, he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts — it is considered to be the nation’s highest honor in jazz. Weston talks about his collaboration with Langston Hughes, how Marcus Garvey and Paul Robeson influenced his life, his friendship with the Nigerian afrobeat star Fela Kuti, and his success with “having people understand the impact of African rhythms in world music, whether it’s Brazil or Cuba or Mississippi or Brooklyn. If you don’t have that African pulse, nothing is happening,” Weston said. Now 85 years old, Weston continues to tour the world, and in 2010, he published, “African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston.” Text via Democracy Now!

Jack White’s new single, Love Interruption features Ruby Amanfu, a Ghanaian born singer and songwriter.

Cilla K recently released her new album titled New World Lullabies on bandcamp. Listen to the samples below. You can purchase it here.

Wendy Rene – After Laughter Comes Tears: Complete Stax & Volt Singles + Rarities 1964-1965.

Click here for more details.

“This song is singing to our African American heritage before slavery. Over the decades, so much of the strength in the African American community has seeded from resistance and endurance. I wanted to address the part of our heritage spanning back to pre-colonial Africa and the elements of Black pride that draw from our connection to our ancestors in their own land. I particularly wanted to create something that spoke to young boys.” – Esperanza Spalding

Black Gold will be on the forthcoming album, Radio Music Society which will be released on March 20th.

If you don’t know the background story of Fela Kuti, Music Is the Weapon is a must watch.

Carve an hour out of your day and watch this documentary. It combines live performances of John Coltrane, and commentary from a few of his former band mates.

Giovanni Russonello from Capital Bop just wrote a fine piece on the jazz scene in Harlem in Jazz Times. Click here to read it.

Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times is an upcoming book by Robin D.G. Kelley. If you recall, Mr. Kelley wrote Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original.

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, pianist Randy Weston and bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik celebrated with song the revolutions spreading across Africa. In Ghana and South Africa, drummer Guy Warren and vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin fused local musical forms with the dizzying innovations of modern jazz. These four were among hundreds of musicians in the 1950s and ’60s who forged connections between jazz and Africa that definitively reshaped both their music and the world.

In a crucial moment when freedom electrified the African diaspora, these black artists sought one another out to create new modes of expression. Documenting individuals and places, from Lagos to Chicago, from New York to Cape Town, Robin Kelley gives us a meditation on modernity: we see innovation not as an imposition from the West but rather as indigenous, multilingual, and messy, the result of innumerable exchanges across a breadth of cultures. (Source)

The book will be available for purchase on February 27th, 2012.

The Dogon people are an ethnic group that primarily live in Mali, although some also live in Burkina Faso and Niger. They are known for their elaborate masks, masquerades and assorted art sculptures. The intricate artwork of the Dogon people is second to none, and it showcases a level of innovation that was only attributable to them. Julius Hemphill deciding to name his album and first track after them, is quite fitting. It should be noted that the A.D. does not stand for Anno Domini, but adaptive dance instead. The Dogon people usually altered their creative rituals to suit the tastes of tourists who came to see them. So there is a deeper meaning to the title. Make of that what you wish, but it’s pretty clear.

For a little background info, Julius Hemphill is from Fort Worth, Texas, just like that other alto sax player named Ornette Coleman. According to Tim Berne, Hemphill and Coleman are cousins. Blood ties aside, Hemphill sounds like himself. He has a voice that is entirely his own. Before Hemphill recorded Dogon A.D., he was a co-founder of the Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis Missouri.

Hemphill originally released the album independently in 1972 on Mbari records. Below is the original cover. The cover most people recognize with the Dogon mask is actually from a later reissue from Arista, and it has now become the default cover art.

Julius Hemphill handles the saxophone & flute duties. Joining him is Abdul K. Wadud on cello, Baikida E.J. Carroll on trumpet and Phillip Wilson on drums.

This album was fortunately reissued on CD late last year, and it also included the song The Hard Blues which was part of the original Dogon A.D. session, but appeared on the subsequent ‘Coon Bid’ness album.

It goes without saying that I think that Julius Hemphill was a genius. This is an album that everyone should own. It was out of print for a long time, and rest assured, the reissue will go out of print again. Get it now. PS – today just happens to be his birthday. R.I.P Mr. Hemphill, you left an indelible mark on music that the world will never forget.