Ammar Kalia

Forever photographed sitting cross-legged and clutching his sitar, with incense burning, Ravi Shankar has been credited with almost single-handedly spreading...

Saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings has spent the past few years questioning our ideas of what constitutes history and why we shouldn’t just blindly accept the nar...

Dumama + Kechou – Buffering Juju South Africa’s Mushroom Hour Half Hour label has been releasing some of the more ear-tickling sounds from the country’s expe...

Sam Gendel plays like a man trying to erase his instrument. The Californian saxophonist – perhaps best-known for his thoughtful collaborations with Moses Sum...

On any given performance, a crowd can encounter several unpredictable versions of the pianist Robert Glasper. There is the studious interpreter, head bowed a...

Back in 2012, aged just 16, Bajan-American rapper Malik Hall, AKA Haleek Maul, was making downtempo, introspective rap probing the sulky, nocturnal musings o...

Drummer Moses Boyd has always been a difficult musician to pin down. Half of the fiercely propulsive free jazz duo Binker and Moses, he was heralded as a pos...

DJ Diaki – Balani Fou Recent years have seen some of the most exciting dancefloor-focused music moving further and further away from its spiritual homes of D...

For Makaya McCraven, sampling is a means of remembrance. The Chicago-based drummer and producer has spent recent years honing his studio style to incorporate...

Even by the standards of Bollywood sagas, Umrao Jaan is complex and melodramatic. It is based on what is considered the first Urdu novel, Umrao Jaan Ada (189...

The standard is a quintessential concept in jazz. A canonical composition reinterpreted and disassembled by both new players and established elders, they are...

Various: London Is the Place for Me: The Music of Young Black London, Vols 7 & 8 Creole languages and culture can be loosely defined as those that have been ...

"Excuse my voice; I can’t sing but I don’t care because it feels good.” So said Tyler, the Creator before he launched into an impassioned – if tuneless – ren...

At its peak, Jaimie Branch’s trumpet playing has the feeling of a prelingual shriek, a cry out into the distance that intuits no response. It’s a dark, deepl...

Omar Souleyman Shlon There was a glorious moment during Syrian singer Omar Souleyman’s 2011 Glastonbury set. Having just opened to a crowd of sedate, sun-bak...

There is a well-known photograph of Herbie Hancock aged 23, when he had just joined the Miles Davis Quintet. Taken by Blue Note label co-founder Francis Wolf...

The laser-gun-like, pitch-modulating burst of the electronic tom is a cartoonish staple of 1980s music, cropping up everywhere from Duran Duran’s chart-toppe...

Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band – Obiaa! Ghanaian highlife music has never been a single statement of artistic intent. Birthed from the indigenous rhythms of...

There is seemingly no end to Drake’s adoration of UK rap culture. Beginning with his impromptu features at Skepta’s London shows in 2015 and an effusive back...

There is a quality to pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s music that makes it sound like a slow, sad goodbye. That may be because he spent the majority of the 1960s t...