The Year-End Rituals
Including links to some inspired music journalism.....
Within days of the release of Kendrick Lamar’s staggeringly thoughtful, impossible-to-grok-in-one-sitting GNX, the critics, analysts and opinion brokers (honest and otherwise) were winding down listmaking machinations and wrapping up the Year in Arts coverage. The lists seem to arrive earlier and earlier each year; NPR and the New York Times dropped theirs last week. An excellent argument for this is the one newspaper scribes used to hear from assigning editors: These are really gift guides. We should provide harried shoppers our best intel in a timely way so that more people give the gift of music.
I’m with that logic. The next EL post, rolling in tardy (!) later this week, will be our annual survey of The Year in Old. Thanks as ever for reading, subscribing, and sharing these missives!
Until then, please follow the below links to some terrific recent writing on music. And don’t just read — support these authors.
The esteemed Nate Chinen focused his deep listening experience on one of the most significant, if still nascent, aesthetic shifts going on in instrumental music. I’ve been thinking lots about the artists he dubs “Soft Radicals” — Shabaka, Nala Sinephro, others on the International Anthem label — and feel sure we’ll be talking more about this next year.
On the occasion of what would have been Jaco Pastorius’ 73rd birthday, Bill Milkowski — who wrote the definitive book on the pioneering bassist — ponders the music and legacy. The piece includes incredible photos; don’t miss the one of the massive Jaco mural in Fort Lauderdale.
Veteran journalist Tony Scherman has been posting extensive interviews he conducted through the years with some legends (check the multi-part Ry Cooder and Paul Simon ones in his archive to enjoy the insightful questions as much as the surprising answers). With this November post, he explores the impact of the great drummer Earl Palmer — at the end of the piece is an audio excerpt from an interview he did with Palmer for his great book Backbeat.
Here’s a tremendous piece, from drummer Vinnie Sperrazza, about one of the galvanic archive discoveries of the year in jazz…
And finally, to circle back to the “Soft Radicals,” my longtime NPR colleague Will Hermes recently posted a lively 2-part interview with Scottie McNiece of International Anthem. It mentions several artists not discussed in Chinen’s piece who made consequential impact this year — guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anny Butterss.
