2018: Kamasi Washington, Soulwax, Dele Sosimi & Lokkhi Terra, Charles Lloyd & Lucinda Williams
The advent of a new musical year means a lot less to someone catching up on the past…but it’s still a new year. In 2025 I’m planning to finish up sharing about albums from 2018, then move on to 2019 and 2009. Every year has its deep pleasures of great music, but 2019 is a particular favorite of mine. Happy New Year!
Kamasi Washington. Heaven and Earth.
United States, June 22
Epic scale is a skill. It requires fantastic magnetism and undiminished imagination to bring others and self, respectively, into its influence. The historical truth is that far, far fewer instrumentalists in the history of jazz possess the skill of weaving epic scale than possess superlative technical virtuosity or singular tone or harmonic brilliance. Kamasi Washington, young though his career to date may be, is near the top of this particular list.
Soulwax. Essential.
Belgium, June 22
Essential – requisite, cardinal
Crucial – decisive, pivotal
Vital – integral, needed
Important – major, paramount
Compulsory – mandatory, forced
Innate – inherent, congenital
Necessary – unavoidable, principal
Elementary – rudimentary, underlying
Critical – dire, urgent
Obligatory – binding, enforced
Imperative – immediate, inescapable
Indispensable – basic, primary
Foremost – champion, premier
Necessitous – capital, chief
Fundamental – central, significant
If Soulwax really cared, they would make an album featuring each one of the terms that the ones they do announce suggest.
Dele Sosimi & Lokkhi Terra. Cubafrobeat.
Nigeria & England, June 23
The suggestion is that Cuban rhythms like Cubano and Son Montuno are here mixed for a first time with Afrobeat – as though the two worlds of music have not been involved in a pattern of synergies and reciprocities for centuries. Whereas this reminds me so directly of an obscure Congolese salsa album from 1980, Jose Missamou’s El Centenario De Brazzaville, that I wonder if Dele Sosimi and Lokkhi Terra don’t mean to do the album homage. But the music sounds fantastic, just like its spiritual ancestor and a dozen other similar sonic marriages, historically misleading title or no.
Charles Lloyd & The Marvels, Lucinda Williams.
Vanished Gardens.
United States, June 29
This album makes an argument that more albums need to make: that free jazz, often an unlovable and even abrasive form, works really well as an element within more rigidly structured forms. Or perhaps less an element within and more a surround to those other forms. It’s a little bit like a shadow puppet theater on a corner of a crowded square: the focused, narrow palette right in front of you permits a more meaningful experience of the verdant maelstrom at its edges.