Tag: Fred Moten

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A couple of weeks ago Downbeat published their August issue and with it their 74th annual critics poll of the best in jazz. The list is a lengthy undertaking in so far as it contains 62 categories, which invite critics to vote for a mix of established figures and rising stars. The headlines for this 74th edition of the...

For roughly half of the year I listened to everything, almost or near enough. Then I wilted, or the opposite of that, for come the summer I perked up in my stool and began to listen to summer ambiances like the chirping of birds, the splashing of hose pipes and water pistols or the sizzling of a barbecue. As...

The poet and theorist Fred Moten has long occupied a kind of liminal space on the margins of contemporary jazz music, with his 2003 exploration In the Break a signal text for anyone concerned with the black radical tradition and matters of black aesthetics. Yet while the names of Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor...