Tag: Magdalena Abrego

M

Like a trickster or shapeshifter the bassist Mali Obomsawin slips easily between popular and jazzier forms. As a composer she can be fierce and incantatory, erecting songs that are defiant and accusatory while leaving the listener in their thrall. A citizen of Odanak First Nation, an Abenaki community located near the mouth of the Saint-François River in Quebec, on Sweet Tooth her debut as a bandleader she blended traditional music and indigenous mythology with contemporary chants and squalls of free improvisation...

For the Uyghurs of the Tarim Basin who continue to raise a voice against the twin spectres of internment and cultural assimilation, muqam remains a key mode of expression, the name for a set of melodic formulas which guide musical improvisation and often take the form of sprawling epic suites. Combining song, dance and instrumental sections, characterised by rhythmic...