Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian

Miles Davis

latest news & developments
Chris Botti plays on the edge of jazz with both contemporary classical and pop music sensibilities.
CHRIS BOTTI

Festival is an embarrassment of jazz riches

Joy of Jazz takes place in Johannesburg this weekend.

  • Percy Mabandu
6 min read
GOAT in the making: Jazz musician Mandisi Dyantyis, who has two albums to his name, has just done a fashion shoot for GQ magazine that has people talking. Photo: Dan Carter courtesy of Fifty Four
CWAKA

Mandisi Dyantyis: People are seen in his music

Local musician follows in the footsteps of the jazz greats with his cool sounds and dress

  • Lesego Chepape
8 min read
Introspective: It took Kendrick Lamar five years to release Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers
MR MORALE AMP THE BIG STEPPERS

One album, two takes: Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

Kendrick Lamar’s latest album drops down the charts and moves up our reviewers’ legendary list

  • KABOMO
  • Lerato Tshabalala
5 min read
Greg Tate conducts members of the band Burnt Sugar, the Arkesta Chamber. (Photo: Getty Images)
BITCHES BREW

The Black Jesus of post-structuralism

The Bay Area writer and art curator Kwadwo Duane Deterville shares his thoughts on Greg Tate’s legacy and gifts to Black culture in the 20th entury

  • Kwadwo Duane Deterville
9 min read
Elusive: The documentary Chasing Trane fails to catch the full John Coltrane.
ARCHIE SHEPP

Hearing Coltrane: Like watching a grown man learn how to speak

Watching several of Coltrane’s harmonic and melodic experiments at the cusp of the 1960s, Amiri Baraka emerges frightened, yet energised

  • Amiri Baraka
4 min read
Billy Monk and a friend at the Catacombs nightclub in Cape Town where he was a bouncer. He took photographs as a side hustle, but they are now iconic records of unusual scenes in our history. (Don Ross)
BILLY MONK

Moving encounters with misfits and megastars

Film festival screens documentaries of several celebrities and some local artists

  • Arts Desk
13 min read
Paul Simon with Bakithi Kumalo at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 2008
DESMOND TUTU

​Two albums and a resistance

Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ took local musicians to the world and Miles Davis trumpeted ‘Tutu’

  • Percy Mabandu
4 min read
On our lists: Zap Mama’s Ancestry in Progress
AFRICAN LITERATURE

On our lists: Zap Mama’s Ancestry in Progress, Regina Spektor and ‘Miles and Me’

The Lists this week were compiled by Friday editor Milisuthando Bongela, arts writer Kwanele Sosibo and author and freelance writer Bongani Madondo.

  • Arts Desk
2 min read
Tragicomedy: Don Cheadle and Ewan McGregor in Miles Ahead.
FILM REVIEW

Miles Ahead is sour to the taste and falls short on presenting the fullness of Davis

Miles Davis biopic is another example of a black artist’s legacy used as Hollywood fodder.

  • Kwanele Sosibo
3 min read
Miles Davis and the rebirth of Thabo Mbeki
CHARLES LEONARD
Video

Miles Davis and the rebirth of Thabo Mbeki

The recent and sudden revision of Thabo Mbeki’s place in history reminds Charles Leonard of the re-evaluation of jazz legend Miles Davis’s legacy

  • Staff Reporter
6 min read
DEBBIE HARRY

Hilly Kristal, founder of NY punk mecca CBGB, dies

Hilly Kristal, the founder of New York punk rock club CBGB, which helped make the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads stars, has died at age 75, his daughter said on Wednesday.…

  • Staff Reporter
2 min read
CHARLES MINGUS

Hotstix: Still playing with fire

Whether you call his music township jive, jazz or bubblegum, Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse has provided the soundtrack for generations, writes Kwanele Sosibo.

  • Jeff Barbee
6 min read