Whenever you find yourself undercharmed by the listening recommendations of bots and algorithms, remember this ridiculously obvious hack: Trust the humans. Trust the humans who are around music, soaking up music, all the time.

That would include people working in record stores.

Some are crate diggers-slash-snobs. Some are listeners who enjoy crafting empassioned Staff Recommendation paragraphs. Dismiss these bits of text as catalog copy if you must; they’re also a micro-artform, words about music assembled with the goal of sparking curiosity, opening minds.

This type of curation works equally well in real life (imagine that!) and online, via the websites of retail shops. The other day I gave myself a timed challenge: Spend 1 hour looking for music “curation” (sorry!) on retail sites, to find 4 albums that might be of interest to Echo Locator readers. Highly recommended exercise! Results below.

I gamed the system by starting at Dusty Groove, the Chicago shrine to music exploration. Its site is loaded with crisp mini-essays about long-neglected records and new releases. These often mention standout tracks, and are written with great precise descriptions – with minimal critic jargon.

Right away I found a compilation from another Chicago institution, the Numero Group label, of singles from gospel singers and ensembles who brought their sounds to church halls and community centers around Cleveland Ohio. Great Lakes Gospel opens with Juanita Ellis repurposing elements of Bobby Hebb’s hit “Sunny” for the fiery “Make a Joyful Noise.” Almost everything here is galvanizing; to appreciate the deep ties between traditional gospel and the blues, check the tamborine-kissed “What You Need” by a group called Gospel Ensemble.

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Following lots of record stores on social media, I’ve come to appreciate the power of photography – specifically, people holding up vinyl records in stores. A store on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Vinyl Chickie, has made this a thing; its feed shows customers clutching new purchases, and owner Lisa Schaffer holding up new arrival highlights. Not much text needed! The other day the featured album was Blind Owl Wilson, a compilation of the originals that guitarist Alan Wilson contributed to the blues-rock band Canned Heat.

It could be called The Gentle Side of Canned Heat. Where the band specialized in the hot, hard-grooving Delta blues captured on the classic Hooker ‘n Heat, Wilson kept the pulse – then sought out more tenderness in the melodies and vulnerability in the themese. His fragile falsetto vocals transformed blues tropes into disarming confessionals, several of them becoming unlikely (and much beloved) hits for his band. (See “Going Up the Country” and the steady shuffle “On the Road Again.”)

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(Fun underknown fact about the enigmatic Wilson: Dick Waterman, Son House’s manager, credited Wilson with being the catalyst for the bluesman’s rediscovery. “Al Wilson taught Son House how to play Son House…..All of Son’s successful concert appearances, recordings and him being remembered as having a great second career—all that was because of Al rejuvenating his music.”)

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At Grimey’s in Nashville, the first New Release that caught my eye was an album cover using the block-style font of countless tour posters. It’s called She’s Gone: The Complete Works LP, and it celebrates the work of a band The Hamilton Movement that was active around Indianapolis in the 1970s. This band had its own sound, a blend of locked-down funk backbeats and plush soul call-and-response vocals that should have been the foundation for an extended career.

It wasn’t. The band’s manager, Dick Melvin, co-wrote and co-arranged the band’s music, and was responsible for releasing its recordings. Among the gems: the tightly wound funk vamp “Love Circuit” and a stone-cold classic of heartbroken soul, “She’s Gone.” That 1976 track has experienced something of a second life thanks to crate-diggers; in June, the reissue label Now-Again Records gathered it with assorted other singles and remixes from Melvin’s archive, and proclaimed it “The Indianapolis soul album that should have been.”

That line snared me. Later I discovered that Grimey’s reused it from the label copy – what seemed like staff advocacy turned out to be plain old marketing. Sigh.

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There’s so much positive music culture going on in London right now, and the online shop of Phonica Records has put me in touch with loads of it. On this sweep, there was a short squib about a new release from the Tokyo based Kiyotaka Fukagawa, who records as Calm. His zone could be glibly summed up as “ambient” music, but that’s not entirely accurate: He cultivates a cool textural placidity that seems perpetually on the edge of being disturbed – by a feathery little flute-like synthesizer lead.

Here’s a bit from Phonica’s squib about the latest from Calm, which is titled Ambient Jazz: “Calm sets in again to moll the nerves here, serving a full plate of smooth new age and sonic draperies, recalling the night time jazz chasms of Jon Hassell especially.” Ambient Jazz isn’t really “ambient” or “jazz,” but like Hassell’s ever-unfolding soundscapes, it’s deeply entrancing no matter where it’s filed in the store. Highly recommended.

They’re not sure how to dance to it. There’s trepidation in some faces when a camera from BBC-TV’s The Beat Club finds them – perhaps they’re not moving enough, or they’re somehow moving incorrectly. Tell us if we’re doing it wrong, a few seem to plead. It’s 1964, and that means extreme black and white closeups of the guitar fretboard, the head of the snare drum, the methodical up-and-down click of the hi-hat, the ever-worried brow of John Lee Hooker.

Sure, it’s not the dancing you’d see at a jukejoint in Clarksdale Mississippi. Still what a sight: A whole dancefloor moving in response to Hooker’s signature “Boom Boom,” with young Hooker doing the thing with help from a band of earnest young white musicians known as the Groundhogs. Who understand enough about the blues to keep the groove spare and steady.

Must have been wild times in London and environs during the blues revival that began in 1963-1964. Bands like the Rolling Stones formed with the righteous mission of covering and championing American blues from a generation or two previous. That renewed long-dormant interest in veteran Mississippi Delta artists, and others who could be promoted as “authentic” blues voices. At that time, Delta artists who are now revered as legends – Hooker, Son House, Muddy Waters and others — were not legends. They didn’t or couldn’t tour widely in the U.S. They were in some cases careerless, doing other things, their recordings a part of the past. And then, out of nowhere, they found themselves beloved by young people in the UK and Europe.

The embrace became something more musically consequential than a crazy new teen trend: It magnetized musicians to cities like London – John Mayall moved there in 1963 and immediately formed his (enduring, intense) band the Bluesbreakers. New bands (see: The Yardbirds, the Animals) emerged to meet a growing demand. Plus the Delta veterans toured, and that meant backing-band opportunities for young blues-obsessed musicians like guitarist and songwriter Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs (above).

And that meant a rare type of on-the-job experience we don’t see much anymore. Perhaps this wasn’t “mentorship” in common Human Resources usage, but it offered alert musicians opportunities to absorb the nuances of blues performance – the slight shuffle in the backbeats, the short melodic phrases that signal the end of a chorus. McPhee was evidently a fast learner: Check out the carefully calibrated pitch-bending in “No One Pleases Me But You,” from Hooker’s 1966 studio album ….And Seven Nights.

That record is entrancing the whole way; the band aligns behind Hooker’s canting vocals, supplying raw, visceral energy instinctively. Hooker spoke glowingly of McPhee and the Groundhogs; he requested them as his backing band on subsequent European tours, and in an interview described them as “the number one British blues band.” Didn’t take long before other American blues artists sought them out: During the ‘60s the Groundhogs also backed Little Walter, Jimmy Reed and Memphis Slim.

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Here’s another bluesman who became a McPhee fan: The slippery-fingered blues pianist and singer Champion Jack Dupree. Somewhere in the middle of the guitar solo in “Snow Is On the Ground,” one of a series of intimate duets with Dupree singing and McPhee playing, Dupree addresses whomever might be listening: “That sound good, don’t it? That sound good!”

Sure enough it does. The record, Dupree & McPhee: The Blue Horizon Session, is a discographical oddity. It was produced by veteran Mike Vernon, who suggested that McPhee add the initials “T.S.” (for “Tough Shit”) to his name – presumably to make him seem more authentically “of” the blues. At the time of recording, the New Orleans-born Dupree was known as a blues pianist – but he only sings on The 1967 Blue Horizon Session. McPhee provides all the (terse, apt, agile) accompaniment.

Celebrating the more introspective shades and hues of the blues, this set is a stone-cold killer. It was recorded in 1966-67, so it’s just a few years after McPhee first played with John Lee Hooker. But it was not released until 2005 – on the British Ace label, with little international fanfare. The guitarist is clearly in control of all the blues fundamentals, and comfortable stretching them with thoughtful, sometimes weeping little asides. Dupree sounds like he’s doing more than reminiscing about his favorite homemade jug whiskey; check out his laconic stroll through the relaxed zen lesson “Easy Is the Way.”

An inspiring thing about Tough Shit McPhee: After being an apprentice and absorbing many of the unspoken intricacies of the blues, he didn’t just ride the revival train for the rest of his career. He reformed the Groundhogs as a power trio and in 1969 set out to reframe blues tropes with the intense and occasionally irreverent Blues Obituary. Then McPhee steered the band toward progressive rock, in ways that retained, and then twisted apart, blues-based riffage. Here’s “Cherry Red” from 1971’s terrific Split.

And then in 1973 McPhee released a solo album, The Two Sides of Tony (T.S.) McPhee, which belongs to the long tradition of albums expressing two polar-opposite musical personalities. Side A is throttling blues-rock and Side B is a meandering 20-minute synth-heavy progressive rock suite that finds McPhee railing at the British aristocracy’s tradition of fox hunting.

This track might not have been the evolutionary step McPhee’s reverent fans wanted. But credit McPhee for the leap, which in spirit and scope is similar to Hooker’s late-career experiments – the metaphysical 1989 The Healer and the transfixingly murky collaboration with Miles Davis, The Hot Spot, the soundtrack to Dennis Hopper’s noirish 1990 film of the same name. The blues inspires an insular kind of repertory reverence today; it’s heartening that some of its prime movers, originators and one-time apprentices alike, avoided that particular easy route.

We sometimes talk about music as having outlived its moment.

An album hailed as an inescapable cultural marker upon arrival grows ossified, less resonant, “dated” over time. Even if it’s less than a decade old, such a work somehow becomes attached to a different era of human endeavor. It registers as a relic, sometimes because of the sounds or the themes, sometimes through no apparent fault of its own.

There are fewer instances of the opposite being true. But it does happen.

Example: Over the last several years, the subgenre of improvised music classified as “spiritual jazz” has experienced a thorough reappraisal and corresponding artistic reinvigoration. This might have been sparked by reissues of works by visionaries like Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, or Sanders’ 2021 collaboration with the electronic artist Floating Points, or it could be partly explained by the rise of Kamasi Washington or the much publicized vibe shift of Andre 3000. Doesn’t really matter: Through a mysterious constellation of sound and sensibility, right tones arriving at the right time, “spiritual jazz” returned to the conversation. It was missed.

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Here at Echo Locator, we try to notice these little changes. We keep eyes peeled for new ones out on the far smog-obscured horizon. This trend-spotting activity, which of course encompasses radical developments as well as archival discoveries, is a part of what critics used to do. It’s notoriously unscientific; it involves scanning beyond the arts to the culture at large in search of clues about what might be driving the trendlets. Some would consider it armchair sociology. (For example, the mere fact that Twisted Sister is touring again does not signify a gnawing unmet hunger out there for ‘80s hair metal. Unless it does.)

So back in May, when the New York Times ran a terrific wide-ranging opinion essay by Katya Ungerman titled “We Are Sliding Back Into the Middle Ages,” we took notice and filed it away. The piece looked at assorted unexplained phenomena – including Tucker Carlson’s demon encounter – and connected it to other unexplained oddities including in UFO research, then connected that to renewed interest in religious orthodoxy among young people. As Ungerman writes: “Those phenomena are all signs that life feels, to many, increasingly charged with unseen forces.”

Music is, of course, ground zero for the shadowy, the abstract and the unseen. Every era has its sonic mediums and its Enyas, proferring communion with some version of the spirit realm. Their efforts don’t always age well either; yesterday’s vision quest is today’s spa soundtrack.

But: Here’s a deceptively intricate record that was relatively under-acknowledged when released in 2009, and has survived to provide some unexpected insight on our current surreal backslide into the Old Ways. It’s deeply challenging, and at times actually sounds as though it was created by two people imagining precisely what this post-science moment of rising mysticism might feel like. It was made by a drums/bass duo that evolved out of a band called Sleep and calls itself OM. This band is frequently tagged as “doom metal” and/or “stoner rock,” among other imprecise terms of art. The group’s third album Pilgrimage was recorded and engineered by the legendary Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago.

OM came up during a random search for Albini-assisted works that are not as well known as the famous records he made with Nirvana, the Pixies or the (still amazing!) Jesus Lizard. Not gonna lie: I cued up the title track, and was ready to flee by minute three. But something about Al Cisneros’ snaking bass figures, and the solemn incantations of his vocals, triggered curiosity: Where, exactly, is this fitful hooded processional headed? Are these somber liturgical tones beckoning from some sort of deep forest druid gathering? What’s up with the old-world religious imagery? Must one be a stoner or a true occultist to fully engage with the glories of OM?

Now, after several spins, it’s clear that the minimal information is exactly the point: There are no shortcuts to “understanding” this music intellectually, if it can be understood at all. To “get it,” you have to just take the ride — which, of course, is precisely the same “ask” made by Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and countless other modern compositions. Pilgrimage is optimization resistant. It’s an experience — of submerging, of giving over to the churn of the waves, of suspending those modern-life “how long will this take?” time imperatives.

The title track lumbers down its road for ten and a half minutes – and there’s a four-minute Reprise of it closing the album. The pace might be described as glacial. There is no melodic candy, no easily parsed narrative to grab onto, and just a few changes in density and dynamics.

The melody, if we can stretch the term that far, is deliberate in the extreme; it centers around two notes a half-step apart, and is delivered as a ritualistic mantra. The whole thing might crumble under its doomy conceptual weight were it not for the visceral, grandiose, time-chopping drama of drummer Chris Hakius. Who does not seem to care that the tempo is locked at a crawl. Hakius is alive to the duality of this music: He recognizes that the mental zone OM is instantiating is linked to the repetitions of chanting and the stasis of meditation, but that doesn’t stop him from punctuating the placidity with epic fills and crisp polyrhythms. (Hakius left the band, which continues to record and tour, after Pilgrimage.)

Those “events” within the music of Pilgrimage are central to its unusual magnetism. They shatter the ritual processional march of syllables and steps, disrupting the mystical reverence with some good old fashioned cathartic steam venting. It’s a mood, it’s a feeling that reflecting the inescapable conflicts inherent in being alive in 2026. In one corner, there’s the deep eyes-narrowed mistrust of the unknown and the “other.” In the far corner of the gaudily-lit cage, there’s the chants of longshot magical thinking for some sort of late-innings cosmic deliverance. Between them it’s all drones and murk, bass and drums.

If there’s a characteristic “soundtrack” for the World Cup, it’s relentlessly upbeat and mostly digital. Club music, often with a reggaeton undercurrent. On Telemundo and Fox and in the crisp FIFA highlight segments, the music seems designed to emphasize the speed and dexterity of the athletes. It’s a kind of audio shorthand: brisk elevated-heartrate beats supporting sleek and inevitably repetitive stadium-sized themes.

But soccer itself depends on graceful motion. The drives are fast, sure, but they’re rarely unbroken; it’s a sport of pivots and fakes, redirections and sudden surges. Watch some with a Chopin nocturne playing, and the contest slows down a bit, to reveal the balletic control and poise of the players. And, also, the long-game coordination between them as a drive unfolds.

Or maybe put on some stately morna from Cabo Verde – sung by the late Cesaria Evora, the “barefoot diva” who brought it to global awareness in the 1990s. This track, released in 1995, was part of her second attempt at a career, which began when she was in her ‘50s.

Right now, the comments underneath many of Evora’s songs on YouTube say things like “World Cup 2026 Brought Me Here” – remarkable considering how isolated Cape Verde was when Evora was born. The nation is made up of s a string of small islands in the Atlantic, off the coast of West Africa. Population: Small, about 1% of Argentina’s. Character of the people: Fierce. That resolve is an inescapable trait of the music, not just with Evora but the other singers of morna who preceded her, including the 7-foot-tall Bana…

Those who caught the heroic David vs. Goliath run of the Cabo Verde team witnessed the spirit of the people over and over again – tying Spain in its first-ever Cup match, then fighting to draws against Uruguay and Saudi Arabia before reaching the knockout round. Where they took defending Cup champion Argentina into extra time, and only then lost. The key to the team’s run was the score-denying work of uncannily agile goalkeeper Vozinha (Josimar Dias). Who is 40 years old (!) and has been with the Cape Verde national team since 2012. Spain made 27 attempts on goal against Cape Verde; Vozinha saved every one of those that FIFA designates as “on target.” (The below highlight reel was not produced by FIFA.) If pressed for the short explanation for Cabo Verde’s long run, it’s one word: Vozinha.

Morna is reflective, sentimental music. It’s usually sung in Cape Verdean Kriolu, a blend of Portuguese and West African dialects. It gathers elements of the romantic fado (from Portugal) and the wistful boleros and modinhas of Brazil, and uses instruments common in samba, including the four-string cavaquinho. The quality of longing present in the abovementioned styles is known in Portuguese as “saudade,” and in Kriolu as “sodade.”

In interviews during the years of her international popularity, Evora spoke reverently about the physical beauty of Cape Verde, explaining that its pace of life suited her better than the bustle of cities like New York and London. She talked about performing regularly on radio, as a young woman just starting out in the 1960s. Some of those recordings were sent to a label in Holland, then edited for a limited release in 1965.

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Evora was not compensated for those recordings at the time – or others she made in the ‘60s. As she explained in a 1983 interview, she needed the money and quickly grew disillusioned about music. “I was exploited and never had the luck to face music as a possible future. Because of this I closed myself at home with no pleasure of going out.”

Evora eventually allowed them to be released internationally in 2008, as Radio Mindelo via Lusaafrica. They capture her working with a small group of musicians, and though her vocal instrument is brighter and at times radiates optimism, the textural smokiness is there — along with her ability to wring disarming deep emotions from slight, seemingly offhand gestures. Check the understated phrasing on this, one of the tunes she recorded several times in later years:

And, of course, there’s a remix of one of Evora’s later versions….

Even here, situated within a somewhat incompatible machine groove, Evora puts her humanity right out there. Insists on it. Brings it to life with grace. Within her reverie are hints of disappointment and regret, the contemplation of losses that get filed under “what might have been.” But there is never resentment: She’s singing through scars, not simply because of (or in spite of) scars. She’s not defeated. The world dealt her an undeserved bad hand, and she’s using it the way great artists do: To chase down the sublime.

There’s a disconnect at the center of Miles At 100, the ongoing centennial celebration of jazz pathfinder Miles Davis. who died in 1991 at age 65.

The initiative is led by the Davis Estate, and involves the labels that issued the trumpet player and bandleader’s primary recordings – as well as some boutique labels and grey-market opportunists. The campaign is modeled on similar milestone celebrations of classical composers. Its goal is to spark retrospective interest in and exploration of an artist whose impact on music was galvanic and inescapable. The kind of inescapable that is sometimes taken for granted.

There are Centennial-themed boxed sets, and sonic upgrades of Davis’ classic albums. There are previously unreleased live concert albums (including the electrifying Paris Jazz Festival 1963-1964) and limited-run vinyl sets like the Lost Recording’s astonishingly crisp Live in Helsinki/Berlin 1964. Running alongside the releases are multiple tribute-band tours and books and lectures and multi-episode podcasts (of course there are podcasts!) devoted to aspects of Davis’ work.

As a result, it’s now possible to pick a moment or a band or an era in Davis’ career and, through a quick search, explore it in exhaustive, granular detail. Chorus by chorus if you must.

While you’re doing that, please just remember this: Miles Davis rarely looked back.

Davis’ province was nextness. His pursuit of the unknown, the unglimpsed and the not-yet-codified was the art behind his art. He had a strong sense of his identity as a creator, yet was tuned to the slightest shifts in the cultural winds; time after time he caught the changes just right.

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Davis understood the art of provocation; he was the opposite of a bandwagon jumper. He tried stuff. He changed lanes with reckless abandon, without regard for reputational harm. In the 1940s when bebop was running hot and he was part of it, he made a gorgeous, orchestrational cool jazz record. That was the first of many “zags,” each driven by Davis’ curiosity. His example taught musicians about the importance of taking the leap, regardless of its “commercial potential.” He was a regular performer on the multi-artist bills at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in the late ‘60s, his presence underscoring the musical connections between psychedelic rock and improvisation-centered exploration. He didn’t merely develop one trending “sound” after another; his restless career-long quest for new landscapes became its own marketing line – “Directions In Music By Miles Davis.”

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Consider just one of those directions just waiting to be explored at depth: The Miles Davis Quintet’s 12-date tour of European concert halls in the fall of 1964. The rhythm section -- pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams – had been together for 17 months by then, backing Davis and several tenor saxophonists (George Coleman, Sam Rivers). The first date, at the Berliner Philharmonie on September 25, marked saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s debut with the group; it was recorded and released until 1967 by CBS Japan as Miles In Berlin. (Among its disarming treasures: Hancock’s poised, serenely logical chordal opening chorus on “Autumn Leaves.”)

A newly clarified version was released by the elite vinyl label The Lost Recordings earlier this year; it renders the Berlin performance in strikingly hyperrealistic mono, and pairs it with another concert several weeks later at the first-ever Helsinki Jazz Festival. (The lineup included Coleman Hawkins, Howard McGhee, Kenny Clarke, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and The Dave Brubeck Quartet).

Here’s a clip from that lesser-known Davis performance in Helsinki, one of several bootlegged versions on YouTube. Spoiler alert for audiophiles: It’s nowhere near as crisp as the Lost Recordings version.

The group’s open, shape-shifting approach was already established when Shorter entered; he added new wrinkles and new dynamics to it. On the early dates, it’s possible to hear the saxophonist first appreciating, then taking advantage of, the profound elasticity of the enterprise. Like it’s slowly occurring to him that there’s more lattitude available than he expected. Like he’s sensing, from the telepathy of the rhythm section, that there are infinite ways to decouple the melody from the pulse from the chord sequences to create a new mosaic. We hear the group dynamic shift as he enters. Then as he warms to the recombinative possibilities, he captivates the musicians around him. And together they change the temperature in the room.

This type of catalytic energy transfer happened regularly on Davis’ bandstand, on this tour and the many the Quintet did subsequently. It was dependent on the keen reflexes of the musicians, and was, as a result, different every night: These people showed up for work knowing they would have to listen at a high level so that they could discourse at a high level, to create unplanned real-time music that levitated (also at a high level) differently every time.

Miles Davis didn’t need the retrospective gaze. We do. Right now.

Anyone who cares about interactivity and communication in art can learn from the examples provided by these five quick-witted improvisors. In this chaotic and oddly unquestioned AI-accellerated culture, where the disciplined groundwork of creativity can be outsourced and everything fits on the grid and as a result there are no surprises, we need to remember the sound and feeling and fury of the radical spontaneous lunge.

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Longtime visitors to this space might remember that the correspondent has a soft spot for the irreverent and sometimes wacky musical smashups that came from Peru in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Not too long ago, we celebrated the insinuatingly tuneful Farfisa-organ-propelled surf-rock delirium foisted on unsuspecting Peruvian adolescents in the late ‘60s. Check here for our breathless overview, which was by no means a “completist take” or “deep dive.” Link: https://echolocator.substack.com/p/house-of-the-holys-when-kids-in-peru

(Yes, the sign over the cash register here at Echo Locator does, in fact, read “No Deep Dives.” And we mean it! You’re welcome.)

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Today’s topic: The high-speed collision of a Peruvian traditional form called huayno with the steady propulsion of Colombian cumbia. This smashup began in the Amazon in the 1960s, and became known as chicha – named after a corn-liquor adult beverage preferred by the Incas. The musical style has had several other names and marketing tags since; some outfits from rural areas called their music “Jungle Cumbia” and dressed in traditional feather headdress and clothing similar to the Shipibo people of Peru. Others went more Farfisa. Either way, the music is one of those bubbly and delightfully summery concoctions that waltz right in and invade human pleasure centers without asking permission. No two-factor authentication needed.

While we’re marveling, check this deliriously psychedelic ode to medicinal psychedelics, complete with soft-porn vocal embellishments.

The band that’s often cited among the pioneers of chicha is Juaneco y su Combo. Formed in the Amazonian city of Pucallpa (one of Peru’s oil-boom cities) in the early 1960s, the group was led by Juan Wong Paredes, a descendant of Chinese immigrants. Paredes recognized the mind-altering power of cumbia’s steady horse-and-buggy rhythmic repetitions – and, crucially, the music’s connection to Afro-Cuban rhythmic codes. But he and his son, who took over the group shortly after the start of its recording career, also experienced life on the Amazon river, that mighty conduit of news and culture from the entire region. This made them citizens of the world.

As the combo developed, they snagged ideas from all over – incorporating the metallic percussion instruments that drive parades in Brazil, and the accordion that’s central to cumbia, and also electric guitars. These are key. Often there are at least two and sometimes three, each playing a distinct line with percussive crispness, contributing to a latticework of overlapping ideas about motion.

When the elements lock together, Juaneco’s crew suggests a massive, chaotic collision between Latin and South American musics that, despite common elements, don’t typically intersect. The vocalists use Spanish to urge listeners to enjoy the rhythm – while singing a thinly-disguised Brazilian folk song. The guitarists veer from traditional arpeggio patterns to evoke the careening frenzies of surf rock.

The prevailing vibe on the group’s early albums is pleasure. When Juaneco and his combo are motoring through a sinewy medium-tempo cumbia groove, all the dancefloor imperatives are active: This is a dance band making dance music.

Simple. But it’s never just that. As the crisp Afro-Cuban conga-bongo-bell patterns lift up these ancient pentatonic melodies of the Andes, it’s possible to hear a spirit of borderless creativity operating on this bandstand. Here is the kind of strong, profound, vibrant sound that isolationist politicians cannot hear and therefore fear: An irresistible unified thing, drawn from many places and many proud traditions and nationalities.

The bright red sticker on the record says “Novamixagem” – New Mix – and “Novamasterizacao” – New Mastering.

Pretty standard catalog reissue ad copy language.

Except: The record in question is Elis Regina’s dramatic 1973 studio album Elis, and some who were involved in the creation of the work allege that there is more happening than just sonic improvements. They charge that the source recordings have been augmented.

Cesar Camargo Mariano, the pianist, arranger and Regina’s musical director who was integral to her creativity on stage and in the studio (and was her husband at the time), took to social media to express his dismay after the upgraded title was released in March.

“...I listened to (the edition) with sadness,” Mariano wrote of the 2026 Elis, which was authorized by Regina’s estate and masterminded by her oldest son, João Marcello Bôscoli, and engineer Ricardo Camera. “Sadness at hearing all the work of months spent creating the musical concept, the arrangements and performances, the recording and mixing plans—all studied and very carefully thought out by us—thrown in the trash. These issues, for me, are not subject to changes by third parties.”

Above: A track from the original LP that shows how precise Mariano was about the arrangement of a tune, right down to the way he voices chords at the piano.

Boscoli and the Elis Regina Estate are on firm legal ground; they control the late artist’s discography and can do with it whatever they deem to be appropriate.

Still, as a part of the team that developed the album’s aura of understated tension, Mariano is something more than a bystander. His expertise is foundational to the original document (and, it should be said, remains evident on the new iteration). He knows, probably better than any other living person, what Regina was seeking – a particular approach to storytelling built on dramatic pauses and subtle instrumental tensions.

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One of Mariano’s posts breaks down Boscoli’s augmentations to “É com esse que eu vou.” “Nothing justifies the change at the end of the track,” Mariano writes, “where the RMI keyboard track was “dragged” [I take that to mean cut and pasted] and brought forward by 4 bars (!).” He goes on to explain that the sparse orchestrations he and Elis created for the final portion of the song were intentional. “That space I left in suspense in the arrangement had a strong meaning.”

Mariano concludes his lament about “É com esse que eu vou” this way: “Besides the new arrangement and timbre of the instruments taking away all the groove and intentional swing, it’s now completely out of sync.”

Let’s go to the tape(s)!

Here’s the original mix:

And here’s the New 2026 Mix:

Does this set of slight alterations accrue to a net positive for the song – i.e., does it enhance a performance that’s been revered as definitive for 53 years? Or is this a case of ownership privilege? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Boscoli has undisputed permission to tamper with his late mother’s catalog. But: Does that right come with any corresponding obligation to the artistic process and its endless nuances? Does that right also allow the owner to ignore (or, worse, overrule) the input of the musicians and arrangers who actually shaped the music?

This and similar kerfuffles indicate a sensibility shift that’s underway. It’s about ownership, of course, and also the malleability of the building blocks of music. (Those building blocks are being abused daily by your friendly AI bots!) It’s also about respect, whether it’s OK for rightsholders to smudge or trample decisions about art that were made in a long-ago moment of creation. At present, the people who made those decisions, whose contributions frequently extend beyond what’s noted in the credits, do not have a say in the “new and improved” reissues. They are marginalized. Not even part of the discussion.

In coverage of this story in Brazilian media, journalists have taken a position of tolerance: It’s fine for the new mix to exist, just as long as it is identified as a new take. And with the crucial proviso that the original remains available — with indications on the packaging (as well as the pages of streaming platforms) — to clearly distinguish the releases.

Which brings us back to that sticker. It just says New Mix, New Mastering. It doesn’t say anything about the presence of Newly Added Musical Elements. Nothing on the cover – or on the pages of streaming platforms where the album is listed – helps a curious listener tell the 1973 version from the 2026 version. Except for that sticker on the shrinkwrap, which is trashbin-bound anyway.

That’s deceptive! It arguably does disservice to Regina’s legacy, as well as to Mariano and to all those who contributed to the album. Universal should update the packaging immediately.

As the noted Stoic Marcus Aurelius said: “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”

Sonny Rollins, the agile improvisor and peerless tenor saxophonist, was tuned to the shifting winds of the moment when he played.

And he was that way when he talked.

A master of spontaneous originality, Rollins enjoyed conversation. He died last week, at age 95, after creating foundational, genre-defining and genre-expanding recordings and live performances for more than half a century. (Shall we pause and think about that for a moment, Sabrina?)

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Rollins could be fiercely intellectual; when warranted, he displayed a professor’s knack for drilling down to the realm of micro-specifics on any/every topic. But while there, he was always a musician; he’d pivot on a dime and introduce and then dispense with counter-arguments, juxtaposing thoughts in exactly the same way he’d approach phrasing in a solo.

I was lucky enough to sit with Sonny Rollins several times for interviews. One of those exchanges took place at his apartment in Battery Park City, for a story that ran in Jazz Times magazine. Somehow we wandered into the subject of jazz criticism. I asked him for his thoughts on some of the young musicians (saxophonist Christopher Hollyday and trumpet player Marlon Jordan) then attracting boatloads of media attention. Here’s a bit of what he said:

[Disclosure statement: My interview “archive” is something of a mess. There are no dates on any of the interview tapes. I recorded audio on a portable cassette player that, I discovered only recently, had a nasty habit of recording a bit fast. (Unless the batteries were running down, in which case it would get progressively slower.) I used digital audio tools to clean up the sonics but left the voices as captured.]

Back in 1994, Wim Wenders made a film about the tumult of making films. It’s called Lisbon Story. Shot in a kind of art-murk, the work unfolds like a rhapsodic love ode to its location, the city of Lisbon. It’s not exactly a thriller.

Wenders trusted the music to Madredeus, a then-popular ensemble specializing in a modern update of Portuguese fado. This group, fronted by the extraordinary vocalist Teresa Salgueiro, reframed the heart-forward laments of fado into more mysterious, at times almost New Age, atmospheres.

Where fado leans into expressions of love anguish, Madredeus sought a cooler temperature; on the soundtrack album (titled Ainda, which is an adverb used in Portuguese to express continuity, persistence, staying power) and the equally transfixing O Espirito da Paz (1994), the melodies are simple, nondescript declarations that hover in mid-air like survelliance drones. The melodic core of “Ainda” is framed and supported by an intricate ongoing conversation between cello, accordion and two endlessly arpeggiating nylon-string guitars. As in traditional fado, the voice and the instruments are in communication together, breathing together. The music they make this way is a slow-cooked melancholy, simple and complex at the same time.

Madredeus performs in the film, and one memorable scene, above, centers around the impossibly languid “Ainda,” written by the group’s leader, Pedro Ayres Magalhães. It takes up four-plus minutes of film time, but the more entrancing album version lasts 7 minutes and 25 seconds. It snuck up on me the other day when I was letting the algorithm play DJ, and it promptly smacked me sideways with a realization about how much the act of listening has changed since 1994.

“Ainda” is seven minutes of long tones. It moves at a pace slower than crawling.

Salgueiro’s austere performance is astonishing just at the level of voice control, but she does much more than simply hold the notes: She varies their intensity, adding heat as the harmony slowly shifts, introducing subtle vibrato to suggest hints of emotional turbulence.

Her voice pushes and surges, seeking some sort of satisfying resolution. That’s the song’s basis, and its trick: It’s set to Perpetual Yearn. It doesn’t settle down and rest. Its harmony is built on a series of gorgeous suspensions, each surging toward resolutions that never actually attain peace. When, after several minutes of slow churn, Salgueiro ascends to her gorgeously poised (and remarkably delicate) upper register, the shift can be physically unsettling, like a jolt, if you’re not expecting it.

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I remember listening to and reviewing the Ainda soundtrack when it was released. At the time I likely didn’t notice how long the title track lasted. Because in 1995 (the soundtrack followed the film’s release by a few months), a seven minute fantasia comprised of long tones was no big deal.

Now? It is downright exotic.

“Ainda” returned randomly to my consciousness; as soon as it finished playing I had to hear it again. It has haunted me since – as a reminder of the mental processing tools that have been lost as smartphones have facilitated a steady and seemingly irreversible acceleration of daily life. Its reflective aura underscores how an artform like music, which can only be experienced in real time, depends on listeners who are willing to take the ride, and are patient enough to follow the undercurrents and riptides. Of, in this case, a series of preternaturally poised long tones.

A song like “Ainda” pops up in the manic crosstalking rush of 2026 as a curious challenge, not from some long ago age of Enlightenment but, more terrifyingly, the recent past: Can you sit within this riveting slow sound-world and let it whisper its truths to you for seven uninterrupted minutes? Dare!

The music of flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia didn’t start out as a sparks-flying audio fireworks display.

Quite the opposite: In the 1960s, de Lucia and his older brother Ramon de Algeciras recorded a series of albums that craftily situated Latin American melodies into the fingerpicked conversations of flamenco. They did a version of “Besame Mucho” with a smart string arrangement:

They connected the communal spirit of traditional flamenco to the wistful music of Brazil.

Even earlier, in 1965, de Lucia and guitarist Ricardo Mondrago conjured an intimate treatment of Cuban pianist Ernesto Lecuona’s “Malaguena,” from the composer’s 1928 evocation of Andalusian song Suite Andalucia. de Lucia adapted this arrangement for solo performance, and recorded it several times over the years.

Those who associate Paco de Lucia with his fiery, dizzyingly technical (some would say grandstanding) collaborations with guitarists John McLaughlin and Al DiMeola in the late ‘70s and ‘80s might find these interpretations to be easygoing easy listening. Almost quaint.

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They are certainly throwbacks. They belong to a different record-making era, that period in the 1960s when labels in the U.S. and Europe, in pursuit of crossover-style hits, convinced artists to do versions of familiar standards and evergreen tunes. Like those above.

The results could, in some hands, be pure cheese. But the emphasis on repertoire had an unexpected side benefit for artists like de Lucia: It encouraged them to apply the techniques acquired in the music they’d first known and studied to a broader range of related styles. It challenged artists to interface with customs and chord voicings that were not exactly second nature.

And: The emphasis on repertoire encouraged artists and, importantly, their audiences to become curious beyond the territorial borders of a favorite genre. What de Lucia is playing atop bongo and the percussion patterns of rumba for his 1973 hit “Entre dos aguas” (“Between Two Waters”) is something entirely different from traditional flamenco; many scholars cite this track and its album Fuente y Caudal, as the beginning of modern global flamenco on guitar.

A tour through the early discography of de Lucia shows how he built on the commonalities, first in those duos, then as a solo artist and then across the ten albums he made with the vocalist Cameron de la Isla. These are now regarded as foundational catalysts for “new flamenco” in the 1970s.

Check out de Lucia’s pensive introduction to “Se Murio Mi Madre” with de la Isla. It’s part of La Busqueda/The Journey, an excellent anthology of de Lucia’s music that was released in 2015 as a companion to a documentary of the same name. (Another item on the ever-expanding list of filmic homages to musical geniuses…).

Regardless of the date stamp, virtuosity is a prerequisite for flamenco guitar. As de Lucia evolved, he leaned into his technique, using it to stun and amaze while also somehow creating indelible melodic statements. He framed heartfelt themes with hyper-precise articulation, and conjured elaborate spiderwebbed arpeggio phrases that other guitarists could only accomplish through overdubbing. Here are two contrasting versions of the propulsive “Rio Ancho,” the first from his 1976 album Almoraima, and the second as part of a live medley recorded in 1980 on the famously dizzingly Friday Night in San Francisco with McLaughlin and DiMeola.

Paco de Lucia might be grandstanding a bit in the second clip, a gypsy showing he understands crowdpleasing imperatives at least as well as the jazz players. Could also be that he’s just immersed in flow. What he’s doing is less playing guitar than engaging in an airborne dance, a glide animated by poise and an innate unwavering commitment to the almighty rhythm. Even at peak velocity, there’s no strain in his game.

de Lucia himself said it best: “The hands find a way to do what the heart wants to say.”

It’s a hot mess.

Here’s how to tell: When members of the New York Times culture desk got together for podcasting (or would that be “marketing”?) purposes to discuss their rather elaborate 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters project, some of them gushed about the alchemic mysteries of hitmaking.

Some talked about artists they, personally, like or don’t like. (Hint: huge red flag!)

Some talked about “cultural impact,” as though they possess unique sensors for divining such a squishy thing in our polarized world.

What they didn’t talk about: Music.

How they didn’t talk about it: As critics.

[Don’t worry. Today is not the day for (yet another) repeat of the sermon about the timeless – and ideally self-evident – elements of songcraft, and where they’re missing and where they shine brightest in contemporary music.]

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What else they didn’t talk about: The criteria. At first it looks like the process was almost scientific. The Times sought out songwriter nominations from 250 music “experts” – full disclosure: I’m not terribly butt-hurt to have missed the cut.

Then the Times, which it must be said is one of the last newspapers that makes any effort to publish arts criticism on a regular basis, poured the more than 700 nominated talents into some super-secret algorithmic sausage grinder and turned over the resulting rankings to a team of six “Times-affiliated critics” — each of whom, the Times says, “has written about music for decades.” Translation: You music lovers are in good hands. These are the experts: Wesley Morris, Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, Lindsay Zoladz, Jody Rosen and Danyel Smith.

As Rick Beato notes in this funny/sad postscript to his first reaction video, this panel includes thinkers from all the best schools – Harvard, Princeton etc. Yet none have had significant formal training in music. Does that matter? Should it?

So maybe Beato is a bit over the top. But his point is valid. In order to be something useful for humans, or at the least something other than pure ragebait, a critical culling needs to communicate clearly its filters and apply them in the same ways to everyone under consideration.

This list does not.

Diane Warren, a professional hitmaker who has been enormously successful across decades with a formulaic recipe for audio treacle that works over whatever beat is in vogue, is a Greatest Living Songwriter? Is that on the basis of Art or Innovation or Market Share? Unclear!

(Should Market Share be a filter? Let’s ask Lucinda Williams, a Greatest whose welcome inclusion reflects entirely different math; her total sales are a Diane Warren rounding error.) And what’s up with the fact that Warren is one of the very few on the list who is not also a performer?

Is that a slide in the canonical criteria, or is there no criteria beyond what Wesley Morris Likes or Dislikes?

And speaking of Warren, can we talk for a minute about melody? (OK, you’re right, she doesn’t belong in that conversation….).

I get why Beyonce is not here; lots of her songs reflect the work of committees. But they’re songs, with easily remembered hooks. Jay-Z is here, curiously, and it’s likely the 6 experts can’t sing the melodic hooks from three different Jay-Z songs — and if they can, it’s because those hooks were written by others. Jay-Z is a rap artist, and certainly in the Greatness discussion there, and a canny businessman and influential public figure. What he does as an artist is not songwriting as Richard Rodgers or Woody Guthrie or Taylor Swift (on the list) or Billie Eilish (sigh, not on list!) understand it. Or as people who teach songwriting understand it. Does that matter? Should it?

In one of the several explanations Times cultural critic Morris has offered for the choices, he suggests that with this list the Times is acknowledging that the very definition of song is changing, and this list is on the leading edge of representing a newly coalescing understanding in that regard.

So….does that mean the definition of a song no longer encompasses melodic information? Or something as quaint as a singable melody? Let’s ask Paul Simon, one of the 30, who’s been known to agonize at length over the shapes and contours of his themes. Before the words. Beyond the words. Sending the words airborne.

His art lies in the ways those melodies engage with, animate and extend the resonance of the words. Which is a related but different art than building a vibey jam or a platform for polyrhythmic rapping.

Let’s just skip right over harmony, because, hey, we all know that Bad Bunny could drop a hit using John Coltrane’s Giant Steps substitutions if he wanted to. The more limited harmonic palette, the one-chord approach, suits him – and more importantly suits his audience. Besides, these restrictions are the mother of great art. Also: There’s joy in repetition. (Bad Bunny didn’t write that one, tho….).

Just one more metric, among many, to poke (or lament its absence): Output. There’s lots to love about the last Bad Bunny record, and less to love on the releases before it. His inclusion (and the perhaps corresponding exclusion of classic-rock hitmakers like Billy Joel with decades-long discographies) here feels like a triple-axel pretzel knot by the Cabal of Six to champion recency over longer-term contributions.

Which is to say: At times, this list is trying to play, or game, the futures market: Bad Bunny may one day become insanely prolific, but his catalog to this point seems light if the paradigm is “greatest,” while also being thin on what a critic might cite as innovation. He’s yet to deliver songs that evolve in musically meaningful ways from start to finish, or songs that have sophisticated chord changes or dramatic interlude passages like those in, say, “Born To Run.” Or existential narrative subtlety of the sort found in “Piano Man.” Then again, Mariah Carey’s catalog is fairly light on those too. She’s here why, exactly? To make Lionel Richie look presidential?

**

Criticism is (*was*?) service.

It’s an act of advocacy for works created by the thought leaders and innovators in a discipline who, by talent and sheer will, are dragging art a step or two forward. That’s a primary function of a critic. Songwriters catch bursts of emotion and random thunderclaps of inspiration, and then organize those bursts using objectively measurable techniques. The role of the critic is (was?) to understand the tools in use, and the basic rules of the art — everyone in music starts with the same 12 notes of the tempered scale, with creative exceptions like the microtone-slinging Angine de Poitrine, above). And then the critic’s job is to explore why the specific usage by Artist A is measurably more sophisticated than that of Artist B.

This list and its smug accompanying essays do not do that.

The critical list, like this one, is an attempt to drop bread crumbs for future generations, to point those who are curious in the direction of groundbreaking work.

This list does not always do that.

Instead, it reads like a conference room compromise negotiation about personal favorites that uses the acknowledged world-class songwriters (Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, both thankfully present here) as a kind of credibility screen or sheild. In the podcast discussions, those titans are discussed as any sane person’s “gotta haves,” proof of this as a sober endeavor. The inclusion of Young Thug is something else. Still unexplained, unfortunately.

**

There’s been lots of griping about omissions. At one point deep in the shouting comments on the Times site, the eyes glazed over and I was like: Why are we getting all worked up over petty personal taste when we could be immersed in the shadowy realms conjured by songwriters like Joe Henry, Tom Waits, or Alejandro Escovedo?

Regardless of who the experts overlooked, there’s an even more glaring/telling omission from this mess: Jon Pareles. Since 1988, he has been the Times’ primary popular music critic, writing with precision on hip-hop phenoms and blues iconoclasts, African pop stars and jazz renegades. His openminded work shows it is possible to do criticism while educating readers, providing context. While keeping his personal likes and dislikes out of the copy.

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It’s impossible to know if the list would have been different with Pareles’ involvement. One thing is for sure: He would have brought the ears of a musician to the discussions. Probably helped clarify some basic concepts that were evidently murky to some participants. Like: What Is A Song. Why Its Building Blocks Matter. And Why Popularity Is a Nonsense Metric.

In July 2025, the Times culture editor Sia Michel announced, via memo, that Pareles was among several veteran critics being reassigned. Describing arts coverage as being at an “inflection point,” Michel wrote “It is important to bring different perspectives to core disciplines as we help our coverage expand beyond the traditional review.” The Times, Michel wrote, needed to meet the moment, to appeal to a “growing national and international audience.”

Presumably this expensive and gargantuan editorial effort around the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters is exactly the type of thing Michel envisioned. They might still be high-fiving in celebration over there at Times HQ – so happy they can hardly count all the clicks! Proof of engagement! That is the illusory euphoria of a downbound train, though. Because this expensive mess of listmaking is one extra large nail in the coffin of criticism.

Not saying that Travis Wammack was some kind of Southern Les Paul. But as a young man he did leave a drive-in theater with the speaker apparatus still attached to the front window – for the purpose of hearing what his electric guitar sounded like going through it.

He told the story to the regional news site AL.com in 2018. “I thought, “I wonder what that thing would sound like with a guitar coming through it?”

“So when we left the drive-in that night, I accidentally forgot and left that thing hanging on my window. I took it home and….fixed it up and I run my Super Reverb (guitar amp) into it, and you talk about a sound. You can hear it on my two Atlantic records, “Stay” and “Louie Louie,” I’m playing through one of them old gray drive-in speakers. I’ve never heard a pedal or anything that could get that sound.”

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Then there’s the genius tinkering that Wammack did back in 1962, at age 19, for his first single, the instrumental “Scratchy.”

Dig that classic groove, and Wammack’s mix of crisp articulation and wild pitch-bends, the result of another experiment – err, accident. The guitarist broke a string during a session, and the only replacement at the studio was an A string for a tenor banjo. This was the time before light-gauge strings for guitar, and Wammack discovered the banjo string allowed him more control to manipulate the tone. “From then on that’s what I started putting on there. Years later, they came out with a light-gauge guitar string, but you can hear it on “Scratchy,” man, I can stretch that thing over the neck, just about.”

“Scratchy” contains other sonic innovations – Wammack created a distortion circuit using lamp cords, a crude precursor to the distortion pedal. “I used it in the studio and have been credited with the first fuzz-tone.” And don’t miss the strange stop-time vocal phrase; years before the Beatles, it’s an example of tape manipulation, rolling in reverse.

Wammack was not just about gimmicks; check the B-side of “Scratchy,” a blistering fast romp called “FireFly” that apparently confounded Jimmy Page when he tried to learn it.

Wammack was a sound searcher, an alert musician who had a big, authoritative tone that wove twinges of the blues into the restrained groove-observant simmer of R&B. He used it memorably on countless sessions in Muscle Shoals, Alabama like this one, backing the blind guitarist and singer Clarence Carter.

Just listen to that little single-line phrase Wammack plays behind Carter’s vocal on the refrain. It’s a coy little counterline that needs no lo-fi sonic effects; he nails it with gentleness every time.

A man with diverse interests including snake wrangling (!), Wammack was part of the FAME Gang, the third great rhythm section assembled by songwriter/producer Rick Hall. The first section backed Arthur Alexander on “You’d Better Move On,” a huge hit that drew both American and British artists to Hall’s small studio. The second, which became known as the Swampers, further developed Hall’s unique blend of soul, country music and R&B; the group proved essential to records by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and others before splitting with Hall to establish a rival studio, Muscle Shoals Sound. Within a year or so, the Swampers were hosting the Rolling Stones (“Brown Sugar” was recorded there), and backing Leon Russell, Paul Simon and the Staple Singers, among others.

Hall’s third group the FAME Gang included both white and black musicians – the first crew and the Swampers were mostly white, prompting confusion amongst some visiting artists – and included Wammack and guitarist Junior Lowe, keyboardist Clayton Ivey, bassist Jesse Boyce and drummer Freeman Brown.

That band supported Carter on the country-leaning hardship song “Patches,” one of his biggest hits, as well as deep-groove slices of Carter salaciousness like 1973’s “I’m The Midnight Special.” (Check the rhythm guitar, a cannily slowed-down appropriation of the rhythm guitar foundation for the Doobie Brothers’ signature “Listen to the Music,” which had been released the year before…)

The crew backed Candi Staton on her terrific cover of “Stand By Your Man.”

And that’s Wammack alongside his regular collaborators, bringing the heat to the Osmonds’ breaththrough hit “One Bad Apple.” Further proof that Hall’s FAME magic could work for just about anyone….

The guitarist’s solo debut arrived in 1972, but it’s his 1975 date for Capricorn, Not For Sale, that is fully delightful, capturing his wickedly funky long-distance grooves, deep guitar conversations and slouchy, effortless melodies.

That album also includes Wammack’s version of “Greenwood Mississippi.”

Wammack and Junior Lowe had a demo of that song when Little Richard came to Muscle Shoals in 1971 to record The Rill Thing, now regarded among his most potent later albums. Wammack told AL.com that when Richard and his entourage showed up at the studio, he and Lowe told Little Richard about it, and he asked to hear it. “I had it on cassette and took it out and played it in my pickup truck and he said, “Travis, I’ve got to record that.” So we started cutting it and about 15 or 20 minutes into the session. I’m watching Little Richard in the vocal booth and he’s shaking his head. And finally, he comes out of the booth and says, “Travis, where is that music you were singing with? Because I’ll put my vocal on the demo. I want to sing on that music track.” He did, and a few years later Wammack became part of Little Richard’s touring band.

Wammack died in late February, at 81. Another titan of the small print in the liner notes, he left behind a stack of significant contributions to historic records, and a few great records of his own. It’s a shame that Capricorn or whichever conglomerate now controls it has not reissued the prophetically titled Not For Sale, but it’s not surprising. We’re living in a time when the dominant access points for music, streaming services, display daily contempt for musicians like Travis Wammack – simply by not representing them in the credits. Under those dismaying and profoundly anti-music circumstances, it’s up to us to keep the sounds of crazy scratchy searchers like Travis Wammack alive.

Percussionist Nana Vasconcelos left Brazil in 1971 for the most ordinary musician reason: He was hired to tour with the international band of saxophonist Gato Barbieri.

The timing was exquisite: Many artists were leaving Brazil to escape the culture-clamp of the military dictatorship, disrupting ensembles and work prospects for those left behind. Plus in 1972, Barbieri became a celebrity for his contributions to the softcore art film Last Tango in Paris, which included Vasconcelos on the soundtrack. The saxophonist could (and did!) tour on that celebrity for years.

It was a solid gig for someone like Juvenal de Holanda Vasconcelos, whose broad musical family included artists of international stature who left Brazil (Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso) and artists who remained (Milton Nascimento and others in Som Imaginario, a band that was key to Clube de Esquina).

After the Barbieri tour, Vasconcelos, who died in 2016 at the age of 71, settled in Paris. There, he became part of a lowkey but thriving Brazilian underground, making records under his own name and collaborating on projects for others in a number of studios. At a time of upheaval, he found unusual opportunities and developed alliances that lasted for years – including the enduring one with Brazilian composer/multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti. It’s easy to imagine Vasconcelos leaving a 1976 tracking session in Paris with Teca & Ricardo, and hustling to Oslo, Norway to record Dança das Cabeças with Gismonti – the landmark conversation that began a long collaboration:

A creative catalyst with hand drums and rattles and exotic percussion instruments, Vasconcelos lifted up just about every session, transforming the already slightly curious – see the incantory psychedelic folk of Manduka below – into truly indelible music.

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Today’s brief tour is by no means comprehensive, as many records for small labels or vanity operations were not distributed widely in those days – and only a small subset of those made it to the digital realm. Which is to say: There’s more out there.

Don Cherry: Organic Music Society (1973).

Vasconcelos was born in Recife, in the Northeast of Brazil. Throughout his life, he drew on and repurposed the intense music of this region, as he does here to open Don Cherry’s stirring Organic Music Society, punctuating a stately wordless hymn with wild berimbau commentaries.

Teca & Ricardo: “Beberibe” (1975).

Here’s the other extreme of Vasconcelos’ berimbau mastery: Check the way his crisp articulation provides this traditional folk song with its rhythmic foundation. Vasconcelos grew up with singer Teca Calazans – she told researchers that she gave him his first berimbau when they were playing folkloric theater events in Recife – and contributed greatly to records made by the duo, with help from Nelson Angelo and others, at Paris’ Studio Grand Armee in the mid ‘70s.

Nana Vasconcelos: Africadeus (1973).

Vasconcelos’ first solo effort also marks the beginning of a relationship with Saravah records, the creative French label that documented many projects from Brazilian artists in the ‘70s. The extended opening track offers more berimbau tricks, but this piece, which closes the album, shows the unique language the percussionist developed to personalize common folk song types like Cirandas.

Nana Vasconcelos: Amazonas (1973).

Absolute genius gorgeousness here, from Vasconcelos’ second album for Saravah. Produced by popular singer Fagner and featuring another clutch performance by Nelson Angelo.

Pierre Akendengue: Nandipo (1974).

Born in Gabon, Pierre Akendengue began writing songs while studying in France. Nandipo, his debut, suggests that musicians in Paris at the time were curious about exploring beyond genre and territorial boundaries. This piece starts in a spry groove that’s easy for Vasconcelos and his frequent collaborators Angelo and Novelli to send airborne. There’s a wonderful half-time interlude near the halfway mark; check the way these expert supporting players organically restart the groove.

Nana Nelson Angelo Novelli (1975)

Speaking of multi-instrumental wizard Nelson Angelo, this lively trio session finds three musicians affiliated with Som Imaginario (Angelo, Vasconcelos and the multi-instrumentalist Novelli) working in a more spacious way, creating almost ECM-ish interactive platforms for pieces that might have started as pop songs. This track displays Angelo’s knack for constructing tense multi-guitar voicings; “Pinote” shows how inventive Vasconcelos could be in the studio, situating various percussion instruments into multitracked chorales.

Joyce/Nana/Mauricio Maestro: Visions of Dawn (1976)

This remarkable slice of acoustic Brazilian folk was recorded in 1976 in Paris, but sat unreleased until sleuths at Far Out Recordings rescued it from obscurity in 2009. Most tracks move at an effortless, windswept glide; this one, set in a church-processional tempo, displays that uniquely Brazilian gift for ear-stretching vocal harmonies. (Fwiw, Nana could sing, too….).

Nana and Manduka (1976).

The son of Brazilian poet Thiago de Mello, Manduka was an unusual singer-songwriter whose path included detours into the avant garde and Brazilian rock. Before that, though, he collaborated with Vasconcelos, for the Le Chant du Monde label, on a spare, freak-folk-leaning record that spotlights his deep voice in tandem with Vasconcelos’ assured work on conga.

Marcelino Burú: Sessão Cabidela (1978).

The only recording from Minas Gerais singer-songwriter Marcelino Burú (now known as an actor and theater presenter) is an earthy gem – simple, earnest, fiercely tuneful. It also provides perspective on Vasconcelos’ approach to traditional styles – check his effortless, locked-down samba patterns.

Seu Feliz:

Cabidela:

This is from the YouTube page of audio engineer and restorer Nick Dellow. Earlier this week, Dellow posted two tracks the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson recorded in 1936 in a hotel room in San Antonio. Substack’s The Honest Broker, Ted Gioia, alerted folks, and we here at Echo Locator are grateful for the headsup.

They’re both test pressings. Above is the rare take 2 of “Cross Road Blues” — the one that’s been endlessly anthologized on Johnson’s official releases is take 1. The earlier iterations are not anywhere near as pristine-sounding as this version! Bravo Dellow.

And those who are Robert Johnson true believers also need to hear the radically cleaned up “Come On In My Kitchen,” a staple of Johnson’s repertoire. Everything about this — the heavy guitar, the full-voiced singing and gorgeous hummed affirmations — is eye-opening, if not harrowing!

Enjoy.

“Phong would pick up a stick and we couldn’t get him to stop,” Dave Soldier, a musician and composer who is co-founder of a conservation center in Lampang, Northern Thailand, told NPR years ago. He was talking about the soloist heard above, one of 14 elephants who, since around 2001, have participated in a novel experiment encouraging — and documenting — music made by elephants.

Inspired by the visual art of the center’s elephants, Soldier and elephant advocate Richard Lair created pachyderm-sized instruments using metal and wood, and pitched them to scales commonly used in traditional Thai music. They built giant drums and gongs that the elephants could play using mallets held in their trunks. And then they set up recording gear nearby, and began to record any time inspiration struck the herd. The below clip from an ABC news report shows some of the playing techniques…..dig the harmonica!

The project began as a “what if?” experiment; Soldier and Lair noticed that when music was playing, the elephants would gather and move closer to listen. As they introduced instruments to the “studio,” the humans took care to not overly influence the animals, though at one point they did record the elephonic attempts at Beethoven.

The orchestra performs for visitors to the Center, which is the locus point for efforts to save the endangered Thai elephants as well as the site of Thailand’s only elephant hospital.

The music has been released on three CDs and via digital platforms; Soldier’s Bandcamp page includes links to purchase, which helps support the Center’s work.

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Some of the selections involve instrumentalists, including cellist Jami Sieber, collaborating with the elephants. After her first visit, Sieber wrote “When I began playing my electric cello, they gathered around me in a circle. While initially uncertain about being surrounded by these massive and grand beings, I soon recognized that this was a profound moment as I witnessed their curious response to the music: bodies swaying, heads swinging in perfect rhythm, trunks reaching and exploring, and then joining in with their own vocalized sounds.” The next day, she met the Elephant orchestra with their instruments. Together, she recalls, "we engaged in a remarkable dialogue; the unspoken language was music - at least by my definition.”

The interactions between elephants and human guest musicians are interesting. But there is something more stirring, more organic and ethereal, about the deferential way these animals play together without guests. They interact respectfully, listening as much as participating. They are intentional about the notes, and where they are placed and what happens after: The piece called “Monsoon Tempest” begins with single mallet tones that ring out before the next is struck. Forty seconds in, another instrument is heard, playing a repeating rhythmic phrase; from there other elephants take up the rhythmic motif, and more mallets join a discussion. Eventually a drum implies a stately walking tempo, and this lumbering, elephant-like tempo is reinforced with metallic crashes that happen at (mostly!) regular intervals.

The rational mind wants to say: This isn’t music. That’s because the human mind is constantly sorting and classifying, seeking or imposing some sort of narrative logic on situations to “explain” them. The recordings of the Thai Elephant Orchestra sidestep all that. They encourage us to think on the big celestial wavelength, where the long arm of AI can’t (yet) reach. They celebrate the act of musicmaking as a precious universal gift, innate and mystical and beyond reason. Dependent on intellect one minute, transcending it the next.

Jeff Buckley: Live at L’Olympia. Double live from 2 nights in 1995. Extras include Buckley and Alim Qasimov engaging in some competitive Qawwali singing from a sacred music festival that same year.

John Coltrane Quartet: France 1965: The Complete Concerts. Captured on the last European tour of saxophonist Coltrane’s classic quartet — with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones — this set from British label Charly includes the only top-to-bottom live version of A Love Supreme featuring the thundering foursome.

Mark Lanegan: Bubblegum Original Draft. Here’s the fascinating audio backstory on a harrowing and deeply influential record from 2004. The final version of Bubblegum is notable for its grainy, industrial rhythms and textures; this set brings it to human scale, gathering Lanegan’s early drum-machine-supported solo sketches. Some of these Hotel Sessions dwell in a shadowy and disconsolate dream state that Lanegan somehow retained on the “finished” product.

Pink Floyd: Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975. This is an essential tour document that started as a bootleg. It’s been cleaned up by one of the most sensitive sonic gurus, Steven Wilson, and that alone is reason to purchase. Fearless prediction: the 4-LP vinyl version will disappear instantly on RSD.

Ryuchi Sakamoto: End of Asia. Originally released in Japan in 1982, this gathers the composer’s original works for Yellow Magic Orchestra and early solo pieces, and reimagines them in a classical context. Could be astonishing! According to the RSD description, this version is the first time this title is being released globally.

McCoy Tyner: The Seeker. This previously unreleased live concert, from the 1993 Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy, features the agile vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson with pianist McCoy Tyner and trio (bassist Avery Sharpe and drummer Aaron Scott). They’re playing Tyner originals including the potent title track, as well as jam-session tunes like “How Deep Is the Ocean.”

When it comes to romantic song, there is no replacing the human voice. The voice stirs empathy, guides us through the steps that led to the end of a love affair. The words break down the circumstances of a heartbreak.

Whether they told of betrayal or affections unreturned or melancholy longing, most of the Latin American love songs called boleros were narrative expressions, intended to be sung. Here’s Dinah Washington in 1959, transforming the classic bolero “Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado” into a pensive ballad with English lyrics (“What a Difference a Day Makes”). It’s one of her signature hits.

Not all legendary singers caught the magic like that. For his 1958 Cole Espanol, Nat King Cole recorded in Havana with a large ensemble — but learned the Spanish lyrics by singing phonetically. That, inevitably, leads to some stilted phrasing; the below playlist includes Cole’s lone instrumental on the LP, an enchantingly relaxed version of “Tu, Mi Delirio.” Maybe he didn’t need the words after all?

The act of uncoupling a love ode from its (literal, fixed) narrative can be transformational: When a song like “Besame Mucho” is rendered in a less rigidly cadenced way (as Gonzalo Rubalcaba does), everything opens up. There’s space for the deep melodies to linger in the air. And as they unfold, these melodies become less declarative; they move differently and land differently. Songs that sometimes seem trite when sung take on new dimensions. Becoming poignant beyond the words.

Last week in this space I wrote about the jazz pianist Tete Montoliu and his sustained careerlong exploration of boleros. He’s represented on the below playlist alongside other tremendous instrumentalists — the Cuban pianists Frank Emilio Flynn, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Chucho and Bebo Valdez, and Ruben Gonzalez, who was integral to the success of the Buena Vista Social Club. (A few vocal selections are included to reflect the range and continued vitality of this enduring song form.) Enjoy!

In the Bandcamp ad copy for Free Boleros, the 1996 duet album featuring flamenco singer Mayte Martin and Spanish pianist Tete Montoliu, the bolero is described as a “familiar nocturnal melody” that can make you “forget about time, the world and everything in it.” And since bolero characteristically arrives drenched in drama, the scribe then goes a touch more purple: “A bolero is a last chance to slash your wrists with the edge of a metaphor before doing it with a bread knife.” Wish I wrote that.

The bolero came out of the Cuban trova tradition in the late 19^th century, and spread widely; the Bloomsbury Encylopedia of Popular music of the World characterizes it as the “quintessential Latin American romantic song of the twentieth century.”

You might know some of the famous ones: “Besame Mucho,” “Dos Gardenias” (repopularized by the Buena Vista Social Club), “Somos Novios.”

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Montoliu, who died in 1997 at age 64, was blind from birth. Primarily known in the U.S. as a jazz pianist, he balanced an array of forces when he improvised: He used an almost glib, Oscar Peterson-like technique captivate listeners, and then wowed with deeper and more subtle gifts – his stark, lyrical approach to melody, his delicate and impressionistic sense of chordal grandeur. Montoliu’s discography includes a raft of solo explorations, a beautiful set of Brazilian themes interwoven into medleys (one of his specialties), a tremendous duo effort with saxophonist George Coleman, solo recordings of show tunes and standards, trio dates playing the jazz repertoire.

As even that tiny list shows, Montoliu had serious range. And yet, even when he’s throwing down thunderous reharmonizations or high-speed bebop lines, there are usually traces of bolero whispering through his music.

My favorite Montoliu recording is more explicitly aimed. Boleros (1974) reimagines bolero classics as platforms for fleet, fanciful and still genre-reverent improvisation. Many tracks, including “Adoro,” have sensitive bass and percussion accompaniment. Montoliu begins with a cocktail piano flourish, then settles into a moody reverie once the tempo is established. His solo celebrates the theme and delights in possible variations, an inquiry into the many colors, tones and shapes that wistfulness can take.

Twenty two years later, Montoliu returned to some of these tunes, on the aptly titled live recording Free Boleros with flamenco singer Mayte Martin. Here’s their rendition of “Adoro.”

Martin takes her time, interpreting the theme in taut and measured phrases that are like the Cliff’s Notes of heartbreak. Montoliu reads the vocalist’s moves as a cue for concision; he frames the theme with small gestures, painterly colors. The essence of the song is the same, but this time Montoliu is a touch less scale-happy; his lines tease out the emotional nuances of bolero. This track is especially recommended for those infatuated with la diva Rosalia.

And please take a moment to appreciate Montoliu’s transfixing understatement backing Martin on the classic “El Dia Que Me Queiras.” Again, there’s a touch of cocktail hour, but never schmaltz. Notice the clarity Montoliu brings to the harmony: He outlines the key chord changes the way a cabaret accompanist would, providing Martin with the precise, perfectly timed chords that lead into the next line of lyric. And the one after that. It’s a slow kind of magic.

Montoliu occupies a strange niche – he was not a traditionalist and also not a renegade. He ported jazz ideas into folk songs, and opened up pathways that expanded those songs while retaining (in the case of bolero) its melancholic weight, its sadness. These two records, and others in his catalog, offer ways to trace Montoliu’s approaches and evolutions: He understood bolero one way as a young musician, and in other ways later on.

That’s a direct result of repeat exposure to and multiple at-bat attempts on the same material; as students of music we are lucky to be able to catch an artist like Tete Montoliu taking those swings at various points on his road. There was a time when his focus was forward-looking art albums and dazzling straightahead jazz. Yet even then, he was not afraid to play the melody of a simple declarative bolero – and play it lovingly, in ways that poured light onto its hidden contours. He was an original thinker who understood the through-lines of tradition, a flamethrower and flametender at the same time.