The amorphous Unified Jazz Ensemble has changed to a quartet setting from their 1996 quintet album, Small Town Stories. On this outing, UJE shoots for cooler hues on their ten appealing originals.
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time
Can jazz’s rich tradition of eye-catching cover art survive in the MP3 era?
