 Boston-based saxophonist helps keep jazz alive
Kevin T. Cox
Walter Beasley will have a very busy weekend — with four shows at Scullers Jazz Club and an in-store appearance at the Circuit City store in Dorchester’s South Bay Center — but he won’t have to travel far. The contemporary jazz icon has made the Boston area his home for over twenty years. Better known nationally than locally, the singer, saxophonist, educator and entrepreneur is one of Boston’s greatest musical treasures.
As a child growing up in southern California, Beasley was surrounded by musical influences — gospel, jazz, R&B, Latin and more. Those sounds moved him, and inspired him to move others through his music. Full story
|
 Lack of focus knocks out ambitious ‘Six Rounds’
Dan Devine
Six Rounds / Six Lessons,” the new production by theater group Company One, opens with a declaration for a drastic change in black youth culture.
“We’ve got to be a revolution wearing a do-rag, a fitted cap and some Tims,” the young man says.
While playwright John Oluwole ADEkoje clearly has the talent, wit and ambition to be a part of that revolution, his overloaded and under-edited script for “Six Rounds / Six Lessons” suggests that he still needs some seasoning before he’s ready to give marching orders.
Full story
|
|
 Grandmaster Flash among Hall of Fame inductees
Nekesa Mumbi Moody
Instead of guitars, there were turntables. Scratches replaced soaring riffs. An induction speech was read off a Blackberry. The hip-hop era arrived Monday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first hip-hop act to be inducted into the Rock Hall, joining other acts that represented a wide swath of artists: college rock favorites R.E.M., punk rock poet Patti Smith, rockers Van Halen and ’60s girl group The Ronettes.
Jay-Z, the recently unretired rapper and Def Jam Records president, noted how far rap has come since the days when Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five exposed the world to gritty stories about the streets of New York on songs like “The Message.” Full story
|
