Madagascar

Strut continues its essential compilation series of Indian Ocean sounds with ‘Alefa Madagascar’, the first compilation to document the unique culture of salegy, soukous and soul on the island during the ‘70s and ‘80s.

2010 remastered first time on CD reissue of the 1981 album, released by soul supergroup Madagascar on the Arista label. In the early 80's was not the most favorable time to be a soul band. Or young and talented without a care of the evils of the world… but this one album remains as a very collectable addition in the history of soul music. The album sounded like no one else out there, at the time. The notable track on the album was the song 'Rainbow', with Marva King and John Barnes taking the leads, became a song highly popular in the U. K. "Baby Not Tonight" and " Rainbow" were the only singles of the album to chart on the US R&B Chart in 1981 and 1982 respectively.

“The best new thing that has happened in European jazz for a long time” (Le Monde), Emile Parisien has formed a top-flight American-European sextet for this album, his seventh as leader or co-leader on ACT. The band will be touring in 2022, the year which also marks the tenth anniversary of Parisien’s first appearance on an ACT album.

As part of ECM'0bs Old & New Masters series of box sets, John Abercrombie's The First Quartet collects three albums recorded for the label between 1978 and 1980. Two titles, 1979's Abercrombie Quartet and 1981's M, have been unavailable for decades. By the guitarist's own admission, this band represents the guitarist's first time as a "proper" bandleader. His earlier dates on ECM had been co-led sessions (Timeless, Gateway, Sargasso Sea), a solo album (Characters), and sideman gigs (Jack DeJohnette's New Directions, David Liebman's Lookout Farm, etc.). These three dates also represent an important foundation for Abercrombie as a composer.

Folksongs for a Nuclear Village was Shadowfax's sixth album and its first not to be released on the label Windham Hill. The only remaining original members Chuck Greenberg (saxophones and flutes) and G.E. Stinson (guitars) were surrounded for this album by Phil Maggini (bass, keyboards), Stuart Nevitt (drums, percussion), Charles Bisharat (violin), and David Lewis (keyboards), with additional support in the percussion department provided by longtime collaborators Emil Richards and Michael Spiro. All band members contributed at least one piece, something new for Shadowfax, usually dominated by the writing team of Stinson and Greenberg. The music on this album was first created for Louise Durkee's dance performance…

All things being relative, this is Weather Report's straightahead album, where the elaborate production layers of the late-'70s gave way to sparer textures and more unadorned solo improvisation in the jazz tradition, electric instruments and all. The flaw of this album is the shortage of really memorable compositions; it is more of a vehicle for the virtuosic feats of what is considered by some to be the classic WR lineup – Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Robert Thomas, Jr. and Peter Erskine. For Erskine, this is is first full studio album and he amply demonstrates his terrific sense of forward drive unique among the other superb drummers in WR annals.

Ibn Battuta, dubbed the traveler of Islam, was a Moroccan scholar who at the age of 21 began a series of travels that eventually covered all of the Muslim world and several lands beyond. He traversed the Middle East, making the pilgrimage to Mecca and seeing the other great capitals of the region; traveled to what was then El Andalus in Spain and along the Mediterranean coast; recorded the glories of the Byzantine empire in its later stages; traveled to India, where he was appointed the Sultan's ambassador to China and described that culture as well…