New Tunes for the New Year

Ring in the new year with a new playlist of recent releases from Rhythm Planet!

By Tom Schnabel • Jan 1, 2020 • 2 min read

Time to ring in the new year with a new Rhythm Planet playlist of recent releases in a variety of musical styles. To begin, we hear three classical pieces, but two come with a twist. First is a new solo violin sonata of J.S. Bach, then a piece by Debussy as arranged by a Japanese marimba player, ending with a jazzy marimba-cello Bach duet from the Canadian duo Stick&Bow. Their album is called Resonance.

We segue into a new, never-issued song by the late Hugh Masekela, recorded years ago in Lesotho, South Africa. Then we hear one from the latest album by Hungarian jazz singer Rozina Pátkai before sampling from two glorious box sets of audiophile magic of the music of Chet Baker and Miles Davis, produced by the Craft Recordings label. More jazz follows, with a Blue Note audiophile vinyl reissue of Tina Brooks’ classic album Minor Move from the label’s Tone Poet series. Next comes a great young tenor player, Roxy Coss, with her song “Females Are Strong As Hell.”

We travel to Morocco with gnawa trance music from the debut release of the all-female group Bnat Timbouktou(Daughters of Timbuktu) led by the young Asmâa Hamzaoui. We then hear a nice cut called “Guava” from Dub Mentor’s album A Slow Hot Wind.

A classic Portuguese fado is done anew courtesy of singer Maria Mendes, with arrangements by pianist and Monk-o-phile John Beasley. We stay in the Lusophone music universe with the next track by Brazilian guitarist Toquinho, originally written for him by Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes in the 1960’s. Toquinho became famous early through his association with de Moraes.

The Canadian groupDuo Kalysta—aka flutistLara Deutsch and harpist Emily Belvedere—presents a Debussy classic on, what else, flute and harp. We hear the encore track “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from a new Keith Jarrett live album, Munich2016, before moving on to something completely different with El Wali’s “Youth of the Nation,” from a reissue of an obscure 1994 album called Tiris. El Wali’s music is a combustible mix of desert jams with contemporary production and a nationalist (Western Sahara) bent. We make another u-turn after that and listen to vibraphonist Lolly Allen’s rendition of the classic ballad “Emily.”

In the final three cuts, we feature the energetic San Francisco manouche (gypsy jazz)/flamenco ensemble Barrio Manouche, after which we wrap it up with two singles that have been getting spins on KCRW—Wajatta’s “Don’t Let Get You Down” and DJ Skif’s remix of Bu.Di’s song “Indigo.” Happy listening and happy new year!

Rhythm Planet Playlist for January 1, 2020