The CULTURE PAGES: CRITICS

Craig Jenkins on Honestly, Nevermind... Jen Chaney on The Bear ... Bilge Ebiri on Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.

MUSIC / CRAIG JENKINS

Oontz Oontz, Baby

On Honestly, Nevermind, Drake came to catch flights, not feelings.

BLACK MUSIC TRAVERSES the planet along the same winding, unpredictable pathways Black people do. Wherever we subsist, there's culture-ways, wares, and wisdom exchanged. New musical concepts blow in like developing storm systems, and vibrant art springs up in their wake. When you trace the steps of intrepid travelers at the foundations of these movements-like DJ Kool Herc, instrumental to the birth of hip-hop in the '70s by virtue of the concepts from dancehall culture he brought to inner-city youth parties when his family moved from Kingston, Jamaica, to the Bronx, or Fela Kuti, the Nigerian cultural titan and Afrobeat pioneer whose music was a colorful response to homespun artistic traditions and local current events that also synthesized the innovations of jazz and funk bands across the Atlantic-sounds that once seemed far removed and totally unique to their geographies are revealed as distant relatives.