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A collection of newsworthy jazz-related headlines.

“This Week in Jazz” brings you a collection of jazz-related headlines, focusing on news, video, and articles in the new generation of jazz / hip-hop / soul. See below for the headlines you don’t want to miss this week.

INTERVIEW: MAHALIA IS AS CLEVER AND WARM AS HER SOUL-INFLECTED MUSIC

(Noisey)

“Mahalia’s one of those rare people who couples a propulsive energy with a soothing, open-hearted presence. She’s just 20 years old, and when we meet it’s almost a year to the day since Noisey premiered her single “Hold On,” with its hip-winding, more ‘on-trend’ afrobeat production. In the time since, she’s won the hearts of American fans and collaborated with everyone from Londoners Little Simz and Kojey Radical to Jay Prince. Most importantly, she’s found a way to blend her soulful vocals, intimate songwriting and adolescent folk leanings into music she’s often termed “psycho-acoustic soul”. What that really means is that she connects with listeners using lyrics that revolve around relationships, from the romantic to the sexual to the platonic. As a women of mixed ethnic heritage, she’s struggled with being pigeonholed as both an artist and just a person, for years. Now, though, she’s on the cusp of fully blossoming into the truest version of herself that she’s always known – but hadn’t always been able to share.”

Read the full interview here.

REVIEW: MAKAYA MCCRAVEN, ‘UNIVERSAL BEINGS’

(Pitchfork)

“The jazz drummer and producer’s hypnotic double album is culled from a year’s worth of gig tapes that he’s layered and spliced together into something wholly new and radically communal.

There’s a lot to unpack in Universal Beings, the latest and most deeply assured in a series of releases under the rubric McCraven likes to call “organic beat music.” Recorded not only in Los Angeles but also in New York, Chicago, and London—four metro areas shaping the contour of improvised music, now as ever—the album transmits at a coolly utopian frequency. Informed by ambient and hip-hop protocols as well as state-of-the-art jazz hyperfluency, it suggests both the spark of discovery and the sheen of an obsessively sculptured art object.”

INTERVIEW: WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

(Playboy)

“Together, they’re called The Midnight Hour, though both Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have forged careers that seemingly intersect at instrumentation even when they’re not performing together. As part of the legendary A Tribe Called Quest, Ali Shaheed pioneered the reinvention of hip-hop’s sound that continues to echo throughout the culture and beyond. Younge is a modern-day composer, with an onus on live instruments that poses a hard left from some of the current production styles in hip-hop as of late. The short film Artform,in partnership with Fender and out today (below), is just one of their effort that is meant to amplify voices across music genres.

In this particular installment, the pair dissect the use of samples in hip-hop and how the beat machine is an instrument in and of itself. Further, Younge has urged producers to pick up actual instruments and learn the bits of music that they tend to pull from other musicians’ works.”

Read the full interview here.

PLAYLIST: THIS WEEK’S ESSENTIAL RELEASES: EXPERIMENTAL, HIP-HOP, FOLK AND MORE

(Bandcamp Daily)

Makaya McCraven, Universal Beings

“Perhaps sensing our need to relax, Makaya McCraven’s new album, Universal Beings, plays like a meditative beat tape of delicate strings and light percussion. Through it all, McCraven is the benevolent leader, ceding the floor to a litany of fellow stars without fading into the background. This album is truly a team effort, and with star turns from U.K. saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings, experimental guitarist Jeff Parker and violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, among many others, Universal Beingscaptures a broad intersection of jazz from New York City, London, Chicago, and Los Angeles. “

Mick Jenkins, Pieces of a Man

“At certain points on his new album, Pieces of a Man, Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins sounds just like poet Gil Scott-Heron. That was done on purpose; Jenkins titled his new record after the icon’s 1971 debut album, and the spoken-word bits pull from the classic LP, down to the background chatter and audience applause. Inspired by Scott-Heron, Jenkins dissects the nuances of black manhood atop repurposed soul and jazz.”

See the full list here.

NEWS: THE THELONIOUS MONK INTERNATIONAL JAZZ COMPETITION RETURNS

(NPR Music)

“After an uncertain delay, the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition has an official date: According to an announcement by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the nonprofit organization that runs the competition, it will be held this Dec. 2-3 in Washington, D.C.

It will be the 30th edition of the Monk Competition, often described as the most prestigious event of its kind in jazz. Originally slated for last October — in tune with the centenary of its namesake, the redoubtably original pianist and composer Thelonious Monk — the competition was postponed until an unspecified date.

“A lot has happened, obviously, in the world and in jazz over the past year,” Tom Carter, the president of the Monk Institute, tells NPR. “But it was important for us to bring it back to Washington, and go back to the roots of the event.” Founded in 1987, the Monk Competition was a strict piano showcase for its first few years, before adopting a rotating instrumental focus. The most recent edition took place in 2015 in Los Angeles, where singer Jazzmeia Horn won first prize.”

Read more over at NPR.