This week’s Al compas del mundo, arriving a dia late and a peso short, offers a welcome to Sr. and Sra. Mexico and all the ships at sea. Few knew that our small mountain town of Tequisquiapan in the center of the country has been a longtime hotbed of jazz. Called “the Harlem of Central Mexico”, Tequis is where Hammond B3 organ legend Jimmy Smith was born, studying alongside his abuelo mentor Jimmy McGriff. And had it not been for the guidance of “la madre musical” herself, Shirley Scott, it’s unlikely the other B3 advocates represented here, Freddie Roach and Charles Earland (on Who’s Making Love), would ever have made it out of their municipal school bands. Pianists who called the town “home” include Herbie Hancock and Bennie Green, the latter discovered in the kitchen of a pozole parlor playing the spoons with great fervor alongside his compadre, marimba player, Bobby Hutcherson. The statue of Gene Harris in the main plaza of el centro was a matter of some contention as the other two...

Al compas del mundo is only too happy to present the 2,206,384 th  musical commemoration of the Summer of Love and San Francisco’s claim to have invented all that was hip and groovy  - quickly now – before it turned into a meth dealing rip-off scene. Blink your eyes and you’re 72 years old, hankering for some nostalgia and a just-turned 18, dew-eyed angelette looking to get down, you know, like a sex machine gal. POP! Goes the bubble and the smell of Acapulco gold – or is it ditch weed? – sends me back to Racine, Wisconsin cornfields, Milwaukee all-nighters at Cambridge Castle, and Madison madness…and they played this music! It was special then and maybe still is. Hippie music and the San Francisco sound List - First broadcast 7-20-2023   01 Jimi Hendrix Experience - Purple Haze 02 Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin - I Need a Man to Love 03 The Great Society, with Grace Slick - Somebody to Love 04 Country Joe and the Fish - Flying High ...

Another week, another trip around the globe. I like a narrow focus at times but a potpourri might just be my favorite type of program. Where else does Jamaican R&B lead off for Cannonball Adderley and Algerian Amazight (Berber) music? The Tuvan throat singers, Alash, do the seemingly impossible with their voices followed by Sebastian Cabot bringing it all back home with his. And coming home to roost is the jovial animosity between Bobby and the ex, Joanie, both claiming it ain’t me, babe. Many other good things worked into the show as well: Little Hudson blues, Congolese cha cha cha, Byard Lancaster off an “acid jazz” album (wtf is acid jazz?), Papago Warrior with their version of the familial-everybody-dances Waila, or Chicken Scratch dance. Envy No Good? The Mercury Dance Band from Ghana speaks truth. The Greek musical hero, Mikis Theodrakis, wrote lots of tunes in his days, most of them of a progressive bent. He composed soundtracks for the movies Z and State of Seige – always f...

Get ready to stretch! This week’s Al compas program’s like a yoga session. Do your ears hang low? Can you stretch them to your toes? Are you up to hear Cuban bop and Egyptian pop? Do the Tigers of New Orleans make you want to drop (and earn your very own funerary second line hop?) Can you handle the gospel according to Ahmed? Does Occitania even exist…perhaps betwixt Israel and Hungary?  Make room for flexibility and funky dance moves with the likes of Willie Colón and Mbongwana Star. Can you handle a Venzuelan joropo and the Maria Chuchena string strum – both with compelling rhythm so similar must be incestuous cousins? Mali and Uganda, they’ll make you want to holla and throw up both your hands. Plus a Brazilian cowboy tune’ll take you back to the stockyards and leave you stretched out just enough, hopefully, that you’ll join Los Xochimilcas in singing “Liberty, liberty, it’s the right of humanity…though it’s easier to find burros in the ocean.” Got that? 1-2-3 and repeat. L...