NYC Radio Live

A great discussion, originally broadcast live on WKCR, with Soles of Duende, Amanda Castro, Arielle Rosales and Brindha Guha.   They'll be preforming with Frank Malloy IV & Roshni Samlal at the Ragas Live Festival at 11pm.     Birthed in East Harlem, the women of Soles arrived with a single, transparent question: how do they find truth, connection, and storytelling through the rhythms of their res...

A chat with Lucibela the great singer from Capo Verde who is bringing her countries music to the US right now with a 14 state tour.   

We have a chat with Alexandre Tannous, a leading sound researcher, sound therapist and ethnomusicologist.  On 9/18/19 Alexandre will lead an experiential exploration of the effects of this unique system of sound, consciousness, and spirituality with key members Brooklyn Raga Massive. To deepen the experience we sat had a wide ranging discussion about the effects of sound.  Alexandre Tannous has be...

A midnight set from the 24 Hour Ragas Live Festival 2018 Samarth Nagarkar (vocal) Rohan Prabhudesai (harmonium) Sandip Ghosh (tabla)

As we ramp up towards Ragas Live Festival 2019, we are sharing all 24 sets of last years incredible festival.  3AM-4AM was a special moment for us all.   Ross Hammond (guitar), Pawan Benjamin (sax/bansuri), Sameer Gupta (drums)   Special Guests Renald St. Juste (percussion), Morgan Zwerlein (percussion) join in for the last jams.     Sacramento guitarist Ross Hammond has played on large stages and...

A 9-10 am performance from Rajeswari Satish (vocal);Radhika Mani (violin) and Bala Skandan (mridangam) from the Ragas Live Festival 2018 at Pioneer Works.   Ragas Live Festival 2019 will take place at Pioneer Works October 19th and 20th. 

For  Chico Freeman , Jazz is the family business.  His father played with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Ella Fitzgerald and his grandfather was an associate of Louis Armstrong. Chico has had an amazing career playing with the likes of Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Celia Cruz, Charles Mingus, Tito Puente, to name a few.  We got to hang with the...

As Martha Redbone and Brooklyn Raga Massive prepare to take the stage at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Fransisco this week, we share highlights from our first conversation with Martha and hear her first performance with BRM at the Outside (In)dia Series. This is burning set with Martha Redbone – Vocals Aaron Whitby – Keys, Piano Marvin Sewell – Guitar Charlie Burnham – Violin Tony Mason – Drums Fred...

We hang out with Shoko Nagai and Satoshi Takeshi and hear tracks from her amazing TOKALA project...    Shoko Nagai is a versatile musical artist who improvises and performs with world-renowned musicians on piano and accordion and composes original scores for films and live performances. As a teenager in her native Japan, Nagai was trained on Yamaha's electronic organ, the "Electone," to perform po...

Today we share the first of 24 sets recorded at the Ragas Live Festival 2018 Partha Bose (sitar) and Aditya Narayan Banerjee (tabla) played a late morning raga at 10am, recorded and broadcast from Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.   The Ragas Live Festival will return to Pioneer Works October 19-20th 2019! Born on January 21,1962, Partha was initiated to the Sitar at the age of six and thereaft...

5 years after our first conversation, we reconnect with Paul Winter.   Seven-time Grammy® winner Paul Winter has a body of work that chronicles his wide-ranging experiences in the musical traditions and natural environments of the Earth.  The saxophonist, composer and bandleader founded Living Music as the recording context for his ensemble, the Paul Winter Consort, and his community of colleagues...

This is a fascinating conversation with Dennis McNally, who tells the inside story of the Grateful Dead as revealed to him during a dozen years on the road with the band, by the members themselves, and from a mountain of research.  Ben Ratliff writes in the New York Times, that Dennis "had more access to his subjects and their trails of paper, recording tape and roach clips than almost all previou...

Celebrating the release of his new album, Monroe Bus, we get to hang out with Andy Staman!  Andy Statman is one of his generation's premier mandolinists and clarinetists, and has made major contributions to both Jewish music and bluegrass.  He describes his compositions and performances as "spontaneous  American-roots music and personal, prayerful hasidic music, by way of avant-garde jazz."

We get to hang out with Ilusha and listen to selections from his new album, Yes & No.   Singer and guitarist Ilusha Tsinadze was born in Soviet-era Georgia and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 8. Yes & No is a musical conversation between the contemporary sounds of Brooklyn and the traditional music his family left behind in Georgia. Ilusha has become recognized for his distinct interpretations...

While out in Bombay, we visit the author Namita Devidayal, whose compelling new biography, The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan shines new light on the maestro's genius.  Namita, author of The Music Room, speaks about this poetic new work and reflects on both dark and light sides of her subject.  

We hang out with one of the greatest drummers of his generation, Eric Harland!  We chat about what he's learned form the  many great musicians he's played with, philosophy, meditation, his own journey and generally get into it. Eric will be coming to town with Zakir Hussain and the Masters of Percussion April 24 at the Town Hall...  

n a stunning display of North and West African fusion, El Foukr R’Assembly, a group traveling all the way from Algeria performs live on WKCR.  The musicians from Algeria, Burkina Faso and Ghana come together for two explosive sets of music A taxi-driver & a farmer, a graphic designer, a sound engineer and an art-major student, Oualid Khelifi as the producer and filmmaker had met them lin 2014 at v...

This was one of my favorite early episodes.  Cosmas Magya is a master of the Mbira ( a type of thumb piano) from the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe.  Here he performs and explains the way the instrument is used in ceremonies to contact ancestors.  We’ll also hear a track he recorded with another powerful Mbira player and vocalist Beauler Dyoko. (Rebroadcast from 2011)

Hailing from Venezuela, Betsayda Machado & Parranda El Clavo made their New York debut at  GlobalFest   last year. The group’s electrifying live set, complete with pitch perfect harmonies, dazzling dancers, and irresistible rhythms earned them legions of new fans and a feature in the next days’s New York Times. We sat down with Betsayda with her manager Juan Souki and learned more about the Afro-V...

Before their premier of an exciting new work Nature/War/Love we hang out with Karou Wantanabe, Parul Shah and Sameer Gupta.  We also check out slections from Karou Wantanabe's latest album Néo . In Nature/War/Love Shinobue flute and taiko drum virtuoso Kaoru Watanabe, known for his work on Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and hybrid Indian classical tabla and modern j...

Debashish Bhattacharya is simply one of the greatest guitarists walking the earth.  The slide guitar master will be performing at GlobalFest this year, and we give a preview of what to expect, revisiting a  Hurricane Sandy Benefit Concert Debashish performed in NYC in 2012 with his daughter Anandi and brother Subashish. 

Seven-time Grammy® winner Paul Winter has a body of work that chronicles his wide-ranging experiences in the musical traditions and natural environments of the Earth.  The saxophonist, composer and bandleader founded Living Music as the recording context for his ensemble, the Paul Winter Consort, and his community of colleagues, which includes some of the world’s finest jazz, world, and classical...

Here's our first recording from Ragas Live Festival 2018! A beautiful set from 11pm to midnight from Anirban Dasgupta (sarod), Mir Naqibul Islam (tabla).   Anirban is the youngest son and disciple of Pt. Buddhadev Dasgupta. Needless to mention, he grew up with the very best ambience of Indian Classical music, with his older sibling, Bhavani Shankar also following his father’s footsteps. Not to be...

We hang with the great Turkish musician Ozan Aksoy. He performs live on Ney and Saz and we  check out tracks from his new album entitled, Ozan.   The New York City based musician Ozan Aksoy’s destiny was set with his birth name - Ozan - an ancient title for mystical bards in West Asia. As a child growing up in Turkey, he first learned to play the saz (lute) from his father, and soon demonstrated r...

A freewheeling interview with Zakir Hussain, widely hailed as one of the global percussionists of our time. This was recorded in November of 2018.  We later chatted in 2020 and the maestro performed on our Ragas Live Festival both also available on this podcast.    Zakir Hussain, who first made a name for himself accompanying legends such as Ustad Ali Akbar Khan,  avi Shankar, Ustad Vilayat Khan,...