From KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel (pictured above with Ariana Morgenstern (far left) and Paul Simon):
Most of you know the “Graceland” CD and its significance. It’s now the 25th anniversary and there’s a film based on Simon’s return to a changed Johannesburg called “Under African Skies”.
What most people don’t know is that we at KCRW had been sending Paul Simon cassette tapes of African bands …

From KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel:
Goethe once observed that “architecture is frozen music”.
When I told people a few years ago that I taught at SCIARC (Southern California Institute Of Architecture), people would inevitably ask “what’s music got to do with architecture?” To me the differences in the two disciplines were never that great.
Here are two great artists making the connection:

Claude Debussy, French composer (1862-1918), …

From KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel:
I recently revisited some of Toru Takemitsu’s work, which I first heard in college with a recording called “Coral Island.”  It was way too far out for me then.
But listening now, years later, I am amazed by the color, shadings, the dialectic of abstraction and order that inhabit his work.   A few months ago, after reading the obit for boxer …

A great new CD has just come out, and it’s called Afrocubism, and it’s from the great U.K. label World Circuit, purveyor of great world music for almost three decades and best known for producing The Buena Vista Social Club.
In fact, this is the album the Buena Vista Social Club was supposed to have been, had musicians from Mali not been stuck in Burkina …

By KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel:
I recently bought a book compiled and photographed by the one and only jazz patroness, Baroness Pannonica (often called Nica) de Koenigswarter, a member of the old-world aristocratic and fabulously wealthy Rothschild dynasty.
The Baroness took the pictures and wrote down the wishes; the introduction is by her daugher Nadine, and the foreword is from Gary Giddins.
Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild was …

The other day I got the new Michael Franti & Spearhead album in the mail.  I knew—once again—that I’d enjoy the music and words inside. It’s called “The Sound of Sunshine.”
KCRW has a long and close history with Michael Franti, going back to the 80’s with his first group, the industrial punk band The Beatnigs, and even more so with his next group, The …

From KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel, who interviewed Herman Leonard in 2008. Leonard passed away Saturday at age 87 :
I’m not the only person who considers Herman Leonard his favorite jazz photographer. Quincy Jones and Miles Davis felt the same way. He captured something that no other photographers did.  Looking at his pictures makes you feel joy.
His interest in photography was sparked by seeing a …

In the current issue of the New Yorker, there is a profile of singer-songwriter Gil Scott-Heron.  His star burned brightly for many albums, first in the 70s for Flying Dutchman Records, later for Arista, snapped up by record mogul Clive Davis, who was blown away by a concert he attended.
I remember interviewing Gil at KCRW in 1983. He was in LA, opening for Stevie …

KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel was compelled him to write a remembrance for three unusual musical personalities who passed away recently, including Harvey Pekar.
KCRW will be paying tribute to the cult phenomenon by broadcasting an original radio production of Pekar’s “American Splendor” on Friday, June 16 at 7:30pm. Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson, stars as Pekar in the production, which first aired on …

KCRW DJ Tom Schnabel:
For eons, traditional cultures have used music to mark important milestones:  fertility rites, birth, puberty, marriage, and death.  So it’s not surprising to learn that operating rooms in major hospitals have music piped in as well.  Surgeons create playlists that help focus and calm them and others in the operating theatre.  Sometimes patients and close relatives bring their own.
The other day …