The Rhythms That Broke Bashir: How Sudan’s Music Shaped A Revolution

Sudanese people protest Omar al-Bashir’s authoritarian regime in 2019. Wikimedia Commons

BY CATHY WILCOCK

RESEARCH FELLOW,

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

The revolution in Sudan in 2019 has been eclipsed by the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023.

But the events of 2019 demand greater attention as they hold lessons for a post-war Sudan.

Music was central to the protests in 2019. The camp outside military headquarters in Khartoum, where demonstrators gathered for weeks to demand civilian rule, became known as Sudan’s largest ever arts festival.

My research on resistance movements has led me to believe that music is not only a cosmetic accessory to protests. In Sudan, it was an integral part of the revolutionary movement that ousted the Omar al-Bashir regime. For decades, music helped cultivate anti-government sentiment and forge the networks and communities that would sustain the revolution in 2019.

I’ve explored this idea in a recent paper, drawing on interviews with protesters and musicians.
Sudanese music and resistance

Music in Sudan has historically been intertwined with popular resistance. First against colonial rulers and then – following independence in 1956 – against post-colonial despots. The patriotic anthems of the 60s and 70s expressed the sentiment that Sudan was being built by the people, not the government.

As one music fan who was a young teenager in the early 1970s said:

There were different ideas, of course, about what sounded good, but if you were making music, you were against the government, that was for sure.

One after the other, however, authoritarian regimes sought to crush all creativity – and especially music – through censorship laws and the systematic intimidation of artists.

Gigs had to be held as private events in people’s homes and even these were regularly broken up by a morality monitoring unit. Many popular musicians left for careers abroad.

But underground music scenes kept anti-government sentiment alive.

My research shows that the exodus of musicians, producers and fans under the Bashir regime did not weaken popular resistance. Instead, this displacement helped build strong transnational social networks, enabling musicians to record music outside Sudan. This was then distributed back to communities inside the borders. Later, these same social networks supported the 2019 revolution.

Throughout recent history and across various genres and scenes, music has helped the Sudanese imagine alternatives to authoritarian rule and build the relationships needed for collective action.

Given the close historical ties between resistance movements and music scenes, examining the music of the revolution provides insight into the values, identities and visions of democratic change that shaped Sudan’s revolutionary movement.

Music, gender and class

In my paper I analyse the most prominent revolution songs – collected in a shareable YouTube playlist – to explore what protesters’ choices reveal about the movement itself. The songs point to a growing openness towards gender and class.

At the 2019 protests, the revolutionaries honoured a canon of anti-oppression anthems. These included traditional Sudanese staples, hip-hop classics and contemporary pop sing-a-longs.

Not all revolutionary anthems are lyrically political, however, and there are gendered reasons for this.

In Sudan’s decades of patriarchal autocracy, speaking openly about politics through song lyrics was often far riskier for women than for men. As a result, women-led genres, such as tumtum and aghani albanat, typically centred on romance and everyday life, accompanied by handclapping and rhythms played on the doolka drum. Among highbrow creatives, these vocal and percussive genres are considered artistically subordinate to male-dominated genres. These include haqeeba, which features instrumental accompaniment on the more technically demanding oud.

However, tumtum and aghani albanat were popular with protesters in 2019. This was not because their lyrics were directly political (they were not). Rather, they represented the defiance of women who continued to create and perform music despite decades of state restrictions on women’s artistry.

Despite their lyrical playfulness and political neutrality, Sudanese society celebrated these genres in the revolution. This sends a powerful political message about a rising cultural openness towards feminine creativity, which had been inhibited by the state.

Zenig is a new Sudanese genre of music. It emerged in the early 2010s from the poor and peripheral neighbourhoods in Khartoum. It takes its rhythmic base from tumtum, and mixes this with retro keyboards, low-fi synths and improvised vocals. It is fundamentally a Khartoumian invention, and is deliberately defiant of conservative gender and class hierarchies.

Zenig contributed to the cacophony of sounds during the 2019 sit-in. One protester remembered “its fast-paced rhythmic style worked well in energising crowds”. The most likely place to hear Zenig at the sit-in was in intimate circles and small stages where friends could dance together. Before the revolution, Zenig was known in Khartoum as the music of poor outcasts.

The significance

By elevating female leadership in the music of the revolution, Sudanese revolutionaries deliberatively negotiated what an alternative ideal Sudanese society would be like; one with more empowerment for women, as both creative and political forerunners.

The inclusion of genres like Zenig at the 2019 sit-in demonstrates that Sudan’s revolution was not only about changing the regime.

For many young Sudanese, it was also an expression of yearning for broader societal change and an upending of societal power relations.

Read more: Ethiopia’s musicians fled the country after the 1974 revolution - how their culture lives on

The revolution in 2019 was a unique time for openness, experimentation and future-making facilitated by music.

Music and rebuilding

The war has prevented Sudanese civilians from continuing these important social negotiations.

The resistance movement and its musicians have been displaced within Sudan and to regional hubs like Cairo (Egypt) and Nairobi (Kenya). Many have tragically lost their lives. Some have remained in Khartoum and continue to make hopeful music against the odds.

Even as Sudan’s future remains uncertain, music will be surely be central in the rebuilding of civilian lives that will come.

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The Story Behind Soweto Blues, Miriam Makeba’s Famous Song About The June 16 Uprising

Miriam Makeba in 1969 in exile. Rob Mieremet/Nationaal Archief, CC BY

BY GWEN ANSELL

ASSOCIATE OF THE GORDON 

INSTITUTE FOR BUSINESS SCIENCE,

UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA

Miriam Makeba sang a famous song about the 16 June 1976 uprising in her birthplace, South Africa. The protest was a pivotal point in the fight against apartheid and white minority rule in the country. The song was called Soweto Blues and its opening lines go:

The children got a letter from the Master.

It said no more Xhosa, Sotho, no more Zulu

Refusing to comply they sent an answer

That’s when the policemen came…

The song recalls the events of that day when South African schoolchildren, marching peacefully in Soweto to protest the imposition of Afrikaans as an official language of instruction alongside English in Black schools, were shot down by the police of the apartheid regime.

Soweto Blues was also the title chosen by my publishers for the cover of my historical research on the politics of South African jazz and popular music.

Many high school students in South Africa – and many of their teachers – were not fluent in Afrikaans, seen as the language of the oppressor. The move was part of a push, dubbed “Bantu Education”, to reduce Black education and cut it off from international opportunities and “subversive” English-language ideas. The system’s architect, Hendrik Verwoerd, had declared that Black children must never be educated above the level of “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.

Soweto Blues is one of the two compositions most closely associated with the events of June 16. The other, Isililo (Tears of Soweto), from Sakhile, was written in retrospect, in 1982, as the group’s co-leader, saxophonist Khaya Mahlangu, reflected on his nightmare memories of Soweto on that day.

But Soweto Blues was written hot, as the news of the massacre reached the world. The story of the song is a story of solidarity with the struggle against apartheid across the African continent.

Composed and recorded in Kumasi, Ghana

Ask who composed the song, and the answer is likely to be trumpeter Hugh Masekela and/or his ex wife Miriam Makeba. The song, officially released in 1977 by Makeba, is best-known in the version released on her 1989 album, Welela.

The lyrics are instantly recognisable as being penned by Masekela the rhymer – “Just a little atrocity/Deep in the city”.

But the melody tells a bigger, pan-African story. It was co-written by the trumpeter and guitarist Stanley Kwesi Todd, founder of Ghanaian ensemble Hedzoleh (“freedom”) Sounds.

Masekela was introduced to the west Africans by Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti in 1973, and the collaboration produced three albums led by his name: Introducing Hedzoleh Soundz (1973); I Am Not Afraid (1974); and The Boy’s Doin’ It (1975).

But there were other collaborations between Kwesi and Masekela too, including the 1977 You Told Your Mama Not to Worry. That was recorded in Kumasi, Ghana with Kwesi as co-producer, and released in the US by the new Casablanca label, before that imprint settled into a pop and disco music identity.

Makeba came from her exile home in Guinea to record; there were compositions by Masekela and Todd, tunes adapted from tradition, and a title track about exile composed by South African singer and songwriter Letta Mbulu. Soweto Blues closed the A-side. The original album, regrettably, is currently hard to find.

A marketable title

So how did it end up as my book title? It wasn’t my intention.

The main title I wanted was Black Heroes, alluding to a 1976 Tete Mbambisa tune paying tribute to both the young martyrs of ‘76 and to US jazz star John Coltrane. That seemed to me to sum up the relationship between South African and Black American jazz as torches lighting the way to freedom.

But it appeared that “somebody in marketing” didn’t think the two words “Black” plus “Heroes”, would sell. “Aren’t there any other song titles that might be catchier?” A back-and-forth ensued, until Soweto Blues came up. “That’s it! 'Soweto’ always sells!”

The 1976 uprising sparked in Soweto, but spread across the country, from the urban settlements of Langa and Gugulethu in the Cape to the rural villages of the North West province. Parents scoured mortuaries for their dead children, many of whom had apparently been shot in the back. Nobody knows precisely how many died, but the national figure is estimated as well north of 700.

And just as the rising itself cannot be narrowed to what happened in Soweto – even if the name “sells” – so the song paying tribute cannot be confined to South Africa alone. It came from a trumpet-player exiled in the US, a singer sheltered by Guinea, and a musician born in Ghana.

Half a century later, the words of the song still have lessons about the events of June 16. The story of its creation teaches too: about a shared African history in which borders did not define humanity.

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Motown Girl Group Martha And The Vandellas Not Only Recorded An Anthem For The Civil Rights Era – They Fought For Fair Pay And Proudly Called Themselves Divas

BY AUSTIN MCCOY

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

The CBS television show “It’s What’s Happening Baby” aired a music video featuring Martha and the Vandellas performing their hit song “Nowhere to Run” to kick off its national broadcast dedicated to Detroit on June 28, 1965.

In the video, the Detroit-based trio sang about how they could not escape missing an ex-lover after a breakup while sitting in a white Mustang moving slowly down the assembly line in the Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge plant.

As a cultural and labor historian, I see the “Nowhere to Run” video as an iconic testament to Detroit’s reputation as the “Motor City” and the role of the autoworker in the American imagination.

Motown founder and CEO Berry Gordy, Jr. worked on the Ford assembly line and used it as inspiration for Hitsville U.S.A., the famed headquarters and music recording studio that served as a space to train performers and perfect the “Motown sound” for the masses.

Martha and the Vandellas were part of Motown’s illustrious roster of artists in the 1960s. Initially comprised of Martha Reeves, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard, and with members changing over the next three decades, they helped establish the Black “girl group.” They presented themselves as working class in videos like “Nowhere to Run.”

Their classic anthem “Dancing in the Street” reflected the revolutionary mood of civil rights protesters, especially Black Americans in the 1960s. As lead singer, Reeves also emerged as a pioneering R&B “diva,” helping pave the way for Black female solo vocalists like Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé.

A patient path to stardom

Martha Reeves was born in Eufaula, Alabama, on July 18, 1941. Soon after, her family moved to Detroit’s east side. Music occupied a central place in her life from childhood.

Reeves writes in her 1994 memoir, “Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva,” about her father serenading her mother with his guitar while she was pregnant with Martha. Her mother, Ruby, also sang. Reeves’ parents passed their love for music to her, and she sang in her church choir and aspired to a life of performance.

“At that young age I was already hooked on pleasing the crowd with my singing,” Reeves wrote.

Reeves graduated from Northeastern High School. As a teenager, she used fake IDs to get into night clubs to watch singers perform, and she sang in open mics and talent shows. She scored her first break after earning a three-night performance at the 20 Grand, a popular Detroit night club located on 14th Street and Warren Avenue.

It was after one of those performances when she met William Stevenson, Motown Records’ executive for discovering new talent. Stevenson invited Reeves to the label’s headquarters.

Reeves came to the studio, but she didn’t audition for reasons that aren’t entirely clear today. Instead, Stevenson told her she could answer the phones. That’s how she got a job in the A&R Department and began working with other Motown artists.

In 1957, Reeves joined her first group, the Del-Phis. Formed by Edward “Pops” Larkins, the Del-Phis also included leader Gloria Jean Williamson, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard.

Reeves soon caught another break. In September 1962, Stevenson called for her to fill in for Mary Wells in a Marvin Gaye studio session. Reeves enlisted the other Del-Phis, and they performed so well that they became the supporting vocal group for Gaye.

After the Del-Phis toured with Gaye and recorded “I’ll Have to Let Him Go,” Gordy offered Reeves, Beard and Ashford a recording contract. The group also took on a new name, Martha and the Vandellas.

Martha and the Vandellas enjoyed commercial success soon after, with songs like “Come and Get These Memories,” “Quicksand” and “Heatwave.”

An anthem for revolution set to a groove

“Dancing in the Street,” written by Gaye, Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter, was released in the summer of 1964 and became a signature hit for Martha and the Vandellas.

Reeves wrote in her autobiography that she did not like “Dancing in the Street.”

However, she made it her own, and Reeves later acknowledged that the song embodied the spirit of civil rights protests.

“It became the anthem of the decade,” Reeves wrote.

She was right.

At the time of the song’s release, the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Black Americans in Harlem took to the streets to protest the killing of 15-year-old James Powell by an off-duty New York Police Department officer.

The 1960s set off a string of “long, hot summers” as racial tensions intensified. Black folks in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles in 1965 protested in the streets in response to police violence.

More than 100 protests were organized in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, from Chicago to Washington and Baltimore.

Detroit erupted a year earlier, in July 1967, after Detroit police officers raided a “blind pig,” or an unlicensed bar, on 12th Street.

The iconic opening lines of “Dancing in the Street” announced a new attitude among Black folks: “Calling out around the world/ Are you ready for a brand new beat?”

The high-octane, optimistic song is laced with slogans interpreted as invitations to take action. Martha and the Vandellas’ declaration that “Summer is here and the time is right for dancing in the street” reflected Black Americans’ willingness to not only march, but to take measures in their own hands and fight for equality and justice.

Battle for fair pay and recognition

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of transition for Reeves and the Vandellas. The Supremes were on the rise and threatened to displace them as the most prominent girl group on the Motown label. Reeves also experienced creative differences with Motown executives and struggled with drug addiction. Then, in 1972, Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles so he could try his hand at filmmaking.

Martha and the Vandellas broke up later that year after the release of their album, “Black Magic.” However, Reeves continued as a solo artist, releasing five albums, including her self-titled debut “Martha Reeves” in 1974, “The Rest of My Life” in 1976 and “We Meet Again” in 1978, among others.

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, along with many Motown artists, experienced a resurgence in popularity during the 1980s. Motown Records’ 25th anniversary show in Pasadena, California, in 1983 launched them back into the mainstream. The group reunited and started performing again in 1989.

Also, Reeves and the group sought to resolve their old conflicts with Motown Records. Reeves and various members of the Vandellas sued Gordy and Motown in 1989 for unpaid royalties. Motown Records settled the suit in 1991 for an undisclosed amount.

Four years later, the B-52s inducted Reeves and the Vandellas into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The diva archetype

Martha and the Vandellas played a vital role in laying the foundation for future all-Black female groups like En Vogue, TLC, SWV and Destiny’s Child.

They helped set the standard for turning songs about the trappings of love and heartbreak into anthems. Reeves embraced being an “R&B Diva” long before music critics applied the persona to singers like Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé. Reeves was not just a larger-than-life vocal presence; she showed future generations of Black female vocalists that, to be a diva, one must have control of one’s own career.

“We became the Vandellas and with me being the only lead singer, my name was put out there because I did all the work,” Reeves said in a 2020 interview. “I did all the singing … I managed to just come up with my own destiny, with my own future in show business.”

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FELA KUTI: ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME 2026 INDUCTEE

Fela and Egypt 80 Band performs inside the shrine. Image: William F. Campbell, 1983

"The Shrine

The Rituals.

The Banter, Yabis Night.

The Audience.

The Protest Songs. Related Activism

Societal ills

Politicians and widespread Scandals of Bribery and Corruption

The junta, dictatorship and absolute shutdown of Press Freedom

No one else could have done it"

Afro Beat legend will be presented with the 'Early Influence Award' at the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction on November 14, 2026 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

The Incredible Impact Of Ozzy Osbourne, From Black Sabbath To Ozzfest To 30 Years Of Retirement Tours

Ozzy Osbourne photographed in London in 1991. Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images

BY LACHLAN GOOLD

SENIOR LECTURER IN CONTEMPORARY

MUSIC, UNIVERSITY OF THE SUNSHINE

COAST, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA

Ozzy Osbourne, the “prince of darkness” and godfather of heavy metal, has died aged 76, just weeks after he reunited with Black Sabbath bandmates for a farewell concert in his hometown of Birmingham in England.

His family posted a brief message overnight: “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning.”

John Michael Osbourne changed the sound of rock music and leaves behind a stellar career spanning six decades, numerous Grammy awards, multiple hall of fame inductions – and a wave of controversy.

An agent of change

In 1969, from the ashes of various bands, Geezer Butler (bass), Tony Iommi (guitar), Bill Ward (drums) and Osbourne formed the band Earth.

Realising the name was taken, they quickly changed their name to Black Sabbath, an homage to the 1963 Italian horror anthology film.

With the Summer of Love a recent memory, Black Sabbath were part of a heavy music revolution, providing an antidote to the free loving hippies of the late 60s period.

Despite making their first two albums cheaply, Black Sabbath, released in February 1970, and Paranoid, released September that same year, they were a global success.

Their approach was laden with sarcasm and irony. American audiences mistook this for satanic worship, positioning them as outsiders (albeit popular ones).

After Black Sabbath’s early successes, they were managed by the notorious Don Arden, whose daughter Sharon Levy was the receptionist. More than any musical bond Osbourne had in his life, Sharon would be the most influential character throughout his life.

Osbourne recorded eight albums with Black Sabbath (some to critical acclaim) and was then kicked out (by Sharon) due to his troubles with drugs and alcohol.

Ozzy solo

Osbourne’s solo career has always been managed by Sharon. While recording his second solo album, Diary of a Madman, guitarist Rhodes died in a tragic light plane crash. Osbourne was close to Rhodes and fell into a deep depression, after never having lost someone so close.

Sharon and Osbourne married only months after this incident. His struggle with drug use did not stop him from making further solo records alongside various guitar players, continuing with moderate success throughout his career.

On the road, Osbourne put the John Farnham’s last tour trope to shame.

He held his last ever gig more times than one can count with names like No More Tours (1992–93), Retirement Sucks (1995–96) and No More Tours 2 (2018–19).

This lament for touring led to the most successful era of Osbourne’s career. After being rejected for the 1995 Lollapaloza festival bill, Sharon (and their son Jack) started Ozzfest; initially an annual two-day multiband festival headlined by Osbourne, held in Phoenix, Arizona, and Devore, California.

Subsequently becoming a national – and then international – tour, Ozzfest led to a successful partnership with MTV, which led to the reality TV show The Osbournes premiering in 2002. Here, his previous and ongoing battle with drugs was obvious, proudly on display – and ridiculed – to huge global audiences.

The spectacle of a rich rockstar and his family featured a constant barrage of swearing, battles with lavish TV remotes, canine therapy, never-ending chaos, and Osbourne constantly yelling “Sharrrooon” like a twisted maniacal loop of A Street Car Named Desire.

Struggles and controversies

Osbourne suffered multiple health conditions over the years, rarely concealing the state of his physical or mental wellbeing.

Notably he’s struggled with drug and alcohol abuse his whole career with drug recovery centres using Osbourne as an exemplar. In 2007 he disclosed he suffered from the Parkinson’s adjacent condition Parkinsonian syndrome. In 2019 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

This resulted in him being unable to walk for his final Back to the Beginning show in Birmingham on July 5 2025.

And Osbourne’s career had more than its fair share of controversy. He bit the head off a dove and a bat (celebrated with a commemorative toy), and urinated on the Alamo cenotaph. He was taken to court multiple times, but was never convicted.

Ozzy and me

As a white middle-class boy growing up in the Brisbane suburbs in the 80s, heavy metal music appealed to my testosterone and pimple filled body.

Exploring the secondhand record shops of Brisbane, I would’ve bought my first copy of Black Sabbath around 1985. The sound of thunder and a distant church bell before the first drop-D riff enters seemed like the antithesis to sunny Queensland and 80s pop.

As my life became obsessed with the recording studio and the vociferous music scene in Brisbane in the post-Joh era, and those drop-D riffs influenced a new style that swept the world in the early 90s.

Osbourne’s influence was huge and through grunge, his sound was reborn. Grunge was a marriage of the Sabbath-like drop-D riffs with the energy of punk and the melody of the Beatles.

Listening to Black Sabbath and Ozzy records, equipped me with a sonic palette ready to capture the wave of alternative music emmerging from the Brisbane scene.

While Ozzy’s death is no surprise (except for those who never thought he’d last this long), we should take pause and remember an icon with an endless energy for entertaining, a passion for music, and changing the expectations of popular culture for more than 50 years.

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Sly Stone Turned Isolation Into Inspiration, Forging A Path For A Generation Of Music-Makers

The charismatic front man of Sly and the Family Stone died on June 9, 2025, at the age of 82. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

BY JOSE VALENTINO RUIZ

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MUSIC

BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP,

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

In the fall of 1971, Sly and the Family Stone’s “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” landed like a quiet revolution. After two years of silence following the band’s mainstream success, fans expected more feel-good funk from the ensemble.

What they got instead was something murkier and more fractured, yet deeply intimate and experimental. This was not just an album; it was the sound of a restless mind rebuilding music from the inside out.

At the center of it all was front man Sly Stone.

Long before the home studio became an industry norm, Stone, who died on June 9, 2025, turned the studio into both a sanctuary and an instrument. And long before sampling defined the sound of hip-hop, he was using tape and machine rhythms to deconstruct existing songs to cobble together new ones.

As someone who spends much of their time working on remote recording and audio production – from building full arrangements solo to collaborating digitally across continents – I’m deeply indebted to Sly Stone’s approach to making music.

He was among the first major artists to fully embrace the recording environment as a space to compose rather than perform. Every reverb bounce, every drum machine tick, every overdubbed breath became part of the writing process.

From studio rat to bedroom producer

Sly and the Family Stone’s early albums – including “Dance to the Music” and “Stand!” – were recorded at top-tier facilities like CBS Studios in Los Angeles under the technical guidance of engineers such as Don Puluse and with oversight from producer David Rubinson.

These sessions yielded bright, radio-friendly tracks that emphasized tight horn sections, group vocals and a polished sound. Producers also prized the energy of live performance, so the full band would record together in real time.

But by the early 1970s, Stone was burnt out. The dual pressures of fame and industry demands were becoming too much. Struggling with cocaine and PCP addiction, he’d grown increasingly distrustful of bandmates, label executives and even his friends.

So he decided to retreat to his hillside mansion in Bel Air, California, transforming his home into a musical bunker. Inside, he could work on his own terms: isolated and erratic, but free.

Without a full band present, Stone became a one-man ensemble. He leaned heavily into overdubbing – recording one instrument at a time and building his songs from fragments. Using multiple tape machines, he’d layer each part onto previous takes.

The resulting album, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” was like nothing he’d previously recorded. It sounds murky, jagged and disjointed. But it’s also deeply intentional, as if every imperfection was part of the design.

In “The Poetics of Rock,” musicologist Albin Zak describes this “composerly” approach to production, where recording itself becomes a form of writing, not just documentation. Stone’s process for “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” reflects this mindset: Each overdub, rhythm loop and sonic imperfection functions more like a brushstroke than a performance.

Automating the groove

A key part of Stone’s tool kit was the Maestro Rhythm King, a preset drum machine he used extensively.

It wasn’t the first rhythm box on the market. But Stone’s use of it was arguably the first time such a machine shaped the entire aesthetic of a mainstream album. The drum parts on his track “Family Affair,” for example, don’t swing – they tick. What might have been viewed as soulless became its own kind of soul.

This early embrace of mechanical rhythm prefigured what would later become a foundation of hip-hop and electronic music. In his book “Dawn of the DAW,” music technology scholar Adam Patrick Bell calls this shift “a redefinition of groove,” noting how drum machines like the Rhythm King encouraged musicians to rethink their songwriting process, building tracks in shorter, repeatable sections while emphasizing steady, looped rhythms rather than free-flowing performances.

Though samplers wouldn’t emerge until years later, Stone’s work already contained that repetition, layering and loop-based construction that would become characteristic of the practice.

He recorded his own parts the way future DJs would splice records – isolated, reshuffled, rhythmically obsessed. His overdubbed bass lines, keyboard vamps and vocal murmurs often sounded like puzzle pieces from other songs.

Music scholar Will Fulton, in his study of Black studio innovation, notes how producers like Stone helped pioneer a fragment-based approach to music-making that would become central to hip-hop’s DNA. Stone’s process anticipated the mentality that a song isn’t necessarily something written top to bottom, but something assembled, brick by brick, from what’s available.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Stone’s tracks have been sampled relentlessly. In “Bring That Beat Back,” music critic Nate Patrin identifies Stone as one of the most sample-friendly artists of the 1970s – not because of his commercial hits, but because of how much sonic space he left in his tracks: the open-ended grooves, unusual textures and slippery emotional tone.

You can hear his sounds in famous tracks such as 2Pac’s “If My Homie Calls,” which samples “Sing a Simple Song”; A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Jam,” which draws from “Family Affair”; and De La Soul’s “Plug Tunin’,” which flips “You Can Make It If You Try.”

The studio as instrument

While Sly’s approach was groundbreaking, he wasn’t entirely alone. Around the same time, artists such as Brian Wilson and The Rolling Stones were experimenting with home and nontraditional recording environments – Wilson famously retreating to his home studio during “Pet Sounds,” and the Stones tracking “Exile on Main St.” in a French villa.

Yet in the world of Black music, production remained largely centralized in institutionally controlled studio systems such as Motown in Detroit and Stax in Memphis, where sound was tightly managed by in-house producers and engineers. In that context, Stone’s decision to isolate, self-produce and dismantle the standard workflow was more than a technical choice: It was a radical act of autonomy.

The rise of home recording didn’t just change who could make music. It changed what music felt like. It made music more internal, iterative and intimate.

Sly Stone helped invent that feeling.

It’s easy to hear “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” as murky or uneven. The mix is dense with tape hiss, drum machines drift in and out of sync, and vocals often feel buried or half-whispered.

But it’s also, in a way, prophetic.

It anticipated the aesthetics of bedroom pop, the cut-and-paste style of modern music software, the shuffle of playlists and the recycling of sounds that defines sample culture. It showed that a groove didn’t need to be spontaneous to be soulful, and that solitude could be a powerful creative tool, not a limitation.

In my own practice, I often record alone, passing files back and forth, building from templates and mapping rhythm to grid – as do millions of musical artists who compose tracks from their bedrooms, closets and garages.

Half a century ago, a funk pioneer led the way. I think it’s safe to say that Sly Stone quietly changed the process of making music forever – and in the funkiest way possible.

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Bono: Stories Of Surrender Review: For U2 Fans Only

BY RACHEL WEST

U2 frontman Bono is recounting his life and career in the new concert doc Bono: Stories of Surrender. After unveiling his memoir of the same name in 2022 (and a new truncated paperback version last month), Bono took his “book tour” on the road. As only Bono can, he turned his book tour into a one-man show, performing excerpts from his book and snippets of U2 songs while backed by a quartet. Cameras captured a 2023 New York stop of his touring production to bring the show to audiences around the world, now streaming on Apple TV+.

For many music lovers and even U2 fans, Bono can be a polarizing figure. His swagger and personality can often eclipse the band and the music, even when he’s acting with the best intentions and using his platform to bring awareness to important issues. Here, in Stories of Surrender, his main character energy dominates the screen.

Bono recounts his childhood, including the death of his mother, Iris, at his grandfather’s funeral, the constant vying for his father Bob’s love, and meeting the two loves of his life–wife Ali and his U2 bandmates–in the same week in high school. These stories are quite familiar to any U2 fan. He performs excerpts lifted straight out of the book, often verbatim, which does create a full-blown sensory book reading experience.

As in the stage show, his messy handwriting appears on screen, punctuating his tales. Empty chairs sub in for band members The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., and Adam Clayton, and his father as he weaves his tales. After all, Bono is first and foremost a showman. He commands the crowd from his pulpit on stage. While that may work in the intimate theatres of his book tour and Las Vegas’ Sphere, it doesn’t quite translate to director Andrew Dominik’s film with the same impact.

Premiering at Cannes, where it received a seven-minute ovation, the beautifully-shot black and white Stories of Surrender is a no-frills production by U2 standards. There is no giant lemon or spaceship stage because Bono doesn’t need that. Focusing on his relationship with his father, his love of classical music, and his formative moments, those seeking tidbits and stories about life on the road with the band, performing from the world’s biggest stages and rubbing elbows with stars will be left disappointed.

As a decades-long U2 fan who has seen the band more times than I can count, the energy and vibrancy of Bono’s live performance of Stories of Surrender is missing in this recorded version. Perhaps to understand and love U2 is to be in the room to see Bono work his magic. It is unlike anything or anyone else performing music today. For fans wishing to recapture some of that live experience, Stories of Surrender feels like a bit of an empty shell. There is just some element missing in this film version. But, with a book tour that only included a single Canadian date in Toronto, this version is the only way for most fans to get to see and hear Bono’s stories in this format.

What is not missing are U2 songs. Reimagined and shortened versions of “Vertigo”, “Beautiful Day”, “I Will Follow”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and more are peppered throughout the performance. They are used to punctuate his story of surrender. Lyrics from “Desire” mark his relationship with Ali, while “Out of Control” paints a picture of his youth, and U2’s Pavarotti collab “Miss Sarajevo” echoes through his only real celeb tale (complete with an Italian accent).

There is a nice throughline to Anton Corbijn’s excellent 1988 black and white U2 documentary Rattle & Hum through some stylistic choices, and various nods to other stories that Bono has told over the years. It’s hard to imagine anyone who isn’t already a U2 fan finding connection and entertainment from Stories of Surrender, but those who do will be rewarded and reminded of what exactly makes Bono the frontman of one of the world’s biggest rock bands.

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Amadou Bagayoko: The Blind Malian Musician Whose Joyful Songs Changed West African music

Amadou and Mariam in 1992 in Bamako on the day the author first met them. Courtesy Lucy Durán

BY LUCY DURAN

PROFESSOR OF MUSIC, SOAS,

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

Amadou Bagayoko (1954-2025), Malian guitarist, singer and composer of the famed duo Amadou & Mariam – known as “the blind couple of Mali” – passed away on 4 April in Bamako. He was 70.

The married singers, who met when she was 18 and he 21, took traditional Mali music and blended it with western rock and many other influences to shape a whole new sound that was both rich and playful. They would sell millions of albums for hits like Sunday in Bamako and Sabali.

They would tour the world, opening the 2006 men’s football World Cup, closing the 2024 Paralympics, singing at former US president Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize concert, winning awards along the way.

Despite this fame, they remained tireless activists for Africans with disabilities. They were known and admired at home for their integrity, where Amadou’s passing is much lamented.

As a musician and professor of music with a research focus on Mali’s music, I met and interviewed Amadou several times. His passing heralds the end of an era for Mali’s long-held musical dominance in the international market.

Who are Amadou & Mariam?

Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia were both dedicated promoters of the work of the Institute for the Blind in Bamako, where they had first met in the 1970s as students and went on to be music teachers. They married in 1980 and remained inseparable, forming Amadou & Mariam.

Their hit songs combined the musical traditions of the southern part of Mali, where they both came from (Bougouni, Sikasso) with elements from rock, reggae, Cuban rhythms, and more – all transformed through their own ingenuity, but also, later on, by the ideas of influential producers.

In fact, the surnames Bagayoko and Doumbia are both from the ancient lineage (called Boula) of blacksmiths that date back to the time of the emperor Sunjata Keita, who founded the Mali empire in 1235. The blacksmiths (numu) were often powerful kings. This shared heritage in the noble past of the blacksmiths is significant in their musical synergy.

Amadou Bagayoko

Amadou’s career spanned more than five decades, beginning in the early 1970s when he played electric guitar in several influential Malian dance bands of the time, including Les Ambassadeurs, fronted by the legendary singer Salif Keita.

President Moussa Traoré’s 23-year military regime from 1968 to 1991 favoured the voices of the griots. These hereditary musicians sang the praises of the people in power in a flowery, strident style.

The life of these dance bands was on the wane by the late 1980s, which is when “la grand couple aveugle du Mali” (the blind couple of Mali) were launched – at first, two simple voices accompanied by Amadou’s guitar, recorded on cassette.

At the end of Traore’s rule, Amadou & Mariam’s music responded to the new spirit of democracy that the country was hungry for.

There were many things that set this duo apart from other musicians of the region. They were not griots. Their lyrics are often about the power of love – not a straightforward topic in a country where polygyny (up to four wives, as permitted by Islam) is the norm.

Their presence on stage as a blind couple, looking affectionate and mutually supportive, in their chic, coordinated attire, also raised the profile of people with disabilities. Their melodies were catchy and upbeat.

Meeting Amadou and Mariam

Sorting through my research recently I came across a photo I’d taken of them on my old slides, buried in my archives. It was a revelation to see it again.

I took the photo, with their permission, when I first met Amadou and Mariam in 1992 in Bamako. It was at the recording studio that is now known as Bogolan, where they were hoping, at the time, to make some recordings.

It shows Amadou and Mariam in their youth with pride and dignity, values that remained constant for them in later years. On that first encounter, I was struck by their graciousness, their belief in their musical project, and their determination to bring it to a wider public.

I wished at the time that I had the contacts in the record industry to help them. But they did not give up and they slowly built up their career, building on their sound and image, which was and remains unique within the variety of Malian music.

World fame

Against all the odds, with their conviction, talent, strong melodies and good production, Amadou & Mariam became hugely successful in the early 2000s. The album that really launched their international career was Dimanches à Bamako (Sundays in Bamako), brilliantly produced by French-Spanish singer-songwriter Manu Chao, who had had a big international hit with his creative and catchy album Clandestino in 1998.

He brought some of those production values into Amadou & Mariam’s songs. Dimanches à Bamako celebrates the vibrant culture of wedding parties held in the streets of Bamako on Sundays, a day when civil marriage ceremonies are free.

Dimanches à Bamako was the first of several successful albums by Amadou & Mariam that were produced by European producers such as Damon Albarn, with songs like Tie ni Mousso (Husband and Wife) that played on the charming stage presence of Amadou & Mariam as a devoted husband and wife. The songs were accessible and appealing but still delivered punch.

After that first meeting in 1992, we met up again many times, frequently for radio.

Amadou was a much respected and admired musician whose music reached out to audiences around the world. He was hugely loved and appreciated both at home and abroad, not just for his talent and musical creativity as an excellent guitarist and song writer, but also for the image that he and Mariam created on stage.

Together they will be remembered and respected for the values they represent in their music: equality, love, perseverance against disability, and truth. My condolences to Mariam.

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Beatlemania: A Penetrating New Book Celebrates Lennon And McCartney

BY T BONE BURNETTE

JOHN AND PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS

IAN LESLIE, CELADON

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The Beatles at the press launch for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” held at the home of their manager Brian Epstein.Credit...John Downing/Getty Images

In our culture, music is most often written about in terms of sales, streams and chart positions. That is, of course, the least intelligent way to think about or talk about music.

Ian Leslie’s “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs” is unconcerned with all that, but rather it explores the way two extraordinarily gifted young men combined and exchanged their gifts while inspiring, challenging, teaching and learning from each other.

In the great teams of composers before John Lennon and Paul McCartney — Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe, Leiber and Stoller, Bacharach and David — one of the members wrote the music and the other wrote the lyrics. John and Paul both wrote music and both wrote lyrics, and they made a decision at the beginning of their collaboration to share the credit on all of their compositions, thereby creating a third being called Lennon and McCartney. That selfless, generous merger, as their egos shape-shifted into and out of each other, unleashed a power that took music to a height that has not since been surpassed, or I think it safe to say, even reached.

I fell in love with rock ’n’ roll music when I was 9 years old in 1957 and first heard “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” by Jerry Lee Lewis. I clearly remember rolling around on the floor laughing at the explosion of freedom and joy in that recording, and in that moment I thought that that was how I wanted to spend my life. By 1960, however, the rock ’n’ roll explosion had faded away. Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash. Elvis Presley was in the Army. Chuck Berry was in jail. Eddie Cochran died in a car wreck. Little Richard was in the ministry. Jerry Lee Lewis had been canceled. Rock ’n’ roll seemed at a dead end.

Three years later, however, these two young musicians and their friends George Harrison and Ringo Starr, all from a seaport in the north of England, reinvented a style of music that had come from the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta, the highlands of the Appalachian Mountains and the mean streets of our cities. In the next five years, while absorbing and combining the art and music of the rest of the 20th century, they made music that took us all on an exquisite trip into other worlds of sound and meaning in a feat of invention that seems and is, I think, superhuman.

Though there has probably never been music that has permeated and elevated mass culture to a higher degree, this book is not interested in music as a mass commodity. This book is about soul, about grief and most of all about love — the love that two boys who lost their mothers far too soon have for each other, the courageous way they merge and the unfathomable power of that merger.

Leslie, a British journalist and author, has a deep affection for, and a penetrating understanding of, these complex characters and their unprecedented friendship — from their boyhoods in Liverpool, through the debauchery of postwar-Hamburg night life, through their lightning rise to international fame, through the remarkable string of albums with the explosive innocence of “With the Beatles” in 1963, the jubilant rockabilly of “Beatles for Sale” in 1964, the cannabis-fueled “Rubber Soul” in 1965, the epic psychedelia of “Revolver” in 1966 and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in 1967 — which, perhaps inevitably, ended in acrimony not long thereafter. Having lived through that period of time myself, it is stunning to follow Leslie’s insights into how far and fast John and Paul traveled, how profound their preternatural alliance was, and how epic their heroic journey.

I’m sorry John isn’t here to read this book. I hope if Paul does read it he feels the depth of appreciation and gratitude and intelligence it contains. There is a passage about them being high on LSD, after recording the song “Getting Better” during the “Sgt. Pepper’s” sessions, that seems to me central to Leslie’s understanding of his subjects:


That night, John and Paul did something that the two of them practiced quite a few times during this period: They gazed intensely into each other’s eyes. They liked to put their faces close together and stare, unblinking, until they felt themselves dissolving into each other, almost obliterating any sense of themselves as distinct individuals. “There’s something disturbing about it,” recalled McCartney, much later, in his understated way. “You ask yourself, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t.”

One plus one equals two unless you are counting, say, drops of water, in which case one plus one can equal one, or it can equal a fine mist. In “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” one plus one equals eternity.

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WCLK's Jamal Ahmad Pens Letter To The "Uncle" Roy Ayers

JAZZ 91.9 WCLK

If I were ever asked what one musician defines my musical ethos and mission, I would loudly proclaim, without hesitation and with every fiber of my being, South Central Los Angeles' own, Uncle Roy Ayers. Because he was genuinely so many things at one time. He was a walking fusion. What's so genius about Roy Ayers is I became a fan of his early in my life and yet I had no clue who he was.

Like many of my Gen X peers, I discovered his music through hip-hop samples. I'll never forget the day I was in my bedroom playing the New Rochelle group Brand Nubians' newly released single "Wake Up" and my father knocked on my door. He asked me who I was playing on my box. After I told him he said, yeah but that's Roy Ayers' "Everybody Loves The Sunshine". Not knowing who he was, I immediately rode Marta to Wax N Facts and bought the cassette of that legendary album. I was never the same and hearing that song for the first time, which was a truly cathartic moment. And by chance, later that year, which was my junior year in high school, I attended a party featuring legendary DJ Clark Kent and they were giving away tapes at the door. I grabbed a soundtrack called Young Soul Rebels, that featured loads of rare groove and featured his hit single "Running Away". Goodness gracious. I danced so hard in my bedroom the first time I played that song.

A few years later, I was listening to the Thursday night hip-hop show on Georgia Tech's radio station and I won tickets to see him live at Center Stage. I was 19 years old and I took my first girlfriend and it was the first concert I ever attended with a date. He kicked off the show with "Mystic Voyage" and for the next hour and a half, I was in a musical trance. My girlfriend was looking at me like I was crazy because she never saw me react to music the way I did that evening lol.

When I started my radio show at WCLK that same year, he was so heavy in my playlists, the program director actually had to limit me from playing so much of his music lol. And then, through an introduction by my radio mentor Ken Batie, I met my musical hero. They say never meet your heroes, but that didn't apply to Uncle Roy(which is what Ken called him). I saw Roy Ayers do some of the most beautiful things for his fellow humans and quite frankly things I've never seen anyone of his stature do. I remember once after he performed for Ken's birthday party at the Apache Cafe and I was chauffeuring him to the airport with Ken. As we drop him off, he tells Ken with this frustration in his voice, "man take this" and slaps all this money in Ken's hand. Then he let out this sly grin and winked at me. He had given Ken back the money Ken paid him for his performance and said "happy birthday brotha".

Over time, Roy and I became closer with every encounter and I've lost count how many times I've been blessed to interview him and host his shows. Every encounter was soulful and warm and he never changed. When I told him my band The Dangerfeel Newbies was going to cover his song "Love From The Sun" featuring his former vocalist Kathleen J. Bertrand, he gave us the ultimate blessing and said "oh Kathleen is going to make that right". Then when he heard it, he said "y'all turned that song into a hit"! When I asked him to take part in the film I co-directed with Jason Orr of FunkJazz Kafé entitled "Stepping Into Tomorrow"(the final photo in this slide is from the film), he didn't hesitate a bit and blessed us with amazing energy and stories. We're just thankful we were able to honor him and many of his peers.

It goes without saying that Roy Ayers is a jazz legend. But just saying that would minimize his importance. He was one of the great pillars of modern music and the last jazz musicians from his era that drew just as many younger fans to his concerts as he did older fans. Last time he came to Atlanta, I saw so many Tik Tok videos of millennials getting ready for his show. That means something. Roy Ayers' legacy has reached into so many generations that my twelve year old daughter asked me recently if I had ever heard of him. That's so unbelievably cool. He's been sampled by so many legends in hip hop and his list of collaborations features folks as diverse as Rick James, Whitney Houston, Tyler The Creator, The Roots, Masters At Work and many more. His "vibration" literally created a whole new genre and Erykah Badu knighted him "Godfather Of Neo Soul".

All we can do now is thank God for his being and blessing us with him for so many years. Roy Ayers will always be remembered as a master of good vibrations and the world is a much better place after he taught us all how to get on down in the sunshine. I will continue to remind the world of your greatness sir and I will honor you every chance I get. I love you Uncle Roy and may God be pleased with you and your amazing spirit.

~ Jamal Ahmad

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Fleetwood Mac All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Track – Book Review

BY CLAIRE GLOVER

Fleetwood Mac – All The Songs – delves deeply into the exceptional recording history of the hugely-bestselling and immensely influential rock band. Packed with captivating information, photographs and fascinating behind-the-scenes details, it’s a must-have for any music fan.

This is an extremely comprehensive, beautiful book that covers Fleetwood Mac’s 15 lineups. It captures details of Peter Green, including his tragic death, the blues origins of Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood, John and Christine McVie, and the crowning glory when Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the line-up.

Detailing the band’s many iterations, from the self-titled debut album in 1968 when they were known as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, to the classic Rumours era. Covering the shocking passing of Christine McVeigh in November 2022, it’s crammed with hundreds of brilliant photographs, including rare black and white stills and images of instruments used by the band and engaging shots of the musicians in the recording studio. It is an essential prized possession for any true fan of classic rock. It’s a complete look at behind the scenes, which chronicles a five-decade-long recording history of this well-loved, bestselling and hugely influential rock band.

The content draws upon years of research to recount the circumstances that led to the composition of every song the band ever wrote, as well as the details behind their studio recording process. The layout comprehensively covers all the songs, documenting the musicians, where the song was recorded, production details, genesis and lyrics. Alongside incredible images capturing the band across the years.

From documenting Fleetwood Mac’s first concert at the Windsor National and Jazz and Blues Festival in 1967. From 1975 – 1987, which was then the Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks line up. It tells of Mick Fleetwood remembering hearing the song Frozen Love, performed by the Buckingham / Nicks duo, and he was particularly taken by the guitarist’s touch. He invited Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac, who insisted that his girlfriend Stevie Nicks be part of the adventure, and the rest is history, beautifully captured in these pages.

A couple of little snippets of mesmerising information: Lindsey Buckingham, who was born in October 1949, was pushed into swimming by his father, the owner of a prosperous coffee factory. Yet his only interest seemed to be music, and he didn’t fit in with his two older brothers, who were nicknamed the swimming Buckingham’s. At the age of five, Buckingham spent most of his time drawing guitars while his two brothers were swimming laps in the community pool. His obsession with the self-taught guitar took precedence over everything else.

Stephanie Lynn Nicks was born on May 26, 1948, in Phoenix, Arizona. The name Stevie came from the fact she couldn’t pronounce the word Stephanie when she was little, and so the pronunciation came out as TD, which was eventually turned into Stevie. She was certainly one of the most emblematic figures in the band. Under the watchful eye of her grandfather, country singer Aaron Jess Nicks, Stevie first sang at the age of four. He introduced her to dozens of 45 records, which they listened to together religiously. He was tempted to take her on tour with him, but gave up when her parents categorically refused.

The 600 pages of the book’s contents include – The Roots of Fleetwood Mac, Jeremy Spencer, The Guitarist With Two Faces, The 2003 to 2013 Tours, Glossary, Photo Credits and final pages covering the band’s discography of every song.

This incredible book extensively captures in words and pictures one of the most enduring, charming yet drama-filled bands in rock history, whose success, challenges and amazing music continues to resonate with generations of listeners.

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Film Review: “A Complete Unknown” — A Fable Well Worth Telling

BY TIM JACKSON

Focusing on the years between 1961 and 1965, director James Mangold turns Bob Dylan’s creative journey into a better-than-average cinematic biography in which the singer ends up riding off on his motorcycle and into history.

A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold. Screening on screens around New England beginning December 24.

In Bob Dylan’s imaginative memoir, Chronicle, he begins: “I’d come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.” It is an apt summary of James Mangold’s film A Complete Unknown. With a script by Mangold and Jay Cocks based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric (Arts Fuse review), the film covers Dylan’s arrival in Greenwich Village in January 1961 and ends with his legendary performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The reinvention of Bobby Zimmerman into Bob Dylan was swift; he took the city and the folk world by storm. Mangold gleans Wald’s book for references and details, painting a clear if occasionally fanciful portrait. Dylan was already an obsessive songwriter at twenty. His songs and lyrics were highly personal, unlike the traditional songs performed by his peers. His performance at Newport with electric instruments was transformative, a radical departure from what was the standard for ‘folk music’, which was resolutely acoustic.

Playing Dylan, Timothée Chalamet might earn his first Oscar. There is a passing physical resemblance between the two of them; but more important, the actor plays the guitar and meets the challenge of duplicating Dylan’s nasal vocal style. (The rest of the cast also perform their musical numbers.) Chalamet suggests that Dylan’s mumbling speech might be the way the man used to emotionally distance himself from the world and close relationships. That reticence is understandable. As Dylan sings in “Maggie’s Farm”, ‘I got a head full of ideas that is drivin’ me insane’.

At age 20, Dylan is seen in the film moving into her apartment with a New York girlfriend, where he writes compulsively. Soon after that, Dylan shacks up with the already famous Joan Baez. (As Baez, Monica Barbaro has an unaffected singing voice that resonates with Baez’s, though the original is a tough act to duplicate.) Initially, Dylan had commented to manager Albert Grossman that Baez was “pretty,” adding “maybe too pretty”. Arrogant, unshakably confident of his own vision, Dylan later tells Baez to her face that: “Your songs are like oil paintings at the dentist’s office.” Baez’s understandable response: “And you’re kind of an asshole, Bob.”

The narrative’s accuracy regarding times and places is shakey. It is true that Dylan met and played with the legendary Woody Guthrie during his first week in New York. A Complete Unknown places his initial visit at New Jersey’s Greystone Psychiatric Park where Guthrie, played by Scoot McNairy (also in this year’s Nightbitch), lies in bed, unable to speak, his career cut short after a long battle with Huntington’s disease. But it is film fiction that Pete Seeger was at Guthrie’s side at the time. Edward Norton’s fatherly demeanor and vocal inflections imitate Seeger perfectly — his performance is among the film’s highlights. After Dylan plays “Song to Woody” in the hospital room, the pair sit without comment. The silence of this moving scene makes a dramatic point: we’re left to infer that both of the older artists recognize that this young minstrel from Duluth might be the pioneer for a new generation of folk artists.

Grossman soon signed Dylan into his stable of artists, which included the biggest stars of the scene, such as Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. A Columbia Record contract followed. Grossman was a music industry powerhouse, but Dan Fogler’s interpretation of him is a bit clownish. Grossman soon recognized that his other artists could cover Dylan’s quickly expanding repertoire, earning all concerned a fortune in royalties.

In the film, Dylan falls into a relationship with activist and artist Sylvie Russo, played by Elle Fanning. This character is a substitute for Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s actual muse, the woman who graces the cover of 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. (It is one of the few name changes in the film.) In Chronicles, Dylan describes meeting Rotolo: “We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid’s arrow had whistled past my ears before, but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard.” He later wrote the song “Ballad in Plain D” about their separation. In 1985 he said ”Oh yeah, that one! I look back and say, ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’ Of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.” After recording it, he was never known to have performed it again.

The fine supporting cast includes Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash and Norbert Leo Butz as Alan Lomax. Many key figures are skirted over in this telling, such as journalist Bob Shelton and folk singers Phil Ochs and Peter Yarrow. Others, like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, receive peripheral cameos. One notable scene comes when Dylan makes an unexpected appearance at a TV show hosted by Seeger, in which the guest is a mythical Delta Blues singer named Jesse Moffett. The blues guitarist Big Bill Morganfield was brought in to play the role. Moffett and Dylan play a wonderful duet; it’s a made-up performance, but it adds some blues bona fides to the film.

Dylan’s wealth and status came fast. By 1964, he was a star. The civil rights and anti-war movements embraced the performer as their premier spokesman-troubadour. But soon a a radically altered Dylan would emerge, one that alienated many of his fans and admirers. That’s the subject of the second half of A Complete Unknown, which leads up to Dylan’s infamous appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

George Wein began the folk festival in 1959 with Grossman. It was to serve as a platform for live performances in the acoustic tradition, the lineup structured to include emerging folk artists (Joan Baez and the Kingston Trio), traditional bluegrass acts (Flatt and Scruggs), aging blues masters (Son House, Odetta, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee), and many more. Wein was creating a community made up of musicians who were dedicated to the progressive ideals of a generation, artists who had come of age amidst the battles against racial segregation and McCarthyism. There was also the assassinations of John Kennedy and Malcolm X, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. War was escalating in Vietnam. At the center of the movement and its ideals was the perpetually engaged Pete Seeger. But Dylan was a musician and poet first, not an activist. His sudden fame made him uncomfortable; he resented being labeled or pigeonholed. He had a working knowledge of a vast range of American music and loved rock and roll as much as folk. Given that his songs and lyrics were being interpreted by many as speaking for the conscience of anti-establishment culture, a conflict was inevitable.

In March of 1964, Dylan recorded an electric album, Bringing It All Back Home. Dylan, backed by members of Paul Butterfield’s Chicago Blues band, opened at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric version of “Maggie’s Farm”. Many in the crowd booed: it was seen by some as an affront to the acoustic roots of folk. They shouldn’t have been so surprised. The truth is, Dylan always wanted to be a rock star. Unacknowledged is the fact that the Butterfield Band had performed loudly that same afternoon with electric guitars. But Dylan’s performance ended up creating an angry division between Seeger, the traditionalist, and Dylan, who was upset and confounded by the hostile reaction. The folk world was forever changed.

The performance was not as much a revolution as an evolution, a change that is at the heart of A Complete Unknown. As befits a Hollywood biopic, it fabricates and simplifies details for the sake of creating drama out of Dylan’s break with the past. There’s added soap opera: an awkward episode about a romantic break-up. Nevertheless, by focusing on the years between 1961 and 1965, Mangold turns Dylan’s creative journey into a better-than-average cinematic biography in which the singer ends up riding off on his motorcycle and into history.

Given that America today is being ripped apart by another traumatic political divide, this is a story worth telling. Particularly for generations only vaguely familiar with the embattled evolution of one of America’s visionary artist poets,

Dylan aficionados will no doubt grumble. Chronologically, songs are performed before they were actually written; there are incidents that never happened, and various events have been consolidated for dramatic purposes. Rolling Stone magazine has published a list of 29 fictitious events and/or details in the film. Purists should turn to numerous books on Dylan’s life and music. Besides Dylan Goes Electric and Chronicles, it is worth looking at 2022’s Philosophy of Modern Song, in which Dylan analyzes and riffs on tunes over the course of over 60 essays. In film, there are Martin Scorsese’s documentaries, 2005’s No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and 2029’s The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. Also worth taking in: Todd Haynes’s terrific I’m Not There and D. A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, which covers Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in England.

Dylan, who is on record as admiring Chalamet’s performance suggested on X, “After you’ve seen the movie read [Wald’s] book”. The book and film fit together well; they present a complete picture. In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Chalamet explains: “This is interpretive. This is not definitive. This is not fact. This is not how it happened. This is a fable.”

Footnote:

I was at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. I had just gotten my driver’s license and I drove to Newport from Connecticut with two friends. We slept in sleeping bags in the dirt and washed at the local YMCA. I owned the double side 45 RPM record of “Like a Rolling Stone”. That electric version, along with British adaptations of American standards, such as The Animal’s version of “House on the Rising Sun”, were blowing our young minds. All day, you could attend what were called ‘workshops’ with roots artists from America and around the world. The most vivid of those in my memory: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Doc Watson and his son Merle, Rev. Gary Davis, Son House, and Lightnin’ Hopkins. In those days you could gather informally around a folk singer like Taj Mahal singing under a tree in the afternoons. I’ll never forget an impromptu performance featuring Peter Schumann, co-founder of the Bread & Puppet Theatre, who did some improvised storytelling while Eric Von Schmidt unrolled a long sheet of paper attached to a fence and drew illustrations as he went along.

That evening, we expected Dylan to “go electric.” We had been soaked by the rain and couldn’t afford the ticket price, so we listened from outside the gates. We were pleased to hear the electric guitars cranking out “Like a Rolling Stone”. A decade later, working with folk singer Tom Rush, I wrote a piece for Black Sheep Magazine called “The Folkie’s Fear of Drums”. A positive letter of response was later published from none other than – Pete Seeger!

Tim Jackson was an assistant professor of Digital Film and Video for 20 years. His music career in Boston began in the 1970s and includes some 20 groups, recordings, national and international tours, and contributions to film soundtracks. He studied theater and English as an undergraduate, and has also worked helter-skelter as an actor and member of SAG and AFTRA since the 1980s. He has directed three feature documentaries: Chaos and Order: Making American Theater about the American Repertory Theater; Radical Jesters, which profiles the practices of 11 interventionist artists and agit-prop performance groups; When Things Go Wrong: The Robin Lane Story. And two short films: Joan Walsh Anglund: Life in Story and Poem and The American Gurner. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. You can read more of his work on his blog.

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