Nadine Khouri - Another Life - VINYL LP

The late, great Miami based blues singer/guitarist's career started on the Deep City tag in 1968 with a string of singles following on the Blue Candle tag. He became a much in demand session musician in the 80's in Miami and recorded two fabulous blues albums - this one being the first. One of the great forgotten blues men, Snoopy Dean died in 1998 from complications arising from diabetes.

The young Egyptian soprano Fatma Said, praised for the luminosity and rich colours of her voice, makes her recording debut for Warner Classics with El Nour. Her enticing and absorbing recital programme crosses cultures, combining art songs by French, Spanish and Egyptian composers with Egyptian folk songs and popular songs from the Middle East. As she explains, Inch'El Nour' in Arabic means 'Light', and this album sheds light on how music that has been interpreted many times can be perceived in a different light. The idea is to connect three cultures - Arabic, French and Spanish - and to show how much, despite cultural, geographical and historical differences, they have in common when it comes to musicInch.

Ledisi, the New Orleans-born and Oakland-raised singer, pays tribute to the legendary Nina Simone with the album Ledisi Sings Nina. Featuring seven songs of social and personal import drawn from Simone's celebrated songbook, Ledisi Sings Nina is a finely crafted, arrangement-driven collection recorded in Holland, Los Angeles, London, and New Orleans - before and after the pandemic began. It balances upbeat, big-band energy with atmospheric balladry, and an attention to historic detail that succeeds in updating the music for a modern hip-hop/R&B era. With the prowess of Ledisi's voice, the messages of Simone's music - of personal empowerment and collective protest - retain a relevancy for a BLM generation facing the same harsh challenges and bitter struggles of the 1960s. The performances on Ledisi Sings Nina find the singer benefitting from top-tier support in a variety of contexts the majority of tracks feature the world-renowned Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley with arrangements by Jochen Neufer, and others. InchI'm Going Back HomeInch features the all-star New Orleans Jazz Orchestra directed by Adonis Rose. InchFour WomenInch is powered by Ledisi in the company of three vocalists of equal authority Lisa Fisher, Lizz Wright, and Alice Smith. InchWild Is The WindInch - with Spanish guitar, piano and drums - is the album's sole live recording, taken from the 2020 PBS special broadcast Ledisi Live A Tribute to Nina Simone.