The Tokyo Concert Experience

  When I first listened to Night Reign , the second and most recent album by Arooj Aftab , I immediately knew that I was listening to the best album of 2024. It’s eerie and mysterious and yet accessible without making concessions. It felt like an artistic statement. Confident and very unique sounding, unlike anything else. The album defies genres, you can’t call it World Music, Jazz or Hip Hop and yet it has elements of each. I then revisited her collaboration with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily, Love in Exile and was reminded of its vast soundscapes and the way that the electronic and acoustic instruments blend with Aftab’s voice to create this tapestry of sound that slowly builds itself throughout lengthy tracks. The album, as hinted by the collaborators background, has strong jazz/experimental attributes. I’d say that her masterpiece, though, is Vulture Prince . There’s the balance between accessibility and experimentation, but in this earlier album she seems to be taking far m...

  The other day I was watching a TV show, the kind of show where they go to specific areas and talk about their food. They profiled a cook who was well known among the locals for making an amazing ramen. In the show they called him a legend. It made me think that term didn’t exactly fit the person in question. After that I noticed that the word ‘legend’ is used a lot, but who’s truly a legend? To me a legend is someone who overcoming hardship was able to make a mark on their field. Someone who established a before and after. Someone who’ll be remembered long after their gone because of their everlasting impact. Without a doubt, on September 29th at WWW X we were in the presence of a legend.                          Born into royalty in Mali, Salif Keit a was ostracized by his family due to his condition. On top of that he pursued music as a profession, something t...