Soundcheck

“Shamstep” band, 47SOUL, take their name from the Arabic name for the Levant region – Bilad al-Sham, with members from Jordan, Washington DC, and Israel - spanning the divides of the Palestinian Diaspora. The music is a mix of dubstep, hip-hop and electro-Arabic dabke with lyrics in both Arabic and English, which are intensely political in their call for celebration and freedom in the struggle for equality. The quartet 47SOUL performs their smart dance music in-studio. (From the Archives, 2019.)

Set list: 1. Don’t care where you’re from 2. Moved Around  3. Intro To Shamstep 

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The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is a musically free-ranging band of brothers from the south side of Chicago. Their music draws from funk, funky jazz, Afrobeat, hip hop, rock, reggae, and R&B, and they’ve performed with Tony Allen, Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul, Prince, Femi Kuti, Gorillaz, Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), and the B52's, to name a few. Growing up, the members of HBE were raised with music as a constant, as they are the sons of the late jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran (Earth, Wind, and Fire, Sun Ra Arkestra). Now based between Brooklyn and Chicago, the full party of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble plays some tunes in-studio. (Archives, 2019)

Set list:  1. Menage 2. War 3. ACF

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Rumbo Tumba is the project of the Argentine musician Facundo Salgado, who uses a looping station and a battery of handmade, traditional South American instruments to create brilliant musical conversations between South American traditions and modern technology.  Rumbo Tumba can make an improbable amount of sound, live and alone, constructing sounds and atmospheres that transport listeners to the purest places in nature. Hear his live in-studio set for us and his explanation of how he makes all this music live. Rumbo Tumba plays in New York at Public Records on October 10.

Set list: 1. Monte 2. Barro 3. Huguaju

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From the 2025 New York Guitar Festival, hear music from legendary American jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and Icelandic bass player Skúli Sverrisson, who were about to go into the studio and record their second album as a duo. Part of the New Sounds Live concerts, the music was recorded at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, and was a co-presentation of World Music Institute. 

Set list: 1. Sverrisson: Her Room 2. Sverrisson: Draumfari 3. Frisell: Baby 4. Sverrisson: Afternoon Variant

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Cole Quest & The City Pickers are a bluegrass band from Brooklyn, and if that surprises you, well, the fact is New York City has had a long, strong bluegrass scene going back to the 1950’s. Cole Quest draws on that tradition, and his own family tradition - he’s the grandson of the folk icon Woody Guthrie – in originals and updated versions of Guthrie tunes. Cole Quest & The City Pickers shred with high-spirited energy and that high lonesome sound, in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Where I'm From 2. Early Morning Dew 3. I Ain't

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The Soundcheck Podcast series offers up music from recent sessions, all revolving around The Blues –at the root of so much popular music, and where the roots have grown into other fruits worldwide. Listen to French-Moroccan band Bab L' Bluz and their hot psychedelic blues spiked with the Gnawa trance rhythms of northern Africa's Maghreb. There’s the “Desert Blues” of West Africa in music by singer and guitarist Mdou Moctar from Niger. He and his band combine rock and psychedelia, call-and-response and accelerating threes, and fiery guitar playing for trancey and ecstatic results. Listen to Texas-raised singer, guitarist, and songwriter Ruthie Foster and her longtime bandmates who play some of their feel-good and hopeful blues. Hear the timeless sound of West Georgia Blues by singer and guitarist Jontavious Willis (along with the wicked tunings and his slide playing), in-studio. Plus, there’s the groove and swagger of Yemen Blues, and their fusion of Moroccan trance, Arab and Bedouin folk, and Western funk and rock. The American singer-songwriter Fantastic Negrito plays some of his blues-stomp-and-roll music with roots in his family’s past. Plus, hear the vintage soul and blues-rock sound of Memphis and Mississippi-rooted, Brooklyn native singer Bette Smith. 

Soundcheck Special, Sept. 2025 – “Blues Is the Roots” (First aired 9/20/25)

ARTIST: Marco Benevento
WORK: Eagle Rock [1:02]
RECORDING: TigerFace
SOURCE: Royal Potato Family
INFO: https://marcobenevento.bandcamp.com/album/tigerface

ARTIST: Jontavious Willis
WORK: Ghost Woman [5:52]
RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2024
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available
INFO: https://jontaviouswillis.com

ARTIST: Fantastic Negrito
WORK: Son of a Broken Man [5:02]
RECORDING: Live on Soundcheck, Oct. 2024
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: https://www.fantasticnegrito.com/

ARTIST: Ruthie Foster
WORK: Phenomenal Woman [7:00]
RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, March 2023
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: https://www.ruthiefoster.com/

ARTIST: Mdou Moctar
WORK: Imouhar [6:18]
RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, June 2024
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: https://www.mdoumoctar.com/

ARTIST: Bab L' Bluz
WORK: Imazighen [4:15]
RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, April 2025
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: https://www.bablbluz.com/

ARTIST: Yemen Blues
WORK: Allenby [5:26]
RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Sept. 2024
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: https://yemenblues.com/

ARTIST: Bette Smith
WORK: Darkest Hour [3:35]
RECORDING: Live for the Soundcheck Podcast, Aug. 2024
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: https://www.bettesmith.com

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Canada’s Ron Sexsmith is a songwriter whose fans include Elvis Costello, Elton John, Paul McCartney, and a few other folks who know a thing or two about that mysterious process. Sexsmith is now forty years into his career, with 18 albums, three of Canada’s Juno Awards, and a novel to show for it. His latest album is called Hangover Terrace, and it ranges from aching ballads to the tongue-in-cheek advice for living. Ron Sexsmith plays solo, in-studio.

Set list: 1. Cigarette and Cocktail 2. Rose Town 3. Gold In Them Hills

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Distinctive songwriter Cass McCombs takes a broad view of the American experience – from the mundane to the mythic. His new songs from a wide-ranging double album -  Interior Live Oak contain “specific detail amid strange painterly settings” (The Guardian) and remain hopeful despite the feeling of listening to someone who has lived the extreme aspects of modern life. Cass McCombs plays a stripped-down set, in-studio.

Set List: 1. Missionary Bell 2. Home At Last 3. Peace

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Pianist and composer Omar Sosa draws on his own Afro-Cuban heritage, American jazz, and spiritual and meditative practices from around the world to create music that defies categorization. He’s traveled widely, especially in Africa, recording the sounds of the people, the animals, and the instruments of those places and sometimes incorporating them into his own works. Sosa, along with the Cuban-born, New York-based sax player Yosvany Terry, and drummer Julian Miltenberger, play new music, in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Bola 2. My Three Notes (Mis Tres Notas) 3. Muevete en D

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“Failed bull-rider turned seminal songwriter” (Red Light Management), native Texan Rodney Crowell is considered to be one of the chief architects of Americana music, and a songwriter admired by good songwriters. Crowell has had an eventful career in his half century of writing songs, making records and helping create the style that’s come to be known as alternative country. He’s worked with a who’s who of American music:  Emmylou Harris at first, and then much later as well, but also Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow – the list is too long to go into. Rodney Crowell is back with a new album called "Airline Highway" featuring many top-notch collaborations. He plays a solo set, in-studio.

Set list: 1. Rainy Days in California 2. The Twenty-One Song Salute (Owed to G.G. Shinn and Cléoma Falcon) 3. Taking Flight

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