Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith – review

Cafe Oto, LondonAs the genial, dreadlocked Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, 70, wandered around Cafe Oto as if he'd just dropped in to see what was happening, it was amazing to think that this was the same man who has composed a four-and-a-half hour jazz-classical epic inspired by America's civil rights struggles, recently released as a four-disc set. But the Mississippi-born Smith is a man of many faces – ethnomusicologist, Rastafarian reggae fan, inventor of his own musical notation and possessor o...

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