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My monthly list of recommended CDs, as published in All About Jazz-New York, September 2007: Rob Brown Trio, Sounds (Clean Feed) Paquito D’Rivera Quintet, Funk Tango (Sunnyside) Charles Davis, Land of Dreams (Smalls) Jason Lindner Big Band, Live at the Jazz Gallery (Anzic) David Murray Black Saint Quartet, Sacred Ground (Justin Time) Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Soné Ka La (Emarcy)

The Autumn 2007 edition of Democratiya is now available, and I’m proud to be in the Table of Contents along with Todd Gitlin, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Barry Rubin and others. My review of Amitav Ghosh’s Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times is here.

Two lively sets last night at Chris’s, here in Philly, by the Venezuela-born drummer and Latin jazz bandleader Marlon Simon, brother of piano phenom Edward. (The new Nagual Spirits album is Rumba A’ La Patato.) Renato Thoms was a juggernaut on congas. Good original tunes, but the highlight was a fast, Latinized reading of Bobby Watson’s “Fuller Love,” from the

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I’ve got three CD reviews in the Sept. ’07 issue of Jazz Times: Nublu Orchestra Conducted by Butch Morris (Nublu)Sulphur by Steuart Liebig’s Minim (pfMentum) Inamorata by Bill Laswell’s Method of Defiance (Ohm Resistance)

Far-left polemicist John Pilger is very happy to report that boycotting Israel is an idea that is catching on. Only problem is his evidence — he cites a group, Independent Jewish Voices, whose founding author is flatly opposed to the boycott. Pilger is either inept, dishonest or both. Jon Pike of Engage comments. More on Pilger here and here.

My review of their Tuesday night Philly show, in today’s Inquirer.

With Sean Penn and other celebs supporting a budding autocracy in Venezuela, it’s nice to see Jim Carrey making a dead-serious appeal for the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi. [P.S. – Demonstrations have been flaring up in Rangoon in recent days. Take a moment to appreciate the incredible bravery of the Burmese opposition, whose members are being rounded up

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My friend and colleague Larry Blumenfeld has an informative piece in Salon.