AAJ's Chris May

All About Jazz's staff culture is best described as a close-knit group of like-minded friends, united by a shared passion for jazz music. Many of these friendships have existed since AAJ's inception, which makes it especially heartbreaking to announce the passing of Chris May.

Chris was a cornerstone at AAJ, offering deep knowledge, extensive experience, strong opinions, and a steadying influence every day. He was rock solid dependable, a staunch advocate for AAJ, and a spirited leader with a knack for helping new writers feel welcome and supported. To put his contributions into perspective, Chris wrote nearly 1,500 articles and edited almost 5,000 pieces for All About Jazz.

Chris was deeply committed to our work and established one of the strongest voices in AAJ's history. His impact on the publication, the staff, and our readers will never be forgotten. This is an immense loss for AAJ, and he will be profoundly missed.

As Chris aptly put it to new AAJ writers, "None of us get paid. Your reward will come in heaven." Hopefully, Chris just got his big pay day.

Join the Tribute

As a tribute to Chris, we're compiling a list of quotes and stories, which we'll publish as an article. If you have something about Chris to share, email it to me ([email protected]) and I'll include it in the article.

About Chris...

Chris May was a senior editor of All About Jazz. He began adult life as a tenor saxophonist and was a member of the Italian electric-jazz band Madre Superiore, who for much of 1970 was resident at Florence's Space Electronica, billed as the country's first psychedelic club.

After further travels, he returned to London, where he began writing about music rather than playing it. From 1979-84 he was editor of the pioneering magazine Black Music & Jazz Review and in the 2010s he was editor of the style/culture/history magazine Jocks & Nerds.

His books include African All-Stars: The Pop Music Of A Continent (Quartet Books hardback / Paladin paperback), an encyclopedic survey of modern African music, and Vibes From The Scribes (Pluto Press paperback), a contextualized anthology of verse by rap forebears The Last Poets.In the late 1980s, Chris ran the London office of Celluloid Records, then the platform for Bill Laswell's productions. From 1989-93 he was director of marketing at London Contemporary Dance Theatre and then held the same position from 1994-98 at Rambert Dance Company.

From 1999-2008 he was executive director at Richard Alston Dance Company. He is retained by Partisan / Knitting Factory Records to write commentaries for every track on all releases in the ongoing Complete Works reissue series of his longtime friend Fela Kuti. (In spring 1977, in the wake of the Nigerian army's sack of Kalakuta, he was the first overseas journalist to travel to Nigeria to get the story direct from Fela.)

He was commissioned by Google Arts & Culture to create the content for an interactive, state-of-the-art Fela Kuti website. It is hoped this will go live in early 2025. In 2017, Seun Kuti appointed him Guardian of Afrobeat.

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Posted to Publisher's Desk IN THE All About Jazz GROUP
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