Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival, 1978-1985

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Thank goodness for people like Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg who did their part to lift our culture by supporting and sharing with the world powerful music by powerful musicians who happened to be women. And thank goodness for people like Carolyn Glenn Brewer, who wrote so beautifully about them, reminding us that important things come from individuals with bold ideas and a lot of determination."

- Maria Schneider, Grammy Award-winning composer and big band leader

"Thanks to Brewer for helping to erase the stigma women musicians experience by exposing this inspiring organization and its contributions to women in music in this well-documented account."

- Ellen Johnson, vocalist, producer and author of Jazz Child: A Portrait of Sheila Jordan

"In telling the story of the Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival and the women who made it possible, Ms. Brewer has written a glorious new chapter in jazz history. These jazz women are no longer ‘Anonymous.'"

- Chuck Haddix, author of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop - History and Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker

"It is a privilege to know the talented Carol Comer, Dianne Gregg, and Carolyn Glenn Brewer and to sing the praises of this outstanding book."

Mike Metheny, trumpet/flugelhorn soloist and author of Old Friends Are The Best Friends

"A wonderfully detailed book that captures the essence and inner workings of the WJF while also providing much more than a glimpse into the Kansas City jazz scene during those years."

- Steve Cardenas, guitarist

"Compiling oral histories documented with facts, Brewer has breathed life into a story that connects gender issues from 40 years ago to the present, immersing the reader in a rich story-telling experience."

- Lee Hill Kavanaugh, alumnus bass trombonist for DIVA and award-winning journalist for the Kansas City Star

"This gifted writer draws the reader in like she was chatting over coffee and shares the incomparable, unique stories of seven years of the Women's Jazz Festival in swingin' Kansas City."

- Mary Jo Papich, co-founder of the Jazz Education Network

In his much loved portrayal of Jesse Stone, a continuing TV series about a police chief in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise, actor Tom Selleck’s  is constantly throwing off little witticisms like: “The information is out there; all you gotta do is let it in.”

I thought of that expression when the nice folks at The University of North Texas sent me a preview copy of Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s  Changing The Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival, 1978-1985.

Who knew?

But after reading Ms. Brewer’s fully-researched and well-written narrative on the subject, it would appear that those Jazz fans who attended the Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival, 1978-1985 and those musicians who performed in it, certainly knew, and for eight years, they all had a ball.

By way of introduction, CAROLYN GLENN BREWER is a longtime music educator who has written for Jam Magazine and published two books on the 1957 tornado in Ruskin Heights, Missouri. She has played clarinet in bands, chamber groups, and orchestras throughout the Kansas City area. She lives in Kansas City.

Ms. Brewer talks about how this book came about in the following excerpt from it introductory Acknowledgements:

“IN 2010 WHILE I WAS INTERVIEWING Carol Comer for a local jazz magazine about another Kansas City jazz festival, the Women's Jazz Festival inevitably came up. Carol's enthusiasm for the subject hadn't dimmed. She suggested I write an article about WJF, so I did. But I could no more contain this vast subject in a few pages than reduce Mahler's Seventh to a few measures. Work on the book began even before I had finished the article.

Carol and Dianne Gregg couldn't have been more generous. They gave me access to the "world headquarters" archive where through tapes, photos, festival programs, and news clippings the individual festivals spoke for themselves. But always it was during conversations with Carol and Dianne that WJF came to life. Over shared meals and relaxed evenings in their magical backyard their stories became the heart of this story. These two remarkable women not only created an event that changed the course of jazz, but their persistence in promoting jazz connects those events of nearly forty years ago to today's jazz world. They also have proven to be exceptional dog sitters.

Social historians dream about sources like Mike Ning. Not only was he instrumental in the success of WJF as a piano player, artist, and board member, he kept all papers pertaining to the festival. When he handed me a large box full of board meeting minutes and reviews, I knew I had hit the jackpot.

At the top of the list of friends who encouraged me to write this book, [pianist] Paul Smith takes first chair. His lists of musician emails, photos, and recordings gave me the boost I needed at times when

And the following media release which accompanied the preview copy of the book offers this context for a broader appreciation of what the publication of this book represents:

“Carolyn Glenn Brewer explores the history of women in jazz through the lens of the Kansas City jazz festival in her new book, Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival, 1978-1985.

“Even though the potential passage of the Equal Rights Amendment had cracked glass ceilings across the country, in 1978 jazz remained a boys' club. Two Kansas City women, Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg, challenged that inequitable standard. With the support of jazz luminaries Marian McPartland and Leonard Feather, inaugural performances by Betty Carter, Mary Lou Williams, an unprecedented All-Star band of women, Toshiko Akiyoshi's band, plus dozens of Kansas City musicians and volunteers, a casual conversation between two friends evolved into the annual Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival (WJF).

But with success came controversy. Anxious to satisfy fans of all jazz styles, WJF alienated some purists. The inclusion of male sidemen brought on protests. The egos of established, seasoned players unexpectedly clashed with those of newcomers. Undaunted, Comer, Gregg, and WJF's ensemble of supporters continued the cause for eight years. They fought for equality not with speeches but with swing, without protest signs but with bebop.

For the first book about this groundbreaking festival, Carolyn Glenn Brewer interviewed dozens of people and dove deeply into the archives. This book is an important testament to the ability of two friends to emphatically prove jazz genderless, thereby changing the course of jazz history.”

The project seemed overwhelming. He never lost patience when I'd ask him again to tell me about the time he played with Anita O'Day or Dianne Reeves. At gigs, parties, even funerals, he always asked how the book was coming, and if there was anything he could do to help.

My brother—and I'm happy to say my oldest friend—David Glenn, provided insight, valuable editing input, contacts, personal stories, and reminders of the importance of this story.

The staff of The State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center-Kansas City couldn't have been more helpful. Always friendly, even when I handed them yet another stack of photocopy requests from the three cartons of WJF memorabilia, they encouraged me to take as much room as I needed and to not feel rushed.

To all those I interviewed I give special thanks, first because they all furthered the advancement of women in jazz and secondly for sharing their memories and candidly setting the tone of the time.

I'd also like to add a nod of appreciation and respect for authors Linda Dahl and Sally Placksin whose groundbreaking books on women in jazz were invaluable resources, and to Judy Chaikin for her outstanding movie, Girls in the Band. Seeing these brave women on screen personalized their experience and underlined the importance of their stories. …”

And here with the beginning paragraphs from Ms. Brewer’s First Chapter appropriately entitled Crazy Little Women is how the Kansas City Women’s Jazz festival began:

“THE IDEA CAME TO THEM while driving home from the 1977 Wichita Jazz Festival. It was a boring, flat, dark drive with plenty of time for conversation. They rehashed what they had seen and heard that day, but kept coming back to the same point. After twelve hours of jazz, they had heard only one woman performer.

"Sarah Vaughan was terrific," singer/pianist/songwriter Carol Comer remembers, "but she wasn't enough. Dianne and I lamented the fact that women players were mostly passed over, not just in Wichita, but everywhere."

Dianne Gregg hosted a radio show called Women in Jazz, as well as two other jazz shows on the Kansas City National Public Radio station, KCUR. Every week she talked to women jazz musicians who were deserving of more exposure. Both women were well aware of the fact that all jazz musicians struggled to be heard, as they were aware that, even in this era of debate over the Equal Rights Amendment, women musicians continued to have more to prove.

Dianne and Carol had gone to the Wichita Jazz Festival as members of the press. Carol was covering the festival for Down Beat and Dianne for KCUR. As much as they enjoyed the bands, they were there to work, and that creative thought process was still flowing when Carol said, "I have a really radical idea—why don't we have a women's jazz festival?"

They both had a good laugh over the improbability of that happening, but by the time they paid their Kansas Turnpike toll, the idea had taken hold. Why not? There was no shortage of talent, and how hard could it be to organize a concert? Between them they had plenty of contacts and gumption enough to pursue those they didn't know. They hadn't heard of anyone putting together a jazz festival that focused on women, but that wasn't a good enough reason not to do it. Kansas City was the perfect location: right in the middle of the country and known for its jazz heritage.

By the time Carol dropped Dianne off at her apartment in mid-town Kansas City, they were laughing about the fact that an hour before they had thought the idea was radical. "It isn't a radical idea. It's a great idea," Dianne remembers saying. "So we said, 'Let's do it.'" They'd sleep on it and check in with each other the next day. The two women had plenty to think about.”

Jazz musicians are very brave. It’s not easy to play this stuff and you fail at it more times than you succeed. You need help from colleagues who explain things to you and share their secrets to help you better express your own style.  And you need people who believe in you and support you by giving you a place to play.  All too often in the long history of the music such venues have been unsavory, to say the least.

But every so often a George Wein comes along and invites you to a party - aka - the Newport Jazz Festival; or Jimmy Lyons does the same in Monterey, CA; or Dick Gibson throws an actual Jazz Party in Colorado.

The sun is shining [hopefully] and fans and musicians are mingling and sharing appreciations while a group of brave Jazz musicians are on stage preparing to do what Jazz musician, author and teacher, Ted Gioia, describes in the following quotation from The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture:

"If improvisation is the essential element in jazz, it may also be the most problematic. Perhaps the only way of appreciating its peculiarity is by imagining what twentieth-century art would be like if other art forms placed an equal emphasis on improvisation. Imagine T.S. Eliot giving nightly poetry readings at which, rather than reciting set pieces, he was expected to create impromptu poems — different ones each night, sometimes recited at a fast clip; imagine giving Hitchcock or Fellini a handheld camera and asking them to film something — anything — at that very moment, without the benefits of script, crew, editing, or scoring; imagine Matisse or Dali giving nightly exhibitions of their skills — exhibitions at which paying audiences would watch them fill up canvas after canvas with paint, often with only two or three minutes devoted to each 'masterpiece.'

These examples strike us as odd, perhaps even ridiculous, yet conditions such as these are precisely those under which the jazz musician operates night after night, year after year."

Jazz musicians need “such conditions;” they need places to play with atmospheres that are salubrious, audiences that are attentive and considerate and impresarios that provide organized events for them to try once again to succeed.

Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg provided all of these things and took it one step further: they did it with an emphasis on Women in Jazz. Not an easy thing to accomplish in the socio-cultural milieu that was America in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Carolyn Glenn Brewer provides the details of their bravery in Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women's Jazz Festival, 1978-1985.

You can order your copy through the University of North Texas press by going here.

Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: Three Blind Mice

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Art Blakey. What a guy. Perhaps you know the famous story about Blakey and his sidemen driving between New York and Pittsburgh.  They drove by a cemetery where a burial service was taking place. They stopped and parked and Blakey walked over to listen. It turned out that it was a pauper's funeral and the preacher was having no success in getting someone to say something over the dead man. There was a long pause and a lot of uncomfortable shuffling and, finally. Art said, ‘If no one wants to talk about this man, I'd like to say a few words about jazz.’”

- Doug Ramsey, 1998, from a private correspondence with me

Returning to our current theme of favorite Jazz records, the digital reissues made possible by the development of the compact disc often provided more music from the original LP dates in the form of alternate tracks or tracks left off due to lack of space.

This abbondanza was especially welcomed in the case of drummer Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Three Blind Mice [84451 and 84452] which was recorded in performance at the Renaissance Club in Hollywood, CA in March, 1962

An alternate take  of Up Jumped Spring [and three additional tracks [Wayne Shorter’s Children of the Night, Curtis Fuller’s Arabia and Cedar Walton’s The Promised Land] were added and released as a double CD, although to be accurate, two of the three additional tracks are from a different live date as is explained below.

In addition to Curtis Fuller on trombone, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone and Cedar Walton on piano, Art’s Messengers at the time feature Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Jymie Merritt on bass.

Michael Cuscuna wrote these insert notes for the expanded version  Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Three Blind Mice which provide insights into its place in what he refers to as “The Golden Era of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers.”

“The Golden Era of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers began in late 1958 when Blakey introduced his new quintet with Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, and Jymie Merritt with what is probably his best selling album of all time MOANIN'. Golson was soon replaced by the returning Hank Mobley In the fall of '59, Wayne Shorter replaced Mobley and Walter Davis replaced Bobby Timmons. When Timmons returned at the beginning of 1960, the quintet's personnel was stable and during the next 18 months recorded for Blue Note an incredible body of music: THE BIG BEAT, A NIGHT IN TUNISIA, LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE, MEET YOU AT THE JAZZ CORNER OF THE WORLD Vols . 1 & 2, ROOTS AND HERBS, THE WITCH DOCTOR and THE FREEDOM RIDER.

Even the most perfect of situations must evolve, preferably before redundancy or staleness set in.  So it was with this most perfect quintet.  In June of '61, they recorded one album of standards for Impulse with Curtis Fuller on trombone. Soon thereafter, Lee Morgan and Bobby Timmons left to be replaced by Freddie Hubbard and Cedar Walton.  Fuller stayed on to make it a sextet

A new Messengers was born. The third horn opened up new arranging possibilities. And Walton, Hubbard, Fuller and Shorter started arranging and voicing a small group with the same brilliance that made their compositions so remarkable. The Jazz Messengers moved further away from the funky approach that gave them such hits as "Moanin"' and "Dat Dere" and into the forefront of the most intricate modern jazz. When these men wrote for the group, it was not a simple matter of an AABA structure in 4/4. They were starting from scratch structurally, harmonically and rhythmically to create awesome pieces. What made the miracle complete was that Blakey drove them with a vengeance, making every shift and change without ever disturbing the swing or velocity. This was a most major organization for its three-year existence.

This sextet's recording life started most inauspiciously with a failed live recording at the Village Gate on August 17, 1961, which was never released at the time. The two retrievable performances from that night, "The Promised Land" and 'Arabia", appear on Volume Two of this collection.

Two months later, Blakey took the band into Rudy Van Gelder's to re-record most of the material from the live date and out came the absolute classic MOSAIC. Two months later, they recorded another studio album BUHAINA'S DELIGHT At this point, Blakey and Blue Note parted ways.

In March of 1962 came a one-shot deal with United Artists Records recorded live at the Renaissance in Los Angeles which bore the magnificent THREE BLIND MICE, which is fully embodied in Volume One of the CD reissue

Along with on alternate take of "Up Jumped Spring", versions of "It's Only A Paper Moon", 'Mosaic" and "Ping Pong" were ultimately issued in 1976 on a Blue Note album entitled LIVE MESSENGERS.  Despite the quality of these performances, these tunes could not be considered for release at the time because they had been recorded too recently by Blakey for Blue Note.

In going back to the original three-track master tapes to remix to digital tape in 1990 for the best possible sound quality we also discovered a still unreleased version of Wayne Shorter's "Children of the Night" which is issued for the first time on Volume One

Soon after this live recording, Merritt was replaced by Reggie Workman and the sextet signed with Riverside where it made three excellent sessions. They returned to Blue Note in February of '64 and recorded the ferocious, majestic FREE FOR ALL. In May, Lee Morgan returned to replace Hubbard and the band recorded INDESTRUCTIBLE. Within months, this extraordinary ensemble would disband and Blakey would leave Blue Note permanently as a recording artist.

But the voluminous and breathtaking output of these two related editions of The Jazz Messengers from 1959 to 1964 will help the magic of their music live forever in our hearts and minds.”

—Michael Cuscuna

OTHER BLUE NOTE CD's BY ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS YOU WILL ENJOY:

A NIGHT AT BIRDLAND-VOL 1         B2-46519

A NIGHT AT BIRDLAND-VOL 2       B2-46520

AT THE CAFE BOHEMIA-VOL 1         B2-46521

AT THE CAFE BOHEMIA-VOL 2       B2-46522

RITUAL                                          B2-46858

MOANIN'                                              B2-46516

THE BIG BEAT                                         B2-46400

A NIGHT IN TUNISIA                           B2-84049

LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE                     B2-84245

MOSAIC                                                  B2-46823

FREE FOR ALL                                        B2-84170

INDESTRUCTIBLE                                   B2-46429

THE BEST OF ART BLAKEY                  B2-93205

Although it is primarily a feature for pianist Cedar Walton with the horns only coming in to add occasional color and to help create a vehicle to close the tune, I've selected That Old Feeling as an example of the music on Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, Three Blind Mice because it also shows off another great quality in his playing - his skill as an accompanist.

BTW ... Art was a skillful bandleader in that he always included a piano-bass-drum feature when The Messengers were making a club date to allow the horn players to rest their lips [aka "chops"] during each set.

And what is it about Cedar Walton piano playing that is so engaging? He 's not a technical marvel with dizzying displays of notes flying all over the place. Nor is he an introverted romantic whose playing forms deep and melancholy moods. His approach to the instrument is to play it in a straight-forward and swinging manner. He weaves in and out of a rich tapestry of melodies that leave a smile on your face and a feeling of light fascination in your heart. Cedar's music just feels good: nothing complicated, no overt pianism; just That Old Feeling- the one that made you fall in love with Jazz in the first place.

Paquito D' Rivera: Live at the Blue Note

© -Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“There isn’t a weak link in Mr. D’Rivera’s band. And he has already honed it to a sharp edge – the ensemble playing is fastidiously tight, the breaks and endings are executed flawlessly. It’s a band that should be heard … by anybody who likes Jazz that’s inventive, hot and heartfelt.”

- Robert Palmer, “The New York Times”

“D’Rivera has developed into a startling innovator who moves from mordant, birdlike bop to manic split tones and squeaks.”

- Leonard Feather, “The Los Angeles Times”

“Jazz is speed reading of speedwriting and Paquito can make comfortable listeners of us all while playing at the breakneck speed of more than 300 beats a minute. The big tone in the attack, the fast phrasing, the rapid changes of keys, and the alternation of rhythms combine in Paquito’s music with great technical proficiency. He is the master of the sax – and the clarinet, too.”

- G. Cabrera Infante

“A fluent, virtuoso musician, whose playing … [leaps] with an exuberance quite unlike any other alto saxophone player in Jazz ….”

- Stuart Nicholson, “Jazz: The 1980’s Resurgence”

“I have been a fan of Paquito D’Rivera since the moment he first blew me out of my seat one humid night in Havana during an outdoor concert by the outstanding band Irakere. That was in April, 1978, when a group of recording executives and musicians of which I was a part made a musical sojourn to Cuba. Paquito’s blazing solo on Irakere’s very first number of the night left us completely speechless.”

- Bruce Lundvall, record company executive

As frequent visitors to these pages will no doubt have observed by now, I have been dwelling a bit lately on postings about some of my favorite recordings and one that certainly fits into this category is The Paquito D’Rivera Quintet Live at The Blue Note [Half Note Records 4911].

It was recorded in performance at the Blue Note in New York City in 2000.

Listened to in its entirety, it is the perfectly paced Jazz set.

Many of the reasons why this is so are explained below in Fred Jung’s insert notes to the recording which you'll find detailed below.

I first heard Paquito around 1980 on Irakere’s initial Columbia album about which we have written extensively in this profile of the band.

It’s hard to believe that almost 40 years later, he generates the same excitement in me every time I listen to him play.

Paquito’s enthusiasm and energy are exemplified in his music - the man just knows how to light it up.

“Paquito,” so we are told, is a variant of the of the Latin name for Francis meaning “from France:” one connotation being that France is the “land of the free man.”

And so it was for Paquito when he left Cuba and eventually took up residence in New York in 1982, thus becoming a “free” man.

One benefit of this freedom has been the amount of superb music that is has enabled Paquito to generate over the past four decades. In a word, his discography is prolific. You can checkout his many recordings via this link to his Discogs page.

Here are Fred’s insightful and well-written  insert notes to The Paquito D’Rivera Quintet Live at The Blue Note [Half Note Records 4911].

“A good leader allows his players ample space to perform. A great leader trusts in his players and empowers them to creatively interpret his music. Paquito D'Rivera has learned to be a great leader, no doubt from one of the most eminent bandleaders of our time, Dizzy Gillespie (D'Rivera directed Gillespie's United Nation Orchestra for a number of years).

"Dizzy, still today, is a great influence in my career and in my life, not only his playing and his music, but the way he approached life, the way he helped others to make their careers. The music and the spirit of Dizzy Gillespie is always in someplace around my heart," acknowledges D'Rivera.

Long before he defected from Cuba in 1980, D'Rivera was a true child prodigy, taught by his father Tito D'Rivera, a renown classical saxophonist and educator himself. At 12, Paquito enrolled in the celebrated Alejandro Garcia Caturia Conservatory of Music, where he studied theory, harmony, composition and clarinet.

After working at the Havana Musical Theatre, and a three year stint in the army, teenager Paquito D'Rivera along with Chucho Valdes, Armondo Romeu and other distinguished Cuban musicians, found the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, from where Irakere originated. Of which Mr. D'Rivera admits "It was a very important part of my career, especially from the point of view of international exposure. I had been playing with Chucho for many years, so Irakere was what I call, old wine, new bottles."

For his live performance at New York's distinguished Blue Note Jazz Club, D'Rivera chooses the commendable route of recording with his working band of five years rather than the more commercially savvy, all-star grouping. "I realized that I had never recorded with this quintet. This quintet is the engine for all my other projects," admits D'Rivera. D'Rivera's quintet - trumpeter Diego Urcola, pianist Dane Eskenazi, bassist Oscar Stagnaro, and drummer Mark Walker - perform a colorful Latin program.

Live at the Blue Note is certainly a departure for D'Rivera in more ways than one from his more recent orchestral projects. D'Rivera primarily sticks to playing the alto saxophone throughout most of the performance, beginning with "Curumim," a composition from Brazilian composer Cesar Camargo-Mariano. "I am a fan of the composer, Cesar Camargo-Mariano. I heard the song over twenty years ago and I fell in love with the song. Many years later, I met Cesar Camargo and I asked him for the song and he sent me the piano part for that. It means the son of the Indian. It's a great song," explains D'Rivera. The scintillating trumpet charts of Buenos Aires native Urcola, who occasionally performs in George Chuller’s Orange Then Blue, simply outpace everyone else, except for fellow Argentinean, pianist Eskenazi, whose poised narration sets the tone for the remainder of the session.

An up-tempo D'Rivera original, "El Cura," follows with the saxophonist uncorking a burning solo, blowing hard to the ideal backdrop laid out by Eskenazi, Stagnaro, and Walker. The saxophonist expresses, "That is a dedication to a very dear friend of mine, the great guitar player and one of my main influences in jazz music, Carlos Morales. He was the guitar player in Irakere for more than twenty years. We called him 'El Cura' because he looked like a priest."

D'Rivera's rhapsodic clarinet playing for Urcola's homage to his native Argentinean homeland, "Buenos Aires," is a main point of interest. D'Rivera professes, "What he (Urcola) wrote reflects very well the atmosphere of Buenos Aires, especially at night. I have been there many times. It's a beautiful city."

"To me ‘Tobago' sounds like a theme inspired by Horace Silver," says D'Rivera. Eskenazi's "Tobago," features inventive solos from Stagnaro on electric bass and Walker.

"Como Un Bolero" is a bolero that the leader wrote while he was with the Caribbean Jazz Project with Andy Narell and Dave Samuels, "It’s is a romantic bolero. The bolero is the national Cuban ballad. I call it a ballad with some black beans and rice," explains D'Rivera.

"Centro Havana," an original penned by guest flutist Oriente Lopez, is a rich melody that is destined to become a standard. "I heard that piece first recorded by Regina Carter. I liked it very much and I called Oriente and asked him for the piece and he gave me the whole arrangement. That piece is killing," confirms the Cuban-American bandleader.

The Grammy Award winning D'Rivera's credentials speak for themselves and as evident by this performance, the Cuban-American has become a great leader. Join D'Rivera for an extraordinary journey into the music of Latin America by genuine Latin Americans.”

Fred Jung, Editor, Jazz Weekly