Jazz Articles
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Lola Danza: The Island
by Dan Bilawsky
Vocalist Lola Danza has always been an original thinker, but that doesn't get you very far in a field crowded with people fitting that description. What makes Danza stand out is her strength of vision and steadfast commitment to following her muse, no matter how non-commercial it may be. With Janya (Evolver, 2011), Danza and her fellow female band mates explored Korean-influenced avant-garde avenues of expression, creating far-reaching fantasies that could alternately fascinate or frighten. On The Island, Danza takes ...
read moreLola Danza: The Island
by C. Michael Bailey
Singer/composer Lola Danza is not a multicultural artistic presence, she is a pan-cultural artistic presence. This is fully exploited on her ensemble recording, Janya (Evolver, 2011). Her singing and songwriting hover in the neighborhood of jazz because terms like “new age" and “world music" don't seem to quite cover it. Live Free (Evolver, 2009) was exactly that, a freely expressed vocal recording taped live with a quartet at Boston's Ryles' Club. Danza demonstrated amply the depth and breadth of her ...
read moreJanya: Janya
by Dan Bilawsky
Janya's sound is all about Korean-influenced music for the free jazz-loving soul. The members of this female foursome are all of Korean descent, and bring a free yet flowing sensibility to this seven-song program of original music. While the presence of instruments like gayageum, daegeum and janggo--a zither-like string instrument, bamboo transverse flute, and hour-glass shaped drum, respectively-- give this group a decidedly Eastern sound veering toward the mystical and mysterious, Lola Danza's vocals bring diversity and, ...
read moreJanya: Janya
by C. Michael Bailey
The name “Janya" can loosely be translated “genesis" or “beginning." In Sanskrit, it means “to be born" and in the Korean vernacular, “around dawn." Janya is both the ensemble name and debut recording title of four young Korean and Korean-American musicians attempting to cast Korean shamanic music in more modern terms than it was conceived. Korea appears to be one of the only countries where shamanism was practiced as a state religion. As a result, shamanic ritual and music in ...
read moreLola Danza: Vision Quest
by AAJ Staff
Lola DanzaVision QuestEvolver 2005 New York jazz singer and composer Lola Danza has a background in avant-garde jazz and, before that, in classical singing. Active on the New York scene since 2007, when she arrived from Boston and Berkelee School of Music studies, the singer has immersed herself in predominantly free jazz performance. Already attracted to the idea of free improvisation in Boston, Danza progressed to completely free expression with an album ...
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