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Brian Jackson: Winter In America Pt. 2
by Chris May
As Gil Scott-Heron's songwriting and performing partner during the 1970s, keyboardist, composer and arranger Brian Jackson was co-author of some of the most galvanising liberation music of the era. Inhabiting the intersection of jazz, soul and spoken word, Jackson and Scott-Heron, who met while they were both students at Lincoln University, were a team from Pieces ...
Lift Every Voice And Sing: Twenty #BlackLives Albums That Matter
by Chris May
Jazz has been inextricably linked with social and political protest since at least the late 1930s, when Billie Holiday made famous the leftist songwriter and poet Abel Meeropol's “Strange Fruit." The song, which has a power to move that is undiminished by familiarity, likens the bodies of lynched African Americans to fruit hanging in trees.
I See You; I Hear You
by H William Stine
I think one of the responsibilities of having a microphone every week is knowing when to shut up. I did that (for the most part) this week and let singers and songwriters who for so many years have seen and heard with perception and then written with eloquent honesty about this painful struggle playing out once ...
Fire Music: When Jazz Speaks Out - Part 3
by Ludovico Granvassu
As Martin Luther King put it in the opening address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival, “Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with ...
Results for pages tagged "Oscar Brown Jr."...
Oscar Brown Jr.
Born:
As a performer, he acted his songs more than he sang them; as a songwriter, hedrew as much from gospel, the blues and folk music as he did from jazz. He preferred to call himself an entertainer, although even that broad term didnotgo far enough: he saw his art as a way to celebrate African-American life andattack racism, and it was not always easy to tell where the entertainer ended and the activist began. His song "Brown Baby," recorded by Mahalia Jackson and others, was both a lullaby for his infant son and an anthem of racial pride. Other songs, like "Signifying Monkey" and "The Snake," took their story lines from black folklore
Women in Jazz, Part 1: Early Innovators
by Karl Ackermann
"Lil Hardin [Armstrong]...often imagined herself standing...at the bottom of a ladder, holding it steady for Louis as he rose to stardom." (Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, 2012). “The all-female band is an anomaly in music, one that must constantly prove itself as a 'band,' and not just 'girls playing music together.'" (Mary Ann Clawson, 1999). Everything ...
Giacomo Gates: What Time Is It?
by Jack Bowers
What is it that separates a “jazz singer" from the wannabes? While many people are known as or call themselves jazz singers, only a handful truly merit the name. Giacomo Gates, whose latest album What Time Is It? is his seventh (and fourth for Savant Records), is one of the chosen few. Why? Well, as the ...
Kim Nalley's Tribute to Nina Simone
by Walter Atkins
Kim Nalley Tribute to Nina Simone Freight & Salvage Berkeley, CA March 3 2017 Popular San Francisco vocalist Kim Nalley skillfully painted a stunning portrait of the iconic Nina Simone, using her voice like an artist's brush and Simone's songbook like a sonic canvas. The captivating ...
Kurt Elling With The Keith Ganz Trio at Jazz Standard
by Dan Bilawsky
Kurt Elling With The Keith Ganz Trio Jazz Standard New York, NY July 31, 2016 If there's any genre of music that's truly built on the idea of spur-of-the-moment change, it's jazz. And so, in that very spirit, we had this performance. The audience that came down to hear ...
Giacomo Gates: Everything Is Cool
by Jack Bowers
Giacomo Gates was almost forty years old when someone suggested that he try his hand at singing. Luckily for the rest of us, Gates thought that was a good idea, moved to New York City later that year (1989) and began singing in clubs. Six years later Gates recorded his first CD, Blue Skies, and Everything ...
