Awesome New Things

Etta James died yesterday, taking with her another little bit of American musical history. She followed Johnny Otis, the  man who made her musical career a reality, who died Tuesday. James was 73.

I have a special fondness for Etta James because she was one of those singers working in blues and RB in the 1950s who drew my young self into a musical style as alien to my background then as good cigars and smooth whiskey (how times do change!).

Most James fans will tell you they are hooked on her stunning renditions of great pop ballads like At Last, or a blues classic like Id Rather Go Blind. And those are great songs, sung by a legendary stylist. No question. I love them, too. She used her voice to blend blues and RB and gospel and pop and bend the boundaries between genres as few others had done.

But to me, Etta James is Roll With Me Henry, released in 1955 as the answer song to Hank Ballard and the Midnighters powerfully raunchy Work With Me Annie. The primal rhythms and lyrics of those songs (pretty much identical melodies) made my teenage hormones dance with feverish  joy, even if my feet took a few years to catch up. I was hooked (and many years later, BlueNotes emerged, full-grown, sort of, from that primordial musical soup).

I always put her in the same exalted category of some other fine female RB singers of the era who moved me, including Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker.

Henry, renamed Dance With Me Henry to avoid too many salacious overtones (alas, Georgia Gibbs had the whitebread hit with Dance With Me Henry), was her first recording, engineered by Otis while James was in her mid-teens. When I saw her in a show at the Byham Theater about eight years ago, she talked about getting her start with Otis as a nervous teenager, but refused, as she apparently had for years, to sing Henry again. My loss.

But that night, she still managed, despite sitting down and recuperating from some surgeries, to sing the hell out of every other song she chose.

Etta had a tough childhood. She never knew who her father was. I was fascinated by one brief mention on Wikipedia, in which she thought her father might have been the legendary Rudolf Minnesota Fats Wanderone. I looked up that reference, and found this interview by Denise Quan from 2002, which said in part:

Dorothy Hawkins (Ettas mother) died this past May. But she outlived the man rumored to be James father — the enigmatic pool shark, Minnesota Fats. James met him once, in 1987, when she tracked him to the Heritage Hotel in Nashville and rang his room.

He says, Ill be in the lobby, she says, pronouncing lobby as laahhhhby. He talked like that. Ill be in the lobby with one of my dames. He had a vibe like me. As far as me knowing thats my father? I dont know. But he seemed like he was.

When he passed, he sent me a beautiful golden watch that hung on his clothes that had his name on it. And he sent me a letter, and told me that he wanted me to write a song about him and stuff, which I never did. But I often thought about that.

James looks down wistfully at her hands. Despite a perfect French manicure, theyre large, masculine hands — just like those of Minnesota Fats. Then her head snaps back up. Oh! And he gave us a picture – and the picture looked just like Donto, my oldest son. It was just like Donto.

Etta James was a trailblazer; a magnificent voice in a world full of pale imitations. At least her music remains.

Here are a few articles to read: From Rolling Stone, from the New York Times, the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, here are some audio and video memories:

Roll With Me Henry:

Another personal favorite – I think its amazing:

Another early rocker:

You all have most likely been treated to At Last too often by now, so heres a fine duet version of Id Rather Go Blind with Dr. John:

Closing out the week by treating her fans to a fresh, new offering, Nicki Minaj has released the music video for her single Stupid Hoe.

Tweeting about her latest singles visual accompaniment, the 29-year-old hitmaker wrote, World Premiere. #StupidHoe Music Video. Can’t premiere on a network b/c its important that my art is not tampered with, or compromised prior to you viewing it for the 1st time.

The term prodigy is one which is so over-used, it has become almost meaningless. Yet I cannot think of a more apt description for a pianist who made her United States debut in no less a venue than Carnegie Hall – at the age of 20. Lisa Smirnova is her name, and her new ECM Records release is Die Acht Grossen Suiten (The Eight Suites Great Suites).

The Suites were composed by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), and though not as famous as some of his other works, are nonetheless absolutely beautiful in their virtuosity. Handel is probably best known for his Messiah, and Water Music Suite. He was an extremely prolific composer though, and there is much, much more to his legacy than those very recognizable pieces. The Eight Suites is a perfect example.

Lisa Smirnovas recording may help to popularize the Suites a bit. One of the difficulties I have had in educating myself about classical music has been the challenge of simply where to begin. There are so many different versions of famous compositions in existence, that it becomes almost overwhelming when trying to choose the best edition. I have come to trust the ear of Manfred Eicher (founder of ECM) a great deal. With that in mind, I decided that Lisa Smirnovas renditions of The Eight Suites might be worth looking into.

Thankfully, Mr. Eichers instincts were correct. As previously noted, it can be a challenge to just guess at which performers version of a given piece will be most appealing. Even though the compositions themselves do not vary, the ability of the artist at hand can make a huge difference.

What I found in listening to Lisa Smirnovas playing is a technical virtuosity, combined with a very obvious feel for the nuances of each of the suites. This may stem from the fact that she began working on the project some five years ago, back in 2007. She not only gained a masterful understanding of every note, but with that intimate knowledge, has been able to add her own personality to the music as well.

For this non-musician, the distinction is crucial. It moves what are truly imaginative, and very inviting suites of music into a whole other realm. While it is not my intention to compare Lisa Smirnovas version of The Eight Suites to the literally hundreds of other recordings of them available – I must say that her interpretations are outstanding.

The packaging of this release is also worthy of note. I have been a long time fan of the ECM label, as much for the quality of the music, as for the manner in which it is presented. Die Acht Grossen Suiten certainly lives up to ECMs reputation for paying as much attention to the supplements as to the music itself. Not only are there highly informative liner notes, but there are also facsimiles of Handels original, hand-written compositions included. I found these original hand-written pages, which are nearly 300 years old – to be an extraordinarily inspired touch.

Lisa Smirnovas Die Acht Grossen Suiten is set for release on January 24, 2012. In every way, it is a marvelous way for ECM to ring in the new year.

View the original article on blogcritics.org

text size A A A

January 20, 2012

Robert Siegel interviews filmmaker Lavinia Currier about the music used in her film Oka!, which depicts the journey of Louis Sarno, who traveled to the Central African Republic as an ethnomusicologist to record the music of the Bayaka pygmies. Like Sarno, the Oka! film crew traveled to the Central African Republic with sound engineer Chris Berry, who developed a portable sound studio specifically for recording music in the field. Berry taught the Bayaka how to use multi-tracking equipment to compose their own songs.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It’s ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Audie Cornish.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I’m Robert Siegel. Now, a new movie that does a very good job with a familiar old theme – man from economically developed, formerly known as civilized world, goes off to live and find meaning in traditional, formerly known as primitive society. The movie is “Oka.” The society in question is a clan of Bayaka pygmies who live in the Central African Republic and what elevates this twist on the old trope is the stunning music of the pygmies, their voices…

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIEGEL: …and their use of virtually everything around them, trees, even the water in the stream, as musical instruments.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIEGEL: “Oka” is very much based on the story of Louis Sarno, an American musicologist originally from Newark, New Jersey, whom I interviewed almost 20 years ago about his life among the Babenzele pygmies, a people in transition.

LOUIS SARNO: Their society is still based on hunting and gathering. Most other peoples around them are already agriculture-based societies.

SIEGEL: In the movie, based on Sarno’s quarter of a century living among the pygmies, it’s not just his character, Larry, who returns to nature. It’s also the pygmies themselves. Filmmaker Lavinia Currier directed and co-wrote “Oka” and joins us now.

Welcome to the program and congratulations.

LAVINIA CURRIER: Thank you.

SIEGEL: What does oka mean?

CURRIER: Oka means listen in the Bayaka language, Aka.

SIEGEL: Speaking of the Bayaka language, the character of Larry is played by Kris Marshall and most of his dialog with the Bayaka is in their language. Did he learn the language?

CURRIER: He did, very proudly.

SIEGEL: Aka is the name of the language.

CURRIER: It is. Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, “OKA”)

KRIS MARSHALL: (as Larry) So when do we leave for the forest? (Foreign Language Spoken).

SIEGEL: So we see much of it in subtitles – what happens in the movie. You’re also directing the Bayaka who are played by the Bayaka.

CURRIER: Yeah.

SIEGEL: Obviously, they’re new to acting in a movie, but they seem to be pretty talented.

CURRIER: They’re performers. You know, their tradition is, at the end of every day, to sort of recoup the day with storytelling and singing and dancing, and so they were naturals.

SIEGEL: There’s a scene in which a local farmer, who is not a pygmy – he would be called a bantu by the Bayaka – he has a fight with them about whether they’ve done enough work for their pay.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, “OKA”)

SIEGEL: It looked to me like it almost could have been a documentary. It seemed very real. Was the farmer a professional actor?

CURRIER: He wasn’t. We cast him, also, locally in the village among the bantu, but what happened in that scene is that the Bayaka got very excited. You know, they were very happy to be able to express themselves in a safe environment because they’re extremely marginalized. So when that happened, the scene just took off.

SIEGEL: You have to describe the situation of the Bayaka. They are a minority in the Central African Republic. Formerly, they were truly a forest people. Their environment is under threat and their social situation is threatened from the get-go.

CURRIER: That’s correct. I mean, they’re among the most ancient people on earth, being related to the San bushmen and the original inhabitants of Africa and they remain hunter-gatherers, which is an extremely rare and precarious situation because what’s happening now is that the bush meat trade is increasing and the animals that they depend on for survival are being hunted out. So it’s becoming less and less easy for them to survive in the forest and they’re thrown back in the village, where they’re prey to economic exploitation and alcohol and disease and less nutrition.

SIEGEL: The truly bad guys in this story are the corrupt mayor and the Chinese logging company that is in the process of clear-cutting the forest. First of all, did the government of Central African Republic approve of and assist you in making this film, which doesn’t cast their state in an all together positive light?

CURRIER: They did, in a way. They feel proud of the Dzanga-Sangha preserve, which is in the southern part of the country, one of the safer areas of Central African Republic. We had a lot of problems with government folks coming down and stopping filming. You know, gangs of guys with AK47s would say, stop filming until you give us more money for this department or that department.

So that was a bit of drama, but in the end, they were supportive. It’s a coproduction with the Central African Republic and we went back and showed it both to the Bayaka and to the government, even the president, and they were very enthused about that film being shown.

SIEGEL: The Bayaka, as Louis Sarno told us almost 20 years ago here, are not a pristine people by any means. They have encountered village life and alcohol and all kinds of positive and negative things about the modern world. Were they familiar with movies before this?

CURRIER: No. I was very gratified when they said that’s the best movie we’d ever seen, when we showed it. And, of course, it was the only movie they had ever seen.

SIEGEL: Now, the music of the pygmies is sensational and we’re not just talking about ethnological field recordings anymore. The CD, “Listen, Oka,” which has the music from the movie on it, is the result of a sound engineer – not just Louis Sarno, but someone else traveling there and introducing sophisticated recording techniques.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CURRIER: The composer, Chris Berry, who’s himself a student of African music and a master drummer, went back with us and asked the Bayaka if they’d be interested in doing some what he called radio cues, more modern cues. And the women just lined up and these women dream their songs. In fact, one of the women who worked on our crew said, I was in the forest camping with my husband, I woke up dreaming the song and my husband was singing the same song.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CURRIER: So they brought these songs to Chris Berry and the first time they’d ever heard themselves on earphones, they were just laying down tracks one after the other.

SIEGEL: Tell me about the track on the CD that we hear in the film. It’s “Bottlefunk Girls.”

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “BOTTLEFUNK GIRLS”)

CURRIER: “Bottlefunk Girls” was written by the girls. The boys are playing plastic bottles with water in them and the girls are doing the vocals, so it was the children of the village from age three to 14 were playing on that track.

SIEGEL: I mean, the impression one comes away with in the movie is that, if we left a few random objects around the forest floor somewhere and the Bayaka found them, somehow, within some period of time, they would figure out how to make music with them.

CURRIER: They play everything. In fact, they invented a new instrument from some pipe that was lying around in the village and they were both blowing on it and beating it at the same time and getting a kind of kazoo sound. They start music when they’re two years old and the word eboka(ph) is the same for music and dance, so they don’t distinguish between dancing and singing.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIEGEL: You come away from this feeling that in another 25 or 27 years, however long it’s been since Louis Sarno took off for Central Africa, that there will still be people living at least part of the time in the forest and hunting and gathering or have you captured the twilight of a small civilization?

CURRIER: I think we have to realize that these people are not vanishing of their own accord. And we’re driving them out of their habitat with logging, with our appetite for resource and it’s not just Americans or Europeans, also Chinese. I think it’s very delicate. I’m not sure there will be people living as hunter-gatherers in 25 years.

SIEGEL: Well, Lavinia Currier, thank you very much for talking with us about your film, “Oka.”

CURRIER: Thank you, Robert.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

With millions of viewers at stake, music-video service Vevo is reportedly considering cutting ties with YouTube in favor of a deal with
Facebook.

Sources tell CNet that the discussions are very preliminary, and noted that theres still another year remaining on Vevos contract with
YouTube. That said, meetings have apparently taken place between Vevo and Facebook at least twice, the most recently going down less than two weeks
ago.

Facebook is interested in a similar arrangement to the one Vevo has now with Googles YouTube, CNet reports.
Facebook would stream Vevos music videos and the two companies would sell ads and share in the profits.

Jokes Gizmodo: Because we all know how well it works out when social networks become a place
for musicians to hang out (*cough* MySpace).

In all seriousness, Vevo could be a lucrative partner for Facebook in its bid to
grow advertising on the site, writes paidContent, while such a deal would also follow a pattern of moves that Facebook is making to increase user
engagement.

Indeed, a Vevo deal would prove a huge boon to Facebooks content offerings — and music in particular — while
concomitantly hitting YouTube where it hurts. Indeed, Vevo was YouTubes top partner site in December with 53.5 million viewers, and trailed by
Warner Music with 31.7 million viewers.

Agrees Business Insider: One of Facebooks goals is to
keep visitors on the site longer, and if it were to offer free music listening in the form of streaming Vevo videos, it would be a step in the right
direction.

In September, Facebook Music was launched, a service that enables users to share information about their listening habits
and tastes in real time. Facebook also just expanded on that effort with a new music-sharing feature.

Regarding Vevo, The
Next Web writes: The music video service finds itself in a decent position; it can stay with YouTube and reap the rewards from the
worlds biggest video service or it can partner with Facebook and enjoy the advantages of streaming to over 700 million users.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City music fans remembered singer Etta James, who died Friday at 73.

The Ramp;B icon, who was best known for the song, At Last, won six Grammy awards over the course of her long career.

Its always sorrow when you lose somebody that musically youve been hanging out with for 50 years, said Lindsay Shannon, the owner of BBs Lawnside BBQ and host of The KC Blues Show on KCFX-FM.

Shannon said he knew James had been ill for a while and has been playing more of her songs on his show.

I think that she leaves a legacy of 50 years of music, Shannon said. She was able to sing jazz and blues. Shes got a lot to leave behind.

Shannon showed off some Etta James memorabilia in his collection.

This is a picture of Etta James that I took in 1978, down at the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival, he said. I remember the emotion she put in. Her voice at 40 was as strong as it was when she started off as a teenage singer.

American Jazz Museum Chief Executive Officer Greg Carroll said he saw James perform at a festival in the 1980s. He said her legacy has a lesson for people in Kansas City.

Etta James is one of those singers who didnt get the worldwide recognition that she deserves, Carroll said. I would say that for Kansas City, it should be a call to action for folks to get out and support great blues singers and Ramp;B singers in the city.

The original Deep Purple line-up included singer Rod Evans, bassist Nicky Simper, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, keyboardist Jon Lord, and drummer Ian Paice. This Mark I incarnation of the band was together for three albums before Evans and Simper were replaced by Ian Gillan and Roger Glover.

For years it was thought that no live footage of the early Deep Purple existed. It turned out that one 1968 concert in Inglewood, California, where they opened for Cream, was recorded on a primitive open reel recorder. The tape was lost for years but ended up in the hands of the Deep Purple Appreciation Society. The music was finally issued on CD for the first time during 2002. Inglewood – Live In California contained some of the very few live Mark I recordings that have survived.

The sound leaves a lot to be desired due to the primitive and haphazard recording process. They probably cleaned it up as well as modern technology allowed but the result was average bootleg quality at best.

Rod Evans was a good vocalist in the studio but on stage he paled next to his future replacement Ian Gillan. Still, its nice to hear him interpret the bands early material. Bassist Nick Simper comes across as an excellent bassist as he and drummer Paice formed a very competent rhythm section. Blackmore was a presence on some of the tunes but it was Jon Lord on the keyboards that provided the dominating instrumental sound.

Thee set list is very different from every other Deep Purple live recording. Their two early hits Hush and Kentucky Woman are psychedelic rock and hard rock respectively. Mandrake Root and Wring That Neck enabled Blackmore and particularly Lord to jam together and separately.

They couldnt translate their brilliant cover of The Beatles Help from the studio to the stage. They just didnt get the textures and tempos right. They finished with an almost 10 minute rendition of River Deep Mountain High and the old Leaves psychedelic classic Hey Joe. The Phil Spector/Ike Tina Turner tune was turned into a psychedelic/hard rock hybrid. Hey Joe was a raw and gritty performance that would look ahead to some of their future work.

This early live material is not for the Deep Purple neophyte. It is for fans who want to explore their history and in that regard it is a valuable addition to their catalogue of music.

View the original article on blogcritics.org

Rhapsody, the longest-running subscription-music service, announced Thursday that it had finally crossed the 1 million subscriber threshold. Before you cue the cork-popping, bear in mind that Rhapsody launched almost exactly 10 years ago, so its growth isnt setting land-speed records. And three years ago, Rhapsody and rival Napster eachreported having about 750,000 subscribers. The two companies are now combined, thanks to Rhapsodys purchase of the fast-declining Napster in October, but the total is far less than the sum of their erstwhile parts.

So the announcement doesnt exactly herald the dawn of a new era for subscription music services in general or Rhapsody in particular. The total number of people who pay for on-demand music services online is still dwarfed by the more than 21 million who subscribe to Sirius XM. And in a country of more than 110 million households, 1 million isnt mass market.

Nevertheless, Rhapsody President Jon Irwin insists that the new total is a real milestone. Although online music services have notched higher subscriber counts before, they were inflated by the inclusion of customers whod signed up only for low-cost premium radio services. More important, Irwin noted that the way subscribers use Rhapsody has crossed a significant threshold as well. For the first time, most of that usage is not on a personal computer. Instead, more than half of the playback is on mobile phones, stereos, TV set-tops and other consumer electronics, with smartphones accounting for 40%.

Toward the end of a 3-hour concert, Guns N’ Roses really catches fire. But the urgency of the old messages goes largely missing.

Guns N Roses took 21/2 hours Wednesday night at the Forum to justify the dimensions of the concert it was playing. The song that flipped the switch was “Nightrain” — from the Los Angeles hard-rock institutions 1987 debut, “Appetite for Destruction” — and it had all the runaway energy of its subject, gathering speed as it hurtled forward in a pressurized blur of guitars, drums and the superhuman wail of frontman Axl Rose.

Prior to “Nightrain,” which ended the bands main set, Wednesdays show offered the raw materials of excitement: lights, pyrotechnics, three adventurously attired men playing guitar simultaneously. But the band didnt corral those elements in the service of a larger, more coherent thrill until the shows end, and once it did, Guns N Roses left the stage.

Withholding a sense of purpose was one of the many ways Rose exercised his obsession with control during this three-hour blowout, one of the last dates on Guns N Roses first American tour since 2006. (The 49-year-old singer is the bands sole remaining original member; hes flanked by seven additional musicians of varying vintage.) Rose also flexed his strength by subjecting the enthusiastic crowd to extended solos by those three guitarists. And he successfully sold extravagantly florid piano ballads — real “Phantom of the Opera”-type stuff — to a room swimming with testosterone.

Yet if the concert demonstrated that Rose remains a considerable pop-cultural force — an icon due for induction next year into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — it suggested too that hes grown unsure of what to do with his power. Guns N Roses in its heyday seemed to overflow with big ideas about love and war and sex; on Wednesday, though, an old tune like “You Could Be Mine” felt stripped of context, accompanied by generic-looking race-car footage that made no connection with whatever the song might once have been putting across.

Some material from “Chinese Democracy,” the endlessly delayed studio album Guns N Roses finally released to perplexed reaction in 2008, flailed similarly — in particular “Madagascar,” which washed out in a sea of signifiers, including wild-animal video clips and the sampled voice of Martin Luther King Jr. At least two dozen times throughout the concert, Rose disappeared into a kind of improvised dressing room at one side of the stage, and it was tempting to wonder if he was in there rummaging around for something — for anything — to say.

Occasionally Rose made do without a message, as in a gorgeous rendition of the power ballad “Dont Cry” and in the poisoned pop of “Better,” a highlight from “Chinese Democracy” that showcased the astonishing things the singer can still do with his voice. Guns N Roses elaborate cover of Bob Dylans “Knockin on Heavens Door” was even more impressive in that regard, with Rose cycling through countless vocal tics, mannerisms and put-on accents that evaporated after a single phrase.

Corporate X are a highly -buzzed about band consisting of Casper Xavier on programming and vocalist Christine DeLeon. When I first heard them a few years ago, there was potential that had not quite crystallized. Their latest record, The X Project, is a fully realized effort. Its tough to produce such a stylistically varied record, genre-wise, but Corporate X succeeds.

Their music is a stylistic concoction of indie, alternative, rock, downtempo, and synth pop. The songs themselves are steeped in melodies and hooks, with guitars, synths, drums, and a wide variety of soundscapes that float across the rhythm. As good as the music is, the real deal-sealer here is DeLeons ethereal vocals.

Catch Me is a good starting point; its an addictive slice of indie electro pop. DeLeons vocals sit perched above the beat, lending a nice counterpoint to the groove. I have a sense that this will be on my top tracks of 2011 year end list. Take Me Away goes further along the indie dance route, upping the BPMs, but avoiding the trappings of the usual trance/house sampled sounds. Away also has a serious Euro (the party-loving kind, not the doomed currency) feel about it. It very well may be a hit on Ibiza.

Valerie Loves Me is very chillwave, with a nod to Washed Out while Leave Me Alone starts out with a heavy guitar riff, pounding into a Britpop sound reminiscent of Echobelly or Elastica. Even with the evocation of other bands and sounds, Corporate X doesnt ape them, rather they incorporate influences into an eclectic style of their own.

The interplay between Xaviers music and DeLeons vocals are exceptional. Theres a real tightness to the songs. The guitars and arrangements, even on the tech-heavy songs, keep an organic feel to the music, which can often fall by the wayside with such a heavy presence of programmed sounds.

For more information on Corporate X go to their Facebook page.

View the original article on blogcritics.org