First Encounters: Chi-Chi Nwanoku and Keith Pascoe

Posted in Articles, Arts, Europe, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2017-12-20 23:02Z by Steven

First Encounters: Chi-Chi Nwanoku and Keith Pascoe

The Irish Times
2017-05-03

Frances O’Rourke


Chi-Chi Nwanoku

‘Ireland brought us back together’

Chi-Chi Nwanoku is a double bassist and a founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The eldest of five children of a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, she pursued a career in music after injury ended a promising athletics career. She grew up in Kent and Berkshire and now lives in London

The first time I saw Keith was when we were college students in our early 20s. He seemed incredibly composed, confident, like a good fun guy – he had a mischievous twinkle in his eye which I liked. We weren’t in each other’s social circles but I registered Keith as a kindred spirit.

I’d only started playing the double bass when I was 18, after an athletics injury. When I came out of hospital, my A Levels music teacher said, you have music coursing through your veins – now that your sprinting career is over, if you pick an unpopular orchestral instrument, you could just possibly have a career. I’d played piano since I was seven but I’d never played in an orchestra before. A few years later I got into the Royal Academy of Music

…I had been in Ireland just once before when I’d taken my mother there in 1986. She hadn’t been back to Ireland in 36 years, didn’t know how she’d be received: she was born in Cappamore in Limerick, grew up in Thurles, but was kind of abandoned by her family after she met and married my father, an Igbo from east Nigeria, in London. We grew up with lots of wonderful stories and memories that she gave us but she had a very very tough time. In London in the 1950s, it was “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs” – it was as much as my parents could do to find a roof over their heads…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

60th GRAMMY Awards: Full Nominees List

Posted in Articles, Arts, Latino Studies, Media Archive on 2017-12-04 02:27Z by Steven

60th GRAMMY Awards: Full Nominees List

Grammys
Recording Academy
Santa Monica, California
2017-11-28

Find out who is nominated for the 60th GRAMMY Awards in New York on Jan. 28

The nominations for the 60th GRAMMY Awards are here! Find out who has been nominated in each of the 84 categories below (use the links to jump to a desired field).

32. Best Jazz Vocal Album
(For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new vocal jazz recordings.)…

Bad Ass And Blind
Raul Midón

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , ,

Halsey Covers Our Music Issue—and Proves No Topic is Off-limits

Posted in Articles, Arts, Interviews, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2017-08-17 03:25Z by Steven

Halsey Covers Our Music Issue—and Proves No Topic is Off-limits

Playboy
20Q
2017-08-05 (September 2017 Issue)

By Rebecca Haithcoat
Photography by Ramona Rosales

With Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, the queen of New Americana is more outspoken than ever. Here, she covers everything from donating $100,000 to Planned Parenthood to the virtues of the dad bod.

Q1
Hopeless Fountain Kingdom hit number one on the Billboard 200. You’re the first woman to top that chart in 2017. How does it feel?

A lot of this accolade shit is super arbitrary: “Halsey is the first girl with blue hair from New Jersey to.…” It’s exciting but also enraging, because I know a lot of women who put out better albums than me who deserve massive accolades, and I’m the one who had to break the seal…

Q14
How did you navigate growing up biracial?

I’m half black. My dad managed a car dealership, wore a suit to work, had a nice watch, was always clean-shaven, handsome, played golf on the weekends. And people would come up to him like, “Yo, brotha! What’s up!” And my dad would be like, “Hi.…”

Q15
How did that affect you?

I’m white-passing. I’ve accepted that about myself and have never tried to control anything about black culture that’s not mine. I’m proud to be in a biracial family, I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud of my hair. One of my big jokes a long time ago was “I look white, but I still have white boys in my life asking me why my nipples are brown.” Every now and then I experience these racial blips. I look like a white girl, but I don’t feel like one. I’m a black woman. So it’s been weird navigating that. When I was growing up I didn’t know if I was supposed to love TLC or Britney.

Q16
How do people react when they do find out you’re biracial?

White guilt is funny, but this is a really hard time for white allies. People don’t want to do too much but want to do enough, and in my bubble of Los Angeles I’m surrounded by a lot of good people with a lot of good intentions. But as I learned in this past election, my bubble is just a small fraction of how this country operates. That is ultimately my greatest frustration with the public perception of any sort of activism: the mentality of “Well, it’s not affecting me.” Open your fucking eyes…

Read the entire interview here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Documentary ‘Rumble’ explores Native Americans’ influence on music

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Passing, United States, Videos on 2017-08-02 00:39Z by Steven

Documentary ‘Rumble’ explores Native Americans’ influence on music

Christian Science Monitor
2017-07-27

Peter Rainer, Film critic


Link Wray appears in the documentary ‘Rumble.’
Bruce Steinberg/Courtesy of LINKWRAY.com/Kino Lorber

The alchemy of American music as it relates to Native Americans is such a voluminous subject that, inevitably, the fascinating “Rumble” can’t do it justice.

July 27, 2017 —In the fascinating documentary “Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World,” the great jazz critic Gary Giddins says, “The one group that hasn’t really been investigated in terms of their contribution [to music history] is the Native Americans.”

This new film, co-directed by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana, the former of whom previously co-directed the documentary “Reel Injun,” about Native American stereotypes in Hollywood movies, aims to rectify that omission. (Those who made the movie were inspired by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s exhibit “Up Where We Belong: Native Musicians In Popular Culture,” which was co-created by Stevie Salas, a veteran Apache guitarist, and Tim Johnson.)

Why was such an integral swath of musical culture neglected for so long, in a field where it seems as if every last bit of academic arcana has already been tilled?

One of the problems, as the film points out, is that, up until at least the 1960s, it was commercially even less advantageous to be an Indian (the term is often used throughout the movie) than an African-American. Native American singers, musicians, and songwriters did not announce their heritage (which was often of mixed blood). They “passed” as white, or in some cases, as solely African-American or Hispanic.

Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist for the legendary group The Band, who grew up in Canada’s Six Nations Reserve, remembers a saying from the 1950s, when he was starting out: “Be proud you’re an Indian, but be careful who you tell.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , ,

Review: Vic Mensa, ‘The Autobiography’

Posted in Articles, Arts, Audio, Autobiography, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive, United States on 2017-07-28 15:41Z by Steven

Review: Vic Mensa, ‘The Autobiography’

First Listen: Hear Upcoming Albums in Their Entirety
NPR Music
National Public Radio
2017-07-20

Rodney Carmichael, Hip-Hop Reporter


Vic Mensa’s new album, The Autobiography, is out July 28.
Courtesy of the artist

When history ranks 2017 among hip-hop’s wonder years — and from the sounds of the previous six months it certainly qualifies — Vic Mensa’s long-awaited full-length debut will be a big part of the reason why. The Chi-town native has created a work in The Autobiography that’s equal parts confessional and confrontational, gut-wrenching and uplifting. Steeped in a personal story arc that envelopes Mensa’s hometown, it echoes with the pain of a generation.


Courtesy of the artist

It only makes sense that the LP is executive produced by No I.D., who’s already responsible for another of the year’s more revelatory LPs in Jay-Z’s 4:44

Read the entire review here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Krazy Kat,’ and all that jazz

Posted in Articles, Arts, Biography, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2017-07-19 02:50Z by Steven

‘Krazy Kat,’ and all that jazz

The Boston Globe
2017-06-23

Matthew Guerrieri, Globe Correspondent

This Sunday is the anniversary of the end of one of the greatest comic strips of all time. On June 25, 1944, the final installment of “Krazy Kat” was published, two months after the death of its creator, George Herriman. In various forms since 1910, the strip’s essential paradox — Ignatz, a mouse, forever beans Krazy with bricks, who nevertheless loves him back — yielded seemingly inexhaustible variations.

In its day, “Krazy Kat” was more a critical than a popular favorite, though publisher William Randolph Hearst, a fan, continued to give Herriman carte blanche despite the strip’s sometimes meager readership. But its dreamlike artwork, linguistic fantasy, and self-referential tinkering with comic-strip form influenced numerous other art forms — music included.

The dense, idiosyncratic argot of Herriman’s dialogue and his precisely-dashed linework and zig-zagging scenery (a stylization of Herriman’s beloved southwestern landscapes) found its musical counterpart in syncopation. As early as 1911 — only a year after Krazy and Ignatz first appeared in the margins of Herriman’s strip “The Dingbat Family” — a New York composer-pianist named Ben Ritchie published “Krazy Kat Rag,” with a Herriman illustration on the cover. In later years, saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer’s Orchestra (which included such jazz luminaries as Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang, and Joe Venuti), expatriate bandleader Sam Wooding, and clarinetist Artie Shaw all recorded “Krazy Kat” tributes.

Most ambitious was composer John Alden Carpenter’s “Krazy Kat” ballet, subtitled “A Jazz Pantomime.” First performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1921, and first staged in 1922 — choreographed by Russian-born Adolph Bolm, with scenery designed by Herriman himself (he also illustrated the sheet music) — the ballet was well-received, but Carpenter’s score (possibly the first concert work to include the word “jazz” in the title) was soon overshadowed by more overt rapprochements between jazz and classical music. Carpenter’s version of jazz was tame, owing more to the “sweet” jazz of white dance bands than the “hot” jazz of their African-American counterparts. But the composer effectively mined jazz’s capacity for charm and whimsy…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Hip Chick Alert puts the spotlight on Tessa Souter

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, Women on 2017-07-10 02:40Z by Steven

Hip Chick Alert puts the spotlight on Tessa Souter

Hip Chick Alert
2017-03-02

Perez

Tessa Souter was born in London to a Trinidadian father and an English mother. She studied piano from the age of 8 until, at 12, her piano teacher heard her voice and encouraged her to take up singing. She learned guitar by ear to accompany herself and began writing songs. She graduated with a degree in English literature from London University and got her first job in journalism at Parents magazine, before going on to freelance as a features writer for, among other British press The Independent, The Times, Elle, Vogue, as well as Australian Elle, Sydney Morning Herald and HQ….

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,

Electronica With A Human Heart: Meet Little Dragon Lead Singer Yukimi Nagano

Posted in Articles, Arts, Asian Diaspora, Interviews, Media Archive, United Kingdom on 2017-07-09 22:04Z by Steven

Electronica With A Human Heart: Meet Little Dragon Lead Singer Yukimi Nagano

Phoenix Magazine
London, United Kingdom
July 2017

Interview: Muki Kulhan
Words: Hannah Kane
Photographer: Jamie Gray at Blood & Co.
Fashion Editor: Nini Khatiblou
Hair: Shukeel Murtaza at Frank
Makeup: Ammy Drammeh
Nail Technician: Jessica Thompson at Frank

The dynamic frontwoman talks production values, the ‘ugly beautiful’, and why being in ‘the band that almost made it’ is the best thing ever

Summer in the city, and the iconic Camden Jazz Café is packed. The crowd jostles towards the front of the stage as Swedish electro-synth band Little Dragon emerges to cheers and whistles. Band members take up their positions: Erik Bodin on drums, Fredrik Källgren Wallin on bass and Håkan Wirenstrand at the keyboards. The petite frame of lead vocalist Yukimi Nagano, decked in a crystal embellished baseball cap and tulle veil, moves forward and she takes the mic. A persistent electronic beat ripples through the hall and Yukimi’s voice joins to fill the humid air. She moves deliberately and with a dancer’s expression, leading her audience as if in a shamanic trance…

…Yukimi has always been drawn to boundary-pushing musicians, from the first Jimi Hendrix records she bought to her all-time musical heroes Kate Bush, Janet Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Prince and Grace Jones. Born and raised in Gothenburg to a Japanese father, Yusuki Nagano, and her Swedish-American mother, Joanne Brown, Yukimi had a musical childhood alongside her sister Sumie, now a respected folk musician. “My mom played piano and I used to sit on her lap and destroy her playing,” she remembers. “That’s where my love of Fleetwood Mac comes from.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Princess Nokia In Conversation at Brown University

Posted in Arts, Interviews, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2017-06-29 19:54Z by Steven

Princess Nokia In Conversation at Brown University

Brown University
2017-04-27 (Published on 2017-05-16)

Facilitated by Sofia Robledo Rower ’18

Destiny Nicole Frasqueri, also known as Princess Nokia, is an Afro-Latina Boricua artist and musician based in New York City. Her music tackles the intersection of gender, race, class, urbanism, and age in captivating sonic and linguistic medleys. This public conversation will focus on spirituality, feminism, and race in her artistic process and performances.

Presented by Women’s History Series 2017

Watch the discussion here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Princess Nokia Is Ready to Reign

Posted in Articles, Arts, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2017-06-29 00:54Z by Steven

Princess Nokia Is Ready to Reign

The Village Voice
2017-03-29

Ivie Ani


ioulex

I meet up with Destiny Frasqueri — the 24-year-old Nuyorican alternative hip-hop artist known variously as Princess Nokia, Wavy Spice, or simply Destiny — in the East Village. I’m running late; she’s even later, so I get to the Astor Place cube first. Fifteen minutes later she walks up, dressed, as she’d indicated in a text apologizing for being behind schedule, in a beige duster coat and sweats to match, carrying a cherry-print Louis V bag. She’s wearing oversize shades, no makeup, just a touch of mascara. Her dark hair blows in the breeze, caressing a diamond-studded choker.

Frasqueri has appeared in Vogue, modeled for Calvin Klein, and had her song “Tomboy” used for an Alexander Wang runway show. But what makes her a figure of fascination for music aficionados in their teens and early twenties is the way she celebrates the beauty of imperfection, building a hero’s identity out of being a self-described “fucked-up kid.” She’s stunning yet still rough around the edges, rhyming about wearing dirty sneakers, smoking blunts in the stairwell, and proclaiming the power in her heritage. For her followers, her attractiveness lies in her contrasts. “Eczema so bad I’m bleeding,” she raps on “Bart Simpson,” the first track on 1992, the album she put up on SoundCloud last September. Sure enough, I look down and her irritated hands are bleeding slightly.

“I’m just ghetto as hell,” she says once we’ve settled in at San Loco for some chicken nachos. “That’s the only way that I know how to just be myself.”…

…Frasqueri’s mom passed by the time she was nine, and she grew up living in various homes across the Bronx, Harlem, and the Lower East Side. She experienced abusive foster care, life in the projects, and brief escapes to camp with wealthy kids from the Upper West Side. She’d skip class but bury herself in books, digging deep into the Black literary canon. (“I am Black Harlem Renaissance,” she says. “I am Walter Dean Myers and Langston Hughes, baby.”) She taught herself, studying Kemetic philosophy, practicing brujería and Santería, claiming her inheritance of Yoruba and Taíno cultures, and falling in love with New York City. Pissy project elevators and breezy summer barbecues in the street suffuse Frasqueri’s memories. She represents a specific kind of New York, what she describes as her own “urban realism.” “What makes life beautiful?” she muses at one point. “The ghetto makes life beautiful. Black people make life beautiful.”…

…“I’m a Brown Afro-indigenous woman. That makes people uncomfortable as it is. The folks that have a problem with me and say, ‘You still live with privilege. You not fully Black.’ I can’t win and I can’t lose, so I’ma just keep going.” She smiles. “Yes, I’m mixed-race. There’s girls who look like me and glorify being exotic. I have a responsibility to my Blackness.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,