Cassandra Wilson - "Love is Blindness"
Live at Warsaw, 1996 .
The voice is more visual than audible; shaded, iridescent, tangible, substantial. It seems to flow effortlessly. Read any of the dozen or so biographies on Cassandra Wilson and you’ll discover some basics: born and reared in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s and 70s by musician and educator parents.
Classically trained on piano from age 6 until the age of 13, she also received further musical instruction as a clarinetist for the concert and marching bands of secondary school. During the 70s, she could be found performing Joni Mitchell songs behind an acoustic guitar, or singing with a blues band in Little Rock, Arkansas, in front of a large funk band in Jackson, or in the company of long-time friends in an all-girls ensemble. In the eighties, Cassandra moved to New Orleans where she performed with local luminaries Earl Turbinton and Ellis Marsalis. After a year, she relocated to East Orange, New Jersey where she made a decision to take her chances on the New York jazz scene. After a stint as the main vocalist with Steve Coleman’s M-Base Collective, Cassandra began recording on her own.
Her development can be tracked through her discography. From the standards on Blue Skies to the Grammy-winning projects New Moon Daughter and Loverly, to the combination of originals and interpretations played by a collection of Mississippi and New York musicians on both the 2001 release, Belly of the Sun, and 2003’s Glamoured, Cassandra continues to evolve as a vocalist, songwriter, and producer. She is a world renowned vocalist, songwriter and producer, with an extraordinary following, but at heart she is still a Mississippi girl whose art reflects her deep musical and cultural roots, anchored in the fertile Mississippi soil.
All About Jazz
Posted by "darominu" 2010 .
Zap Mama in New York 2009
Zap Mama at The Brooklyn Academy of Music's R&B Festival at Metrotech.
Zap Mama is an all-female a cappella quintet founded by Zaire native Marie Daulne. Daulne's father was killed during the revolution of 1960 while her mother was pregnant with her, so the remainder of the family fled to the forests and found refuge with a tribe of pygmies. Daulne was raised primarily in Europe, but when she heard a recording of traditional pygmy music at age 20, she decided to return to Africa to learn about her heritage. She was trained in pygmy onomatopoeic vocal techniques before returning to the West to found Zap Mama. Her group blends world music styles from all over the globe with little, if any, instrumental or percussive backup other than what group members can do with their voices and bodies. Their 1993 debut, Adventures in Afropea, became the biggest-selling non-compilation album in the history of Luaka Bop Records, helped in part by an opening slot on that summer's 10,000 Maniacs tour. A year later they released a follow-up, Sabsylma; 7 followed in 1997. A Ma Zone appeared in 1999. Zap Mama returned to Luaka Bop for 2004's Ancestry in Progress. Supermoon was issued by Heads Up in 2007. The group evolved around Daulne into an increasingly more pop-directed world beat configuration, and while Zap Mama may have lost a few of their more traditionally focused fans in the process, the infectious persuasiveness and danceability of the later era version of the group brought in just as many again. ReCreation, a perfect example of the sort of global urban tone Daulne had been grafting into the group's DNA, appeared in 2009.
Steve Huey & Steve Leggett, Rovi
Posted by "nycsummer"
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