music rec post
Mar. 22nd, 2009 02:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
harborshoreThis is part 2 of what I started over here, that is, this is the post of some of my favorite WoC musicians. Once more, this rec series started because of RaceFail 2009 (if you don’t know what this is about, the link goes to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rydra_wong’s time line, which includes a link to a summary post). Like last time, I’m refraining from my own commentary on racism in favor of promoting these musicians (though I’m planning a post on what it means to be a Good Girl, and how that matters to this issue) but I will say this: one kind of oppression is not like another, and listening is sadly underrated. For the love of all that is holy, look up intersectionality somewhere.
Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list (ETA: I'm not pretending to be an expert of any kind, is what I actually meant by that), nor is this a list where one artist is like another, because much like last time, these women do not sound like each other simply by virtue of being Women of Color. As for why they’re here, well, some of it is that as a singer and a lyricist and a person, I owe something to every one of these women. And it might be wishful thinking, because who doesn’t wish they sounded like Aretha Franklin or wrote like Nina Simone; and it might be self-confidence, because singing Beverley Knight’s Who I Am with my sister on stage made everything click, all at once; and it might be my journal title (Vienna Teng) or inspiration for lines in a poem (Vienna Teng) or the truest, brightest moment of happiness of my junior year at college (dancing with the girl I love best to “Pata Pata” because it reminded her of home).
Here, then, have seven musicians. Clicking on their names below the cut will take you to their MySpace page or homepage or Wikipedia page, depending on what felt the most informative. In all of these places there are links that let you know how to buy their albums and/or other merchandise. I also added links to Amazon’s stores for Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, and Aretha Franklin. The sample songs I offer here is intended to encourage you to further support these artists and other musicians of color in making music. If you like it, please spend some money on them. The information I used for their short biographies mostly came from their Wikipedia pages, from Musician Guide or my own background knowledge.
Ryeisha "Rye Rye" Berrain
Rye Rye is the first artist signed to M.I.A.'s record label N.E.E.T., and her album is set to be released in March of 2009. (So now, basically.) I trust you know who M.I.A. is? Awesome. Rye Rye toured with her. during the fall and winter of 2007 and early 2008. She features on a remix of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" with Afrikan Boy, which appears on the Paper Planes - Homeland Security Remixes EP by M.I.A. and is available on Rye Rye’s MySpace. You can also download her song "Shake It To The Ground," a collaboration with Blaqstarr, on Itunes, and I recommend you do so.
Seriously, this girl is awesome. She is 17, from Baltimore, and, well, watch the video for "Shake It To The Ground" here. She’s going to rule the world.
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman should need no introduction. Singer-songwriter, marvelous musician, socially conscious lyrics and a voice that I wish, wish, wish I had, low and easy and so clear when she needs it to be. She has released 9 albums, beginning in 1988 with the self-titled Tracy Chapman. Her most recent record, Our Brightest Future came out last year, and she’s touring Europe this summer in support of it. Unfortunately, she’s not coming to Stockholm, but the lucky souls who can go see her should feel very lucky indeed. If you, like me, will not be able to see her, you can go here and listen to her acoustic performance from 1988, on the final night of the Human Rights Foundation World Tour. You have to register at the site to listen, but it’s free and the music is worth it.
The sample track I offer here is Devotion, from the album Telling Stories. It’s a song about religion or love, or religion and love, or how sometimes neither is enough. Maybe it’s about all of that.
Aretha Franklin
Hi, look, it’s the Queen of Soul. Also, perhaps you might have noticed, she just sang at the inauguration of President Obama. She is a singer (most obviously), a song-writer and a pianist. In addition to soul, she has tried her hand at singing jazz, rock, blues, pop, R&B and gospel, and, in a performance I will never, ever forget, she substituted for Luciano Pavarotti when he became sick right before the 1998 Grammy Awards to sing "Nessun Dorma." With less than 24 hours to prepare, she pulled of a stunning (if improvised) version of the aria—I had never heard anyone sing like that. I think she might have also sang with the Blues Brothers that night, though you must forgive me for not remembering.
The sample song I chose is another example of how she transforms the songs she covers. It’s Eleanor Rigby like you’ve never heard it sung before. Here is the link to her Amazon Store.
Beverley Knight
Beverley Knight is an English soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer, who has released five albums since her debute in 1995; she has received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her charitable work and her contributions to British music. She has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton, like other semi-famous musicians Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.
Her latest album was recorded in Nashville, and she recorded 12 songs in 3 days in a highly unorthodox environment. As her website describes it: “Hammond and piano in the living room, 3 BV’s in the corridor, rhythm section in the conservatory and Beverley in the middle in a DIY vocal booth.” She called it the album where she captures what she does on stage. The result is pretty staggering.
That being said, this is from an older album. Get Up! is one of her more famous songs. This one is about confidence and standing up for what you believe in, but when she tells you to do it, you damn well will.
Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba was a South African singer and civil rights activist, who first became internationally known with her role in the 1959 film Come Back, Africa, an anti-apartheid documentary. Following the film's debut at the Venice Film Festival, Makeba traveled to London, where she met respected American entertainer and social activist Harry Belafonte, who helped her gain recognition in the United States. They also recorded an album together that made a statement against apartheid. Her outspoken political work in the 1960’s opposing the South African government’s oppressive policies left her unable to return home, as they revoked her passport and her citizenship. Not until 1990 could she return home, when Nelson Mandela urged her to. Read more about her here, and buy her music here.
The sample song is Pata Pata, her most famous song.
Nina Simone
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tyron, North Carolina during the Depression. At 5, she demonstrated enormous musical abilities and understood Bach to be technically perfect. Later, she said this: "When you play Bach's music," she explained, "you have to understand that he's a mathematician and all the notes you play add up to something--they make sense. They always add up to climaxes, like ocean waves getting bigger and bigger until after a while when so many waves have gathered you have a great storm."
She dreamed of becoming the first black classical pianist, but was rejected, because, well, this was the 1950’s. After she was rejected by the classical academy, she put together her own music out of all the genres she had played. Jazz, classical, hymns, gospel, popular songs—and on that foundation would she build her songs. (Link to her Amazon Store.) Countless critics have called her some version of the epithet an Angry Black Woman, because of songs like Four Women, which is a four-verse treatment of racism and sexism in US history. It’s furious, yes, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Listen to it.
Vienna Teng
Vienna Teng was born Cynthia Yih Shih and took her stage name Vienna from the capital of Austria. She is a former software engineer who graduated from Stanford in 2000 and worked for Cisko Systems for two years before signing with Virt Records in 2002, at which point she quit her job to focus on her music career. Teng's musical style incorporates folk, pop, classical piano, and a cappella influences. She is a baseline alto but her songs often have her singing much higher than that, and her high voice is clear and clean. She writes little stories or love songs or calm songs or folk tales, and they are creepy or sweet or stunning or all of the above, and I can’t tell you how much she means to me as an artist and a poet.
The song I have here is My Medea, which offers an insight into the perspective of one of the most famous madwomen in Western history. And yes, it’s both creepy and stunning, beautiful and terrifying.
rydra_wong’s time line, which includes a link to a summary post). Like last time, I’m refraining from my own commentary on racism in favor of promoting these musicians (though I’m planning a post on what it means to be a Good Girl, and how that matters to this issue) but I will say this: one kind of oppression is not like another, and listening is sadly underrated. For the love of all that is holy, look up intersectionality somewhere.
Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list (ETA: I'm not pretending to be an expert of any kind, is what I actually meant by that), nor is this a list where one artist is like another, because much like last time, these women do not sound like each other simply by virtue of being Women of Color. As for why they’re here, well, some of it is that as a singer and a lyricist and a person, I owe something to every one of these women. And it might be wishful thinking, because who doesn’t wish they sounded like Aretha Franklin or wrote like Nina Simone; and it might be self-confidence, because singing Beverley Knight’s Who I Am with my sister on stage made everything click, all at once; and it might be my journal title (Vienna Teng) or inspiration for lines in a poem (Vienna Teng) or the truest, brightest moment of happiness of my junior year at college (dancing with the girl I love best to “Pata Pata” because it reminded her of home).
Here, then, have seven musicians. Clicking on their names below the cut will take you to their MySpace page or homepage or Wikipedia page, depending on what felt the most informative. In all of these places there are links that let you know how to buy their albums and/or other merchandise. I also added links to Amazon’s stores for Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, and Aretha Franklin. The sample songs I offer here is intended to encourage you to further support these artists and other musicians of color in making music. If you like it, please spend some money on them. The information I used for their short biographies mostly came from their Wikipedia pages, from Musician Guide or my own background knowledge.
Ryeisha "Rye Rye" Berrain
Rye Rye is the first artist signed to M.I.A.'s record label N.E.E.T., and her album is set to be released in March of 2009. (So now, basically.) I trust you know who M.I.A. is? Awesome. Rye Rye toured with her. during the fall and winter of 2007 and early 2008. She features on a remix of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" with Afrikan Boy, which appears on the Paper Planes - Homeland Security Remixes EP by M.I.A. and is available on Rye Rye’s MySpace. You can also download her song "Shake It To The Ground," a collaboration with Blaqstarr, on Itunes, and I recommend you do so.
Seriously, this girl is awesome. She is 17, from Baltimore, and, well, watch the video for "Shake It To The Ground" here. She’s going to rule the world.
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman should need no introduction. Singer-songwriter, marvelous musician, socially conscious lyrics and a voice that I wish, wish, wish I had, low and easy and so clear when she needs it to be. She has released 9 albums, beginning in 1988 with the self-titled Tracy Chapman. Her most recent record, Our Brightest Future came out last year, and she’s touring Europe this summer in support of it. Unfortunately, she’s not coming to Stockholm, but the lucky souls who can go see her should feel very lucky indeed. If you, like me, will not be able to see her, you can go here and listen to her acoustic performance from 1988, on the final night of the Human Rights Foundation World Tour. You have to register at the site to listen, but it’s free and the music is worth it.
The sample track I offer here is Devotion, from the album Telling Stories. It’s a song about religion or love, or religion and love, or how sometimes neither is enough. Maybe it’s about all of that.
Aretha Franklin
Hi, look, it’s the Queen of Soul. Also, perhaps you might have noticed, she just sang at the inauguration of President Obama. She is a singer (most obviously), a song-writer and a pianist. In addition to soul, she has tried her hand at singing jazz, rock, blues, pop, R&B and gospel, and, in a performance I will never, ever forget, she substituted for Luciano Pavarotti when he became sick right before the 1998 Grammy Awards to sing "Nessun Dorma." With less than 24 hours to prepare, she pulled of a stunning (if improvised) version of the aria—I had never heard anyone sing like that. I think she might have also sang with the Blues Brothers that night, though you must forgive me for not remembering.
The sample song I chose is another example of how she transforms the songs she covers. It’s Eleanor Rigby like you’ve never heard it sung before. Here is the link to her Amazon Store.
Beverley Knight
Beverley Knight is an English soul and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer, who has released five albums since her debute in 1995; she has received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her charitable work and her contributions to British music. She has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton, like other semi-famous musicians Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.
Her latest album was recorded in Nashville, and she recorded 12 songs in 3 days in a highly unorthodox environment. As her website describes it: “Hammond and piano in the living room, 3 BV’s in the corridor, rhythm section in the conservatory and Beverley in the middle in a DIY vocal booth.” She called it the album where she captures what she does on stage. The result is pretty staggering.
That being said, this is from an older album. Get Up! is one of her more famous songs. This one is about confidence and standing up for what you believe in, but when she tells you to do it, you damn well will.
Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba was a South African singer and civil rights activist, who first became internationally known with her role in the 1959 film Come Back, Africa, an anti-apartheid documentary. Following the film's debut at the Venice Film Festival, Makeba traveled to London, where she met respected American entertainer and social activist Harry Belafonte, who helped her gain recognition in the United States. They also recorded an album together that made a statement against apartheid. Her outspoken political work in the 1960’s opposing the South African government’s oppressive policies left her unable to return home, as they revoked her passport and her citizenship. Not until 1990 could she return home, when Nelson Mandela urged her to. Read more about her here, and buy her music here.
The sample song is Pata Pata, her most famous song.
Nina Simone
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tyron, North Carolina during the Depression. At 5, she demonstrated enormous musical abilities and understood Bach to be technically perfect. Later, she said this: "When you play Bach's music," she explained, "you have to understand that he's a mathematician and all the notes you play add up to something--they make sense. They always add up to climaxes, like ocean waves getting bigger and bigger until after a while when so many waves have gathered you have a great storm."
She dreamed of becoming the first black classical pianist, but was rejected, because, well, this was the 1950’s. After she was rejected by the classical academy, she put together her own music out of all the genres she had played. Jazz, classical, hymns, gospel, popular songs—and on that foundation would she build her songs. (Link to her Amazon Store.) Countless critics have called her some version of the epithet an Angry Black Woman, because of songs like Four Women, which is a four-verse treatment of racism and sexism in US history. It’s furious, yes, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Listen to it.
Vienna Teng
Vienna Teng was born Cynthia Yih Shih and took her stage name Vienna from the capital of Austria. She is a former software engineer who graduated from Stanford in 2000 and worked for Cisko Systems for two years before signing with Virt Records in 2002, at which point she quit her job to focus on her music career. Teng's musical style incorporates folk, pop, classical piano, and a cappella influences. She is a baseline alto but her songs often have her singing much higher than that, and her high voice is clear and clean. She writes little stories or love songs or calm songs or folk tales, and they are creepy or sweet or stunning or all of the above, and I can’t tell you how much she means to me as an artist and a poet.
The song I have here is My Medea, which offers an insight into the perspective of one of the most famous madwomen in Western history. And yes, it’s both creepy and stunning, beautiful and terrifying.