The News Review:
- Rich DelGrosso Nominated for Blues Music Awards
- If Beale Street Could Talk: Music Community Culture
- Bonnie Raitt to perform at Savannah Music Festival
- Janiva Magness -personal redemption through the blues
- MUSIC: Getting Janiva Magness to the Upstage? No Problem
Rich DelGrosso Nominated for Blues Music Awards
Mandolin Cafe
— The Blues Foundation has announced the nominations for their 30th Annual Blues Music Awards which will be presented at a Blues Foundation ceremony in Memphis on Thursday May 7 2009 at the Cook Convention Center 255 N Main St. Blues mandolinist Rich DelGrosso has been nominated in two categories: Acoustic Album of the Year for. Voting is in the process and Blues Foundation members can.
If Beale Street Could Talk: Music Community Culture
PopMatters IL
In truth music gets short shrift here—a shame since some of Cantwell’s most vivid original and memorable writing is on that subject. The grab-bag of essays in Beale Street hang together loosely aided little by shadowy “subject” groupings (Part 1: Darkling I Listen; Part II: Feasts of Unnaming; and Part III: The Parallax Effect). The book’s first few essays deliver on the promise of the theme of listening as Cantwell writes about the paradoxes of American folk music (“Darkling I Listen: Making Sense of the Smithsonian Folkways Anthology”) the auditory and cultural differences between analog and digital recording (“The Magic 8 Ball: From Analog to Digital”) and in one of the standout essays of the collection the meaning of the sounds of blues music (“If Beale Street Could Talk: A Reflection on Musical Meaning”). The eponymous essay showcases all of Cantwell’s strengths as a writer. He begins with a simple childhood memory of listening to a blues record (Diana Washington’s “Long John Blues”) quickly ties it to the larger framework of the baby-boom generation and dives into an exhaustive analysis of what he calls “roots” music: “blues rockabilly and rock-and-roll old-time music and bluegrass”. Cantwell gives not only a clear and concise look at how and why roots music gained cultural significance in the mid-20th century; he goes beyond that to write eloquently and passionately about the actual sound of the music itself and unfolds the layers of meaning in those sounds recorded and played back in specific ways at specific moments in time. After densely packed pages of analysis Cantwell blissfully and quite suddenly breaks through the thicket of theory describing “a trailing double helix of twin cornets—King liver and Louis Armstrong—[who] cruise the after-midnight pavements of ‘Canal Street Blues’ as Honore Dutrey’s trombone shines like a headlight on their wet crawling surfaces”.
Bonnie Raitt to perform at Savannah Music Festival
USA Today
org or 912-525-5050. Prices range from $35-75. Nearly 100 performances of jazz classical blues bluegrass gospel and other genres will be staged throughout Savannah’s historic district. In addition to Raitt headliners include Neko Case Dianne Reeves Bela Fleck’s Africa Project Chick Corea and John McLaughlin’s Five Peace Band. ther performers range from blues singer Corey Harris in a show called “The Blues Was Born Here” to old-time multi-instrumentalist Dan Gellert accompanying his daughter Rayna. The festival closes April 5 with the Atlanta Symphony rchestra. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Related from Birminghamspoint: UAB defeats Savannah State 63-37
Janiva Magness -personal redemption through the blues
Redwood Times CA
Possessing a rich soulful voice and absolute command over her material Magness is an incredibly gifted performer who can lead her audience through a range of emotions from the deepest sorrow to overwhelming joy. A survivor of an impossibly rough childhood Magness’ life experience informs her music in a way that is brutally honest emotionally moving and above all spiritually healing. Winner of the 2006 and 2007 Blues Music Awards for Best Contemporary Female Artist f The Year Magness has seven solo recordings to her credit and has made guest appearances on CDs by R. Burnside and many others. Her presence on stage is legendary as she performs 200 nights a year at clubs festivals and concert halls all over the world. And in April 2008 she traveled to Iraq and Kuwait co-headlining Bluzapalooza the first-ever blues concert tour to perform for American troops.
MUSIC: Getting Janiva Magness to the Upstage? No Problem
Kitsap Sun United States
“I’ll tell you what my problem is not” Magness added getting to the perspective part. “My problem is not ‘Is the cardboard box in the alley I’m sleeping in gonna keep me warm tonight?’ I don’t have that problem and for that I’m forever grateful. Magness who’s 50 now and one of the most highly regarded vocal stylists in blues music has been in that cardboard box. She’s been where her problems weren’t “When’s my next appointment?” but “Am I going to eat today?”Part of Magness is defined by the blues by the joyful noise that she and her band — guitarist Zack Zunis bassist Gary Davenport keybpoardist Benny Yee and drummer Vince Fossett — play live at as many as 200 gigs worldwide annually and occasionally commit to CD. But another part comes from her years as a street kid in Detroit or shuttling among more than a dozen foster homes after she lost both her parents to suicide before she was old enough to drive a car. So now even as a successful and critically acclaimed performer with a wide fan base perspective is not something Magness has to go looking for. “I’m not the kind of person who is hard-wired for accepting good things easily” she said.