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Joseph Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Spotlight on an African-European Innovator [KEH]
Brief Announements ...
Guitarist Bokar Animates Bebop with African Rhythm [SJ Mercury News]
The New School HIP HOP Revolution [Jung Kyu Rhee]
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| Joseph Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Spotlight on an African-European Innovator [KEH] |
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Joseph Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1739-99) was one of the earliest musicians of African ancestry to make a major impression in the world of European concert music. Born on the Carribean Island of Guadeloupe to an African woman and a wealthy Frenchman, he was educated in Paris to assume the role of a cultured eighteenth-century gentleman, studying literature, fencing, and music. He soon became acknowledged as one of the foremost swordsmen in France, while also developing his gifts as a violinist and composer.
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| Brief Announements ... |
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***The Music of "Bassist Extraordinaire" LARRY RIDLEY: Just In !! We are pleased to announce the arrival of three new albums in the AAI store, all by bassist Larry Ridley. With recording credits with artists like Horace Silver, Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, and many others these releases are sure to please! Please be sure to visit our store and look for our feature article on Larry Ridley in the next issue of the newsletter.
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***TRAVEL TO SOUTH AFRICA: Join us in South Africa! Hesterian Musicism is off to Cape Town for the NORTH SEA JAZZ FESTIVAL in Cape Town in March 2002 and you're invited. African American Innovators is pleased to announce this custom tour where you'll have an opportunity to experience jazz from an American and African perspective. Join Karlton Hester, members of his group Hesterian Musicism, and jazz fans from across the country as they discuss, perform, and experience jazz in the stunning beauty and historical magnificance of Cape Town, South Africa. For more information please follow the link below.
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| Guitarist Bokar Animates Bebop with African Rhythm [SJ Mercury News] |
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"For people who have an ear for traditional music in West Africa, you can hear that it is not an accident that bebop was born out of the communities of Africa that have been displaced." - Pascal Bokar
[Article By Andrew Gilbert, San Jose Mercury News]
Suppose Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker had moved to Dakar in the early 1940s and begun collaborating with traditional percussionists, wedding the breath-taking harmonic flights of modern jazz with surging West African rhythms. The results probably would sound something like guitarist Pascal Bokar's music - a remarkable synthesis of bebop and the rhythmic patterns he heard while growing up in Mali and Senegal.
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| The New School HIP HOP Revolution [Jung Kyu Rhee] |
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Since its birth in the 1970s, the musical form of hip hop has evolved drastically. (Afrika Bambaataa, Davey D's Hip Hop Corner). What used to be about simplistic lyrics and beats based on Jamaican toasting has been revolutionized into a complex art form. (Davey D, Davey D's Hip Hop Corner). Due to experimentation and innovation, it is not only the lyrics and beats of today's artists that are more sophisticated than their predecessors'. The conceptual expressions and images and the variations and combinations that arise from these ideas have greatly expanded as well.
Two intriguing conceptual styles in hip hop music worth examining are Mafioso rap and West Coast underground hip hop. The potential brilliance of Mafioso rap has often been undermined by hip hop purists who claim that the form is not relevant to hip hop. They often dismiss the form as materialism and fantasy. However, Mafioso rap can, at its best, be a truly worthy form of hip hop, and its potential artistic merits deserve serious analysis.
West Coast underground hip hop deserves to be exposed in a positive light as well. Overshadowed by "gangsta" rap that is prevalent in the region, West Coast underground hip hop is not well known to the mainstream. It is a truly creative breed of hip hop whose qualities must be examined for a wider audience.
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| ARTIST Feature: CAROL BOWIE's Visual Art of Jazz [SC Good Times] |
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[Written and Photographed by Bruce Willey, Santa Cruz Good Times] Talent runs deep and wide in Bowie's family. Her father was a preacher and a poet. Both her stepmother and brother were artists. Her sister is a writer, her husband, a furniture maker. And then there's her uncle, the jazz great Charlie Mingus. Bowie's genes are splattered with a savoir faire that would make any black sheep artist turn green. Yet this largely self-taught artist has had virtually no art education save for a few classes through Santa Cruz County Parks and Recreation and now defunct Santa Cruz Art School.
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