| I don't think there is a time limit on honesty. There's music that was made 40 or 50 years ago that you can still play today and be like, 'Goddamn, how they know what I'm dealing with right now?' That's just because they've been honest. |
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| EarthGang's Olu, aka Johnny Venus, at Rolling Loud, San Bernardino, Calif., Dec. 10, 2021. |
| (Timothy Norris/WireImage/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
New Money
There's an endless parade of investment funds using their hundreds of millions of dollars to compete for the (relatively) safe and stable copyrights of superstar musicians looking to cash out in their twilight years; it's about time someone came up with an alternative investment and maybe even an alternative understanding of music and musicians. The Wall Street Journal's ANNE STEELE reports (paywall) that WARNER MUSIC and BLACKROCK have teamed up with investment firm INFLUENCE MEDIA to bet $750 million on newer, younger music, with an emphasis on women and diversity. Among the catalogs they've already invested in are those of producer/songwriter TAINY, artist/songwriter JESSIE REYEZ and BRUNO MARS collaborators the STEREOTYPES. Influence Media founder LYLETTE PIZARRO drops keywords including Latin, hip-hop and gaming.
Every music copyright fund talks about its intention to work with its artists and catalogs to find opportunities for airplay, syncs and anything else that can wring as much value out of the copyrights as it can. The funds tend to frame their deals as partnerships with artists, even when they buy out 100 percent of an artist's rights. I don't doubt their sincerity. I do sometimes wonder what they have to offer the artists, once the deals have closed, besides courtesy email updates. And it's not as if they're funding BOB DYLAN's or FLEETWOOD MAC's next album or songwriting retreat. Influence Media, according to the Journal, has never acquired 100 percent of anyone's work and isn't averse to taking a stake in future songs. There's more of a sense of active partnership here, or, at least, there's the potential for that. Tainy, Jessie Reyes and the Stereotypes aren't in their twilight years. They may well have their best work ahead of them. The millions of dollars coming their way is effectively an investment in, and a gamble on, the creation of new art. It makes sense Warner Music would be involved. The investment fund sounds, in part, like a record company and music publisher.
Jazz Hand
Another kind of musical investment: NEXT JAZZ LEGACY, created by NEW MUSIC USA and the BERKLEE INSTITUTE OF JAZZ AND GENDER JUSTICE, is a new program connecting emerging female and non-binary artists with established jazz musicians for three-year, one-on-one apprentice/mentor relationships. The mentors for the first class of seven artists include ESPERANZA SPALDING, MARY HALVORSON and MARCUS MILLER. "What would jazz sound like if there was gender balance among the creators of the music?," asks drummer/composer TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON, the program's artistic director. "We're ardently questioning why it has felt normal for so many of us to own an album collection (or digital files) that included very few or no women instrumentalists."
Schedule Changes
Russian conductor VALERY GERGIEV, a vocal defender of PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN who has come under criticism when he's performed in the US in the past, was scheduled to conduct the VIENNA PHILHARMONIC in three concerts at CARNEGIE HALL starting tonight. Without giving a reason, as if anyone needed one, the orchestra and venue announced Thursday he's been replaced... OXXXYMIRON, a popular Russian rapper, announced he's canceling his own shows in Moscow and St. Petersburg. "I cannot entertain you when Russian missiles are falling on Ukraine," he told fans via INSTAGRAM... EUROVISION says it will welcome Russia as a competitor in this year's competition because "the Eurovision Song Contest is a non-political cultural event which unites nations and celebrates diversity through music." It added, however, "We of course will continue to monitor the situation closely."
It's Friday
And the thrilling Atlanta rap duo EARTHGANG continues to celebrate its hometown on GHETTO GODS, with help from Dungeon Family affiliates Future, CeeLo Green and Kawan "KP" Prather. It's a celebration steeped in both current realities and hope. "We know where we’re from,” EarthGang's Olu told Rolling Stone. "We see the effect the pandemic has had on our neighborhoods. But we also see the beauty and the ingenuity and creativity that people have been able to foster from this s***"... CONWAY THE MACHINE, one of the stars of Buffalo's Griselda Records crew, drops his first and seemingly last album for Eminem's Shady Records. "I'm contractually done now," he told podcaster Bootleg Kev last week. "It’s free agency right now. I need that supermax, I need that Giannis bag"... LA singer/songwriter SASAMI has gone metal on her second album, SQUEEZE, because "it is such a cis white male space. There is room for someone like me to come in and make a mess in it"... Veteran death metal band BLOOD INCANTATION has gone the other way, turning out an ambient instrumental synthesizer project as album #3... Puerto Rican reggaeton star RAUW ALEJANDRO looks back to his roots in trap and R&B on TRAP CAKE VOL. 2, a between-albums EP that slips out ahead of schedule today... AVRIL LAVIGNE is going back to her roots, too, hoping to claim a piece of the current pop-punk revival with her seventh album, LOVE SUX... Ambient producer Brian Leeds' third album as HUERCO S, following up his 2016 breakthrough "For Those of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have)," features songs "whose structures reveal themselves gradually, progressing from nervousness and agitation to passages of deep, reflective calm."
Plus new music from KANYE WEST ("Donda 2," finally available to anyone with Kanye's Donda Stem Player)... ROBERT GLASPER (vol. 3 of his "Black Radio" series), 42 DUGG & EST GEE, SEPTEMBERSRICH, TEARS FOR FEARS (first album in 17 years), SOFT CELL (it's been 20 years for them), BINKER GOLDING & MOSES BOYD, BLUE LAB BEATS, SPIRITUALIZED, SUPERCHUNK, DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL, ADULT., EMILY WELLS, GÁBOR LÁZÁR, NICOLAS JAAR, HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS & TIM STORY, TANGERINE DREAM, LYNN AVERY & COLE PULICE, PARK JIHA, JÚLIO RESENDE, AVISHAI COHEN, CURTIS STIGERS, JUDY COLLINS, SWAMP DOGG, KODAK BLACK, ACE HOOD, THURSTON MOORE, GANG OF YOUTHS, MOM JEANS, JOHNNY MARR, KING HANNAH, BASIA BULAT, KEELEY FORSYTH, DUQUETTE JOHNSTON, CAMP COPE, BAND OF HEATHENS, the HAWTTHORNS, STRING MACHINE, SCORPIONS, CORPSEGRINDER, FIREBREATHER, BAD OMENS, DEATH INSURANCE and TY SEGALL's score to the documentary WHIRLYBIRD.
Rest in Peace
SAM HENRY, drummer for pioneering Portland punk band the Wipers. He played with several other Portland bands in later years... LA jazz and blues singer ERNIE ANDREWS... SANDY NELSON, drummer behind the early rock instrumental hits "Teen Beat" and "Let There Be Drums."
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Billboard |
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| Billboard’s 2022 Women In Music Top Executives |
| By Darlene Aderoju, Trevor Anderson, Rania Aniftos... |
| Reservoir Media CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi leads this year's list of high-achieving women from every sector of the industry — including 12 Hall of Fame honorees. |
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Billboard |
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| Women In Music Pioneers: Groundbreaking Female Executives |
| By Gary Graff, Deborah Wilker, Paul Grein... |
| From the first recording session for Elvis Presley to the launch of the Grammy Awards, women have played an essential role in music business milestones, often with less acknowledgement than male executives. |
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The New York Times |
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| Is There Such a Thing as Black Thought? |
| By Reginald Dwayne Betts |
| In an uncategorizable new musical, “Black No More,” the rapper Tariq Trotter investigates Black identity - a matter that has occupied his whole career. |
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The New Yorker |
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| How Odetta Revolutionized Folk Music |
| By Sasha Frere-Jones |
| She animated the horror and emotional intensity in American labor songs by projecting them like a European opera singer. |
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Afropop Worldwide |
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| The Black History of Tap Dancing |
| By Ben Richmond |
| Foundational for Broadway and the movies, intertwined with jazz, tap dancing is a Great American Art. Strap on your shoes and shuffle along as we trace the history of tap and celebrate the Black artists and innovators who built--and continue to build--this art form. |
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DJ Mag |
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| A history of bassline |
| By Matt Anniss |
| From its beginnings in Yorkshire clubs to becoming a nationwide dance music phenomenon and chart success, the bassline sound has survived and thrived, despite the efforts of the police and club licensing authorities. Matt Anniss charts its rise, fall, resurgence and influence on a new generation of DJs, producers and ravers. |
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Clash Magazine |
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| Wonho Is Taking Everything In His Stride |
| By Abby Webster and Claire Min |
| Looking like the leading man out of a John Hughes movie, Wonho stares into the camera, head cocked, in a teaser still for his new single album, 'Obsession'. On his head is a striped birthday hat, its rim circled with pom-poms; in his hand, a cupcake with a single candle. |
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Africa is a Country |
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| Hard times never kill |
| By Liam Brickhill |
| Gonora Sounds’ music gets at what it means to be a Zimbabwean: We might be crying, but we are also dancing. |
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uDiscoverMusic |
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| Tracing The Bo Diddley Beat |
| By Jim Allen |
| We trace the history of one of the most inspired rhythms in all of popular music. |
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| what we're into |
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| Video of the day |
| “Ronnie's” |
| Oliver Murray |
| Oliver Murray's documentary about saxophonist (and gambler) Ronnie Scott and his fabled London jazz club. |
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| Music | Media |
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| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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