Thursday, May 16, 2013

Valerie June on crane tv

http://www.crane.tv/valerie-june

Valerie June interview: No strictly roots

Valerie June's winning combination of country moonshine and Deep South soul make her a major star-in-waiting


Valerie June: “I started listening to straight, raw, old country and blues music and I never got out of that” (Picture: Adrian Lourie)
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Valerie June: “I started listening to straight, raw, old country and blues music and I never got out of that” (Picture: Adrian Lourie)
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She looks like a supermodel and sings like a 100-year-old blueswoman — Valerie June is the right mix of old and new to make a major splash on the music scene this year. Her strictly analogue songs are for fans of the vintage, the authentic, and definitely the classic. The combination of folksy fiddle, gospel organ, acoustic instruments and a truly wonderful voice on her album, out in May, will sit confidently beside any roots release of the past century.
Both Workin’ Woman Blues and Twined and Twisted, which she performed solo with her acoustic guitar on Later… with Jools Holland last October, sound as ancient as the Blue Ridge Mountains — simple chords coupled with bleak lyrics about life’s struggle. “I ain’t fit to be no mother/I ain’t fit to be no wife yet/I been workin’ like a man, y’all/I been workin’ all my life,” she sings on the former.
“If I have something inside me that I want to get out I’ll just beat it out on the banjo right then and there,” she tells me. “I’ve written so many songs. I don’t know if the world will ever hear all the songs I have written.”
The Hours Won’t Tell You No Lies zooms into the future, comparatively speaking, by featuring a gently swinging electric guitar and resembling a classic doo-wop number. Amy Winehouse might have done something like it. Then there’s the dirty electric blues of the new single, You Can’t be Told, and the dramatic title track, Pushin’ Against a Stone, which seems to encapsulate her worldview.
“Bad things are there, negative things. You wake up in the morning and there’s a clean sheet of paper but also the stone, always there in the room. It could roll back on you, or you could push it up. My goal is to keep pushing the weight off of me every day.”
You wouldn’t guess the kind of music she makes to look at her. With sunglasses the size of two tyres glued to her delicate face, sporting a frilly purple sweater, short skirt and bright blue tights, she looks far from out of place sitting beneath a multi-platinum disc belonging to BeyoncĂ© in her publicist’s meeting room. She says her ambition is that of every glitzy American pop star: to sing in the halftime show at the Super Bowl.
A late starter after a long period of part-time jobs and tiny gigs, she isn’t quite there yet. “I was asked to sing the Star-Spangled Banner for the Memphis Grizzlies,” she tells me. “They’re a basketball team but I don’t think they win very much.”
Then there’s the flipside of her coin: the dreadlocked tendrils snaking upwards from her head, the fact that, if she has time, she’ll make her own soap to sell at the merchandise stand at her concerts (“My signature fragrance would be herbal — basil mixed with rosemary and coriander. Some big stars have got perfume lines that smell really bad. They’ve got it all wrong”), a much-loved former job working in a Memphis herb store called Maggie’s Pharm — June is quite the hippy.
I tell her she presents a fairly confusing picture. “That’s pretty normal for me. Amalgamation is a good word that I like to use — musically and in every way.”
Looking at her contradictions, it would be easy to think there’s a fair amount of fakery to what she calls her “organic moonshine roots music”. She’s also signed to Sunday Best, a British label run by the people behind Bestival, which is no stranger to novelty acts.
Yet she sings in an extraordinary light, twangy voice that is impossible to imagine featuring on a modern electronic recording. It’s as downhome authentic as grits ’n’ gravy. Hailing from near Jackson, Tennessee (like the Johnny Cash song), she’s Deep South all the way. Talking about the support tour she has just completed around the UK with Jake Bugg, even the way she pronounces “Yeovil” makes it sound like the sweatiest swamp on the Bayou.
She’s no genre tourist. She has immersed herself in this stuff for a long time. Three albums before this new one, the first from 2006, were self-recorded and sold at gigs and from her car. “I went through every phase with music. When I was really little I loved Whitney Houston. I thought she was the prettiest thing in the world. Then I fell for the Sixties people like Janis [Joplin] and Hendrix, John Lennon. Then I started listening to straight, raw, old country and blues music and I never got out of that. Other things came and went but that one was just so deep.”
She enthuses about the ancient  field recordings of Alan Lomax and the folklore work of George Mitchell, who travelled around Mississippi documenting blues musicians in the Sixties. “American roots music is where it all came together, the songs that led to rock ’n’ roll, punk and everything after.”
Such passion led her to seek out as a co-writer and producer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, the recent multiple Grammy winners who, along with Jack White, have done much to keep roots music alive and thrilling. She made a lot of her album at Auerbach’s new studio in Nashville. “It was crazy, it was like a candy store of instruments and tape machines. He must have been collecting this stuff for years, old microphones lined up like an army, all kinds of old banjos and mandolins.”
It’s an old trick but it’s done exceptionally well here. Her album is one of the best things I’ve heard all year. Bright things are ahead, though she can’t stop thinking about pushing that heavy stone.
She pulls me aside after we’ve already packed up and said our goodbyes to add one more thing. “I forgot to mention: the object is not to get rid of the stone. The object is to learn to live with it.” And with that, Valerie June and her invisible burden float off to a headline concert and a sunny future. 

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

songstress Kreesha Turner


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Tuesday, October 5, 2010


Music Clip of the Month/ 10-10

Kreesha Turner's "Dust in Gravity" (2009) (with Delerium)

EDMONTON-born & bred Kreesha Turner broke into the music business after winning a singing contest on local radio station The Bounce (91.7 FM), which in turn led to a trip to Vancouver to record four tracks with Hipjoint Productions (Kelly Rowland, Shiloh). One of those songs, "Bounce with Me," caught the attention of music manager Chris Smith (Nelly Furtado, Fefe Dobson).

Soon enough Turner had inked a deal with Virgin Records and an accompanying R&B album in Passion resulted soon after, featuring singles in "Simple," "Shattered," "Lady Killer," and "Don't Call Me Baby." The latter broke into the Canadian Top 10 (#8) in '08, and even crossed the border to top the Billboard dance charts.

By 2009 Turner had earned a pair of Juno nods, took home the Canadian Radio Music Award for Best New Artist, and even appeared in a Kit Kat commercial with her hit "Bounce with Me." During the year Turner also appeared with alt-pop group Delerium on their "Dust in Gravity" track, which also topped Billboard dance list down south. Check out the video below.

Kreesha Turner - Interview

Posted by chris ON Nov 23, 2011
I was very lucky to meet this week with Kreesha Turner, the same one who had a major hit with the single «Don’t Call Me Baby back in 2008, a song that has remained in our heads since for being so heartfelt and catchy.Kreesha was kind enough to make a little space for us on her tied-up promo day in Montreal. The lady was of the most charming and is even prettier in person on picture, if you ever wondered. Canada's very own R&B goddes showed up wearing a total rock-and-roll outfit, anything to make eny girl in the place feel shabby: gold high wasted leggins, a black sequined jacket over some cropped funky-spangled top, tinkling bangles and gold and black killer boots. When time to face-to-face, let me tell you that no one could help being mesmerized Kreesha's signature afro hairdo, her drop-dead-gorgeous emerald eyes and this incredible sense of intelligence emanating from her. Here is what the lady singer would tell us about her new album and new look.
IX: Kreesha, you’re a Canadian Pop/RnB recording artist. How did you first fell into music ? 
KreeshaI guess from the first, I would not know how far to go back I didn’t start singing . I am from a Jamaican heritage, so I was sent to Kingston when I was 16 and went to highschool there for a year. I did not started to sing seriously until 16. I cut the bug when I was in Jamaica but when I came back to Canada, I finished highschool and I started being involved immediately after graduating. I guess that you could say that for a number of years, I was very active in the underground urban music scene.It wasn’t 2005-2006, through a competition that I won that I met my now manager, Chris Smith. From there, it just continued to build.
 IX: Therefore, singing was not something you always wanted to do ?
KreeshaWhen I was younger, I started off as a dancer. So, I always had a love for music. As a dancer, you react to the music. You know how music affects you and your response to it is in movement. Before that, I did not think I could sing! But you know, I still love music just as much. How I ended up singing, it was actually a bunch of my friends who peer pressured me into joining the church youth choir, because I was like «No, I don’t sing!» (laughs). But they were like «Yes you’re trying out, you have to!» So, I ended up doing it and I got in. One of the first sunday, when the youth choir got to sing in front of the congregation, I remember the audience reacting. I’ve always had that association as a dancer that you are a reaction, but for the first time of my life, as a vocalist, I was the action causing the reaction and I remember feeling this sense of power in a sense. It’s like «Wow», I’m creating this reaction through my voice.
IX: Do you write all your music ? 
KreeshaThis second album, I had creative control, right from the jump. So, I was involved in all the creation, some of the songs are were also co-written, so of them. But for everything prior to my records all I did was writing and performing my own material. But as you go along, you get more and more input so this album, Tropic Electric, I definitely had far way more control than on the previous one.
IX: You’ve had a major hit with the single «Don’t Call Me Baby», which came out in 2008 and played on every radio in the country. Did that success take you by surprise?
KreeshaI don’t know! I guess some people ask you «did you know you had a hit?» and I’m like «no!». But I guess, as an artist, all you can do is create the music and hope that people will like it. But you know, some people have that ear to know that they have a hit, but that’s just not me. (laughs)
IX: Can you tell me about your new album Topic Electric, which came out earlier this week ?  
KreeshaOne of the most exiting part about Tropic Electric is that it is a double album, one disk being «Tropic» and the other one being «Electric». Like I was saying earlier, I worked the underground urban scene before and everything I did was R&B, reggae and a n blend of that. For me, the «Tropic» side is an evolution of what I used to do when back in the days. The «Electric» disk is about pop, which right now is stricly dance music, the DavidGuetta sound and it’s everywhere. The «Electric» disk is an evolution of my first album Passion, which was very pop. I feel like I have a product where for the first time, I have music for both fanbases and  did not have to alienate either of them. In this sense, the title even started off as this musical concept where we wanted to create a fusion between the tropical Jamaican dancehall reggae sound and the dance, electronic sound of today. We didaccomplish it in some songs. Throughout the recording process, some lead more towards the Tropic sound, some more towards an «Electric» sound, so the choice to split it into a double album was actually later on. It lets the listener understand what is going on. Also, for both CDs, there are these few songs where we couldn’t decide what side to put them because they did have that mix. It’s is sort of scary in the sense that with this album, people are getting to see who I am, how I write naturally, how I write music in my head. So, it’s a bit like I’m more exposed. At the same time, it’s still exiting for me. All I can do is create music that I love and that I’m passionate about, and I can only pray that people will enjoy it as much as I do. 
IX: You’ve spent a lot of time in Jamaica working on the album. How went on?  
KreeshaWe were in recording in Jamaica for 8 months - I must admit that I was a bit spoiled right here! If you are in recording in L.A. for example, you have studio time booked and there is a lot of pressure coming from the people around to do everything correctly in time. In Jamaica, the ambiance was way more relaxed. Let’s say we would show up at the studio in the morning, someone could be like, do you feel like working today? No ? Well let’s go to the beach ! It was mostly about feeling good.
IX: Now, you’ve got yourself a new sound and a new look - your hair speaks for itself! How did you decided that you wanted to be more connected to your roots?
 KreeshaMy mom was teasing me the other day because when I performed in the underground scene, this is how I used to wear my hair! I would have it braided, or I would have it all natural. So, everything seems to be commingfull-circle. I guess with having naturally curly hair, we all go though that phase where we want to have it straight, but now I really enjoy being able to rock my natural hair again. In the same sense, with going back to Jamaica, I like to say that I’m going back to my roots, sonically with the music and then literally with the hair. But it me, it is simply a representation of what I’ve been doing since the beginning, which is really more exiting. I was look at the magazines and I noticed that most of the time, the ethnic woman or celebrities always wear their hair straight. Apart from Jill Scott or Erykah Badu, but they’re more from a niche market, so they’re not even on mainstream path. It’s not sending the best message, it’s telling anybody who has kinky hair that to be beautiful, you have to have straight hair. You know, that’s not true.
IX: Kreesha, you have graced the cover of a few fashion magazines and have a really great style. What are your favorite places to shop ? 
KreeshaOne of the main designer that I collaborate a lot with is Angel Brinks, who makes fabulous bodysuits and sequined pieces. I also get clothes from American Apparel. Then, I have become a professional online shopper, I find the most amazing deals online. One of my favorite thing is this industry is fashion. I like to follow fashion and find new things.
IX: I guess that you’re not much of a jeans a t-shirt person ? 
KreeshaI’m a shoe person! I also like bags and accessories like belts and jewelry a lot. Most of the time, I just wear a pair of American Apparel leggings with a tee, killer boots, a bag and the hair does the rest. Sometimes, that is all you need and it still looks good, you know.
IX: You’ve graced the cover of a few fashion magazine, and you’ve got such a great style. Where do you usually shop ?
KreeshaOne of the main designer that I collaborate a lot with is Angel Brinks, who makes fabulous bodysuits and sequined pieces, like these I’m wearing right now. I also get clothes from American Apparel. Then, I have become a professional online shopper, I find the most amazing deals online. One of my favorite thing is this industry is fashion. I like to follow fashion and find new things.
IX: If you could get collaborate with any musical personality, dead or alive, who would that be ? 
KreeshaThat is an interesting question ! Let me think about it for a second. I guess they are some great  act I would love to collaborate with. Let’s say Nicki Minaj I would really like it. I do know that one of my favorite songwriter is Jill Scott. To be able to sit down and write with her would also be amazing. And then, I’m a great fan of David Guetta, so that would be amazing for a collaboration as well. Let’s keep our finger crossed!
IX: I heard that you spend a lot of time here in Montreal. What do you like the most about the city ?
KreeshaMontreal is one of my favorite places. I come here for food and fashion. Unfortunately, I haven’t done that many of shows here but I feel that people here are the most receptive to music. They make a great audience and you can tell that they actually love music. I feel like their is such an appreciation for the arts here in Montreal. I just like the energy of this city.
IX: Now that your record is out, what is now next step for you ? 
KreeshaMe and my band started a bit of rehearsal in the last months, trying to prepare a full live show. I hope to be touring in the new year. I have to admit that I wouldn’t mind missing the winter! I’m exited to be back on stage, I really miss the stage. I will definitely be on touring within the new year, hopefully during summertime because I would really like to escape the winter (laughs). I love the stage and I do miss performing live a d I can’t wait get back to it.
Tropic Electric
Now in stores 

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Songstress. Ife on facebook

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Monday, May 6, 2013

Baby Stone-Sly Stones Daughter

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A Chat with Zap Mama


Marie Daulne’s music reflects the story of her life.
Her father, a Belgium colonialist, was killed by child rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shortly after impregnating her mother, Cyrille Daulne. After his death Cyrille emigrated to Belgium, where Marie was schooled and raised.
When she was 20, Marie returned to Africa to explore her Pygmy roots. Her exploration continued within her music. Most people know Marie Daulne as the lead singer of Zap Mama. With her music she connects her dual cultural past, hoping to create a universal, positive music to connect people. Her second album, Adventures in Afropea 1, was the best selling world music album in 1993, making her a leader in the genre of world music.
“We have to remind people, and remember that we are all from earth and that’s it a village,” says Marie Daulne. Her beauty hides her years of experience. In an effort to discover this world music, Daulne has traveled the world. In her travels she discovered the universal connector:
I completely believed that I was going to go to the Olympic Games. I wanted to attend a higher level, but I broke my knees and that brought me down on earth. Sitting on my knees, I started reading, reading, reading. Then I discovered through writers the history of the world of the human being. This is when I started changing. Why am I running?
I started running all over the world discovering different societies, and then I thought I had to learn from different societies the essence of enjoyment. I tried to catch what was the common funny things. I could go to the Pygmies living in the forest. What will be something fun that would make them laugh? Being in New York, San Francisco, what were the simple things that could make everyone laugh?
I realized that it was falling. Falling in the floor. I remember walking with the Pygmies in the forest. When you’re in the forest the oxygen is so high that you’re high. I was completely high, like having two whiskeys. Suddenly there was a big branch and I fell and all the Pygmies laughing at me, this big tall lady. When I spend time with the Tuareg in the desert, I tried it again. I fell, and they started laughing.
“Falling” for laugh sounds like the antics of Jackass, basic slapstick humor, but looking deeper into Dualne’s words, it’s much more. Following up her response, I asked her why she doesn’t try falling on stage? She responded:
I have done it sometimes, but not on purpose. What happened that I’m making fun of myself? No.
That’s stage diving. That’s what Erykah Badu told me to do. ‘Come on Mary jump! Fall in their arms. They’re going to fall in love.’ I did it. It was beautiful.
Fall into their arms. Fall in love. Fall for peace. Fall for your beliefs. Just fall for us. These are a few wise words from Zap mama.
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