Icing on the Cake
4 A’s worth sharing this week: a timeline of African American music, Silk Sonic sexually bowing out of Grammy consideration, instruments with chaotic auras, new music, and more…
Here are four things (A’s) we thought were worth sharing this week:
A1. Timeline of African American Music.
In 2009, soprano Jessye Norman brought Dr. Portia K. Maultsby, a pioneer in the study of African American music, to Carnegie Hall as part of the festival HONOR! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy. As a cornerstone of the festival, Miss Norman wanted educational initiatives to expand the audience’s journey of discovery, including the first interactive version of a timeline of African American music. After the festival, “the timeline became an integral part of Carnegie Hall’s online educational resources and continued to serve music lovers, educators, and students around the world for more than a decade.”
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Through support from the NEH and NEA the timeline has been reimagined and updated to serve a new generation of audiences (click on this link or the image below to check out the interactive timeline on the Carnegie Hall website).
The Timeline of African American Music represents decades of scholarship conducted and led by Dr. Maultsby, as well as the contributions of numerous scholars. From the earliest folk traditions to present-day popular music, the timeline is a detailed view of the evolution of African American musical genres that span the past 400 years. This celebration of African American musical traditions reveals the unique characteristics of each genre and style, while also offering in-depth studies of pioneering musicians who created some of America’s most timeless artistic expressions.
A2. Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak won’t leave the door open at the 2023 Grammys.
Bruno Mars and Anderson Paak decided not to submit their album to music’s biggest awards show. “An Evening with Silk Sonic, was released in November 2021, making it eligible for the music awards handed out on Feb. 5, 2023 (Silk Sonic won song of the year, record of the year, best R&B song and best R&B performance in April).
In 2023, they would have “qualified for categories like album of the year, best R&B album, and best engineered album (non-classical),” but Mars released a statement on Thursday saying: “Silk Sonic would like to gracefully, humbly and most importantly, sexually, bow out of submitting our album this year.”
“Andy and I, and everyone that worked on this project, won the moment the world responded to ‘Leave the Door Open.’ Everything else was just icing on the cake,” Mars continues. “We thank the Grammys for allowing us to perform on their platform—not once but twice—and awarding us at last year’s ceremony. We’d be crazy to ask for anything more.”
Both heavy Grammy-award-winners (Mars with 15 and Paak with 8), this seems like a humble move that will allow others opportunities to be celebrated.
A3. Erasure in the TikToks.
While scrolling on TikTok, it is common to see someone lip-syncing to a song created by another user. The short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance has served as an incredibly lucrative launching point for many popular artists (including Olivia Rodrigo, Kat Burns, and Lynpaid), but, unnervingly, it has become more and more common for songs and other audio on the platform to be claimed by someone other than the original creator. This was the case for well-known vine artist, Aaron (of infamous Golden Girls theme song fame), who goes by the handle @finallyaaayye.
Aaron posted a TikTok in order to attempt to regain credit for his cover of the Golden Girls theme song after it had been falsely renamed and claimed by multiple users. Moreover, he addressed the many occasions in which someone would comment about the lip-syncer’s voice instead of crediting his own. At present, it’s unclear what the solution(s) to this problem may be, or if TikTok or other social media companies will do something meaningful about these bait and switches. For now, creators (and consumers) seem like they’re on their own when it comes to policing intellectual property crime (sounds to us like a heavy lift).
If you’re a maker, keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re a listener, check your sources.
A4. New music this week from PJ Morton, Keith Jarrett, and The 1975.
PJ Morton released the deluxe version of his summer release, Watch the Sun last week. In this version, he gives us the instrumental versions of all of the tunes as well as a new version of “The Better Benediction” featuring some of Gospel’s leading women artists.
Late last month Munich based record label ECM released pianist Keith Jarrett’s 2016 Bordeux Concert (from what is likely to be Jarrett’s final European tour). Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in the flow of things, and extended sections of Bordeaux are beguilingly beautiful. Tender songs are pulled from the air, “rousing a community of listening at the edge of silence”, as Le Monde put it, “an awareness of time out from the noise and weariness of the world.”
“Twenty years into their time together as a band—and approaching the 10-year milestone of being a hugely successful one”—The 1975 released their newest full-length album, Being Funny In a Foreign Language. “The working title, up until I chickened out, was At Their Very Best,” singer/guitarist Matty Healy tells Apple Music. “But I knew we were coming out in sunglasses and suits, and it could look like a bit of a joke. I’m not joking.”
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Alexandria & Amy + Charlie
Extra credit: Chaotic instruments.
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