'music' Bands // p 4 of 5

Novos Baianos

Novos Baianos was a Brazilian rock and MPB group from Salvador, Bahia. It was formed in the 1960s and enjoyed success throughout most of the 1970s. The band members were Paulinho Boca de Cantor (vocals), Pepeu Gomes (electric guitar), Moraes Moreira (vocals and acoustic guitar), Baby Consuelo (vocals and percussion) and Luiz Galvão (lyrics). The group always counted on the collaboration of the band A Cor do Som, composed of Pepeu Gomes (guitar), Dadi (bass), Jorginho (cavaquinho, drums and percussion), Baixinho (drums and percussion) and Bolacha (percussion). Novos Baianos is considered one of the most important and revolutionary groups in Brazilian music.

History

Novos Baianos started in the 1960s, but they appeared in public for the first time in 1968 at the show "Desembarque dos bichos depois do dilúvio", presented in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. At the time, the group was composed of Moreira, Boca de Cantor, Consuelo and Galvão.

In 1969, the group participated in V Festival de Música Popular Brasileira, playing the song 'De vera'. The origin of the name came up during a performance on the TV channel Rede Record. When the group was still nameless, the festival producer, Marcos Antônio Riso yelled (in Portuguese) "Bring up these new Bahians!", referring to the band's place of origin ("Novos Baianos" is Portuguese for "new Bahians"). This song was on the band's first album, É ferro na boneca, recorded one year later. Initially their sound was a fusion of psychedelic rock with traditional folk sounds from Brazil.

Originally, the group only played with Pepeu Gomes and Jorginho at their live shows. However, gradually, Gomes started to acquire an ever more important role in the group: after he married Consuelo, he became a fully fledged band member and song arranger along with Moreira.

Their music began to gravitate more towards MPB, particularly due to João Gilberto's influence, who frequently visited the group. Their second album Acabou Chorare contained the classics 'Brasil Pandeiro', 'Preta Pretinha', 'Mistério do Planeta' and 'Besta é tu'. It was recorded on the Som Livre label in 1972, and years later would be considered the best Brazilian music album by Rolling Stone magazine. It was around this period that the group incorporated A Cor do Som as an auxiliary band.

In 1972, after recording Acabou Chorare, Novos Baianos moved to a community in Vargem Grande, Rio de Janeiro, in a garage where they lived, played and composed music, and played soccer. This was the reason for the name of their third album, Novos Baianos F.C., recorded on the label Continental in 1973. The group had a strong hippie image at this time.

The band released records until their break-up in 1978. In 1974, they recorded the first album without Moreira, who decided to start his own solo career. As Moreira had previously composed songs with Galvão and arranged songs with Gomes for the band's previous albums, it was a great loss to the band. The members tried to continue and incorporated Gato Félix to the group.

In 1976, Dadi left the group to start A Cor do Som. Novos Baianos substituted Didi, the brother of Pepeu Gomes, for the loss of Dadi. However, the group disbanded some years later due to members starting their solo careers. Despite the end of the band, Novos Baianos' members reunited many times to celebrate special events.

In 1997, the composer of the group, Luiz Galvão, published the book Anos 70: Novos e Baianos for Editora 34. In the book he tells the history of the group and its importance to Brazilian music. After Galvão released the book, the group reunited to record a new album, named Infinito Circular, recorded live at Metropolitan, Rio de Janeiro. In 2007, Moreira also published a book about the group. It was written as a cordel text and was named A História dos Novos Baianos e Outros Versos.

In 2009, the band reunited without Moreira to celebrate 40 years of Novos Baianos and their revolutionary role in Brazilian music.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Oliver Mtukudzi

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi (22 September 1952 – 23 January 2019) was a Zimbabwean musician, businessman, philanthropist, human rights activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Southern Africa Region. Tuku was considered to have been Zimbabwe's most renowned and internationally recognised cultural icon of all time.

Mtukudzi grew up in Highfield, a poor neighborhood in Salisbury (modern-day Harare) in Southern Rhodesia, as the eldest of seven siblings. While both his parents sang in a choir, they were initially not supportive of his continued interest in music, consequently breaking his first homemade guitar.

He began performing in 1977 when he joined the Wagon Wheels, a band that also featured Thomas Mapfumo and fellow legendary guitarist James Chimombe. They were given the rare opportunity by Paul Tangi Mhova Mkondo, an African nationalist and music promoter, who provided money and resources to the group. With the support of Mutanga, the prayers and blessings of Amai Mutanga, he allowed them to perform at Mutanga Restaurant & Night Club (Pungwe) which, at the time, was the first and only African licensed (obtained by Mkondo) night club available for blacks under Rhodesia's policy of segregation. Their single Dzandimomotera went gold and Tuku's first album followed, which was also a major success. Mtukudzi is also a contributor to Mahube, Southern Africa's "supergroup".

With his husky voice, Mtukudzi has become the most recognised voice to emerge from Zimbabwe and onto the international scene and he has earned a devoted following across Africa and beyond. A member of Zimbabwe's KoreKore group, with Nzou Samanyanga as his totem, he sings in the nation's dominant Shona language along with Ndebele and English. He also incorporates elements of different musical traditions, giving his music a distinctive style, known to fans as Tuku Music. Mtukudzi has had a number of tours around the world. He has been on several tours in the UK, US and Canada to perform for large audiences. In 2017 Mtukudzi entertained guests at the wedding of Zimbabwean businessman Wicknell Chivayo.

Mtukudzi is the father of five children and has two grandchildren. Two of his children are also musicians. His son Sam Mtukudzi, a successful musician in his own right, died in a car accident in March 2010 and in 2013, he released an album titled "Sarawoga", in tribute to his son.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Orchestra Baobab

Orchestra Baobab is a Senegalese band established in 1970 as the house band of the Baobab Club in Dakar. Many of the band's original members had previously played with Star Band de Dakar in the 1960s. Directed by timbalero and vocalist Balla Sidibe, the group features saxophonists Issa Cissoko and Thierno Koité, two singers, two guitarists and a rhythm section with drums, congas and bass guitar. Since their formation, the band has predominantly played a mix of son cubano, Wolof music, and to a lesser extent Mande musical traditions.

Orchestra Baobab became one of the dominant African bands of the 1970s, recording 20 albums before their breakup in 1987, which occurred as a result of the increase in popularity of mbalax, a more contemporary genre of Senegalese music. In the years following their disbandment, World Circuit released several of their albums on CD, making the band very popular among world music fans in the UK and the rest of Europe. This prompted their reformation in 2001, which was followed by the recording of a new album, Specialist in All Styles. The group continues to tour extensively and has released two more studio albums, Made in Dakar (2007) and Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng (2017).

Many of the original members were veterans of the famous Star Band, whose alumni later included the Étoile de Dakar, El Hadji Faye and Youssou N’Dour. Star Band were the resident band of the upscale Dakar Miami Club. When the Baobab Club opened in Dakar in 1970, six musicians, led by saxophonist Baro N'Diaye, were lured from Star Band and the Orchestra Baobab was born. The club, in turn, is named for the baobab tree (Adansonia).

The original frontmen of the band were the Casamance singers Balla Sidibe and Rudy Gomis, who came from the melting pot of Casamance musical styles, and most famously Laye M'Boup, who provided vocals in the Wolof griot style. His Wolof language lyrics and his soaring, nasal voice defined the sound of Baobab's early hits. Togolese guitarist and arranger Barthélémy Attisso was a law student in Dakar, and a self-taught musician, whose arpeggiated runs became instantly recognizable. With the saxophone of N'Diaye, this was the first core of the band. After touring Cameroon in 1971, N'Diaye was replaced by tenor saxophonist Issa Cissoko, who became leader of the band, and was joined by clarinettist Peter Udo. Both Cissoko and drummer Mountaga Koité were from Maninka griot families, from Mali and eastern Senegal, respectively. The group's lineup was rounded out by the slow groove Latin styles of Latfi Benjeloum (rhythm guitar), who came from a Moroccan family exiled to Saint-Louis, Senegal, and Charlie N'Diaye (bass) from Casamance.

The group's first recodings were released as Orchestre Saf Mounadem on a split album with Orchestre Laye Thiam, another band of ex-Star Band musicians. Attisso is credited as musical director, and singers Balla Sidibe and Medoune Diallo (who had stayed with the Star Band a bit longer than the others), along with Issa Cissoko are also credited on the cover. Like most of the recordings by Star Band, the album was produced by Ibrahim Kassé, and was later reissued in France under the title Star Band de Dakar Vol. 7.

Their first two albums under the name Orchestra Baobab, were recorded at the Baobab Club between 1970 and 1972, and self-produced by the band. Both bear the title Orchestre du Baobab.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Paul Simon

Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Simon's musical career has spanned seven decades with his fame and commercial success beginning as half of the duo Simon & Garfunkel (originally known as Tom & Jerry), formed in 1956 with Art Garfunkel. Simon was responsible for writing nearly all of the pair's songs including three that reached number one on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge over Troubled Water".

The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music, which sold 14 million copies worldwide on its release and remains his most popular solo work. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony (1980) and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman (1998) with the poet Derek Walcott. On June 3, 2016, Simon released his 13th solo album, Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Album Chart and the UK charts.

Simon has earned sixteen Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including three for Album of the Year (Bridge Over Troubled Water, Still Crazy After All These Years, and Graceland), and a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time. In 2011, Rolling Stone named Simon one of the 100 greatest guitarists. In 2015, he was named one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time by Rolling Stone. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music, where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Piero Umiliani

Piero Umiliani (17 July 1926 – 14 February 2001) was an Italian composer of film scores.

Umiliani was born in Florence, Tuscany. Like many of his Italian colleagues at that time, he composed the scores for many exploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s, covering genres such as Spaghetti Westerns, Eurospy, Giallo, and softcore sex films.

Biography

His composition "Mah Nà Mah Nà" (1968) was originally used in Sweden: Heaven and Hell, a 1968 Mondo documentary about Sweden. It was a minor charting single (spending 6 weeks on the Billboard chart and peaking at #55), popularized by The Muppets, who covered the song several times; starting on episode 0014 of Sesame Street on 27 November 1969, then The Ed Sullivan Show three days later, and again on the syndicated series The Muppet Show in 1977. The track was also a hit in the UK, reaching number 8 in the UK Singles Chart in May 1977.

Umiliani's other scores included Son of Django, Orgasmo, Gangster's Law, Death Knocks Twice, Five Dolls for an August Moon, Baba Yaga, The Slave and Sex Pot. His orchestra score "Arrivano I Marines" for War Italian Style, a 1966 comedy about two USMC soldiers in Italy, is used in the Armored Trooper Votoms series as "March of the Red Shoulders".

His composition "Crepuscolo Sul Mare" was later used in Ocean's Twelve.

Umiliani died in Rome in February 2001, at the age of 74

^{Source Wikipedia}

Piers Faccini

Piers Faccini was born in London, England to an Italian father and an English mother. His family moved to France when he was five years old. His brother is the writer Ben Faccini.

Faccini first appeared on the music scene in London in 1997, co-founding Charley Marlowe with performance poet Francesca Beard, percussionist Frank Byng and guitarist Luc Suarez; the band split in 2001 when Faccini decided to pursue a solo career. His first solo album Leave no Trace was released in 2004 by French Independent label Label Bleu. His second album was released by Los Angeles label Everloving Records in 2006; Tearing Sky was produced by JP Plunier, and featured Ben Harper, who Faccini would tour with between 2006 and 2008. His third album released by French Independent 'Tot ou Tard' in 2009 was co-produced by Faccini and Renaud Letang. His fourth album, My Wilderness, was released in late 2011 on Six Degrees Records. His fifth album, Between dogs and wolves 2013 and sixth album I Dreamed an Island 2016 were released on his own label Beating Drum.

Faccini has collaborated over the years with many musicians and singers including Rokia Traore, Busi Mhlongo, Ben Harper, Ballake Sissoko, Vincent Segal, Camille, Francesca Beard, Luc Suarez, Seb Martel, Patrick Watson, Dawn Landes and Ibrahim Maalouf amongst others. In March 2011, Faccini contributed to the Patagonia Music Collective, contributing to the UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation.

Faccini has also produced several albums for other artists, most notably Ela by Brazilian cellist and singer Dom La Nena, Northern Folk by Jenny Lysander and Terre de Mon Poeme by Yelli Yelli. Faccini is also a poet and children's author, publishing his first book of poetry ‘No one’s here’ in 2016 and a children's book/cd 'La Plus Belle des Berceuses' which he also illustrated in 2017, published by the French publisher, Actes Sud.

in 2009 his album Two Grains Of Sand was nominated for the French independent music award, Le Prix Constantin and voted album of the year by the listeners of French national radio, France Inter. His album with the cellist Vincent Segal 'Songs of Time Lost' was in NPR’s top ten world music albums of 2014 and in Songlines top 10 albums of 2014 as well as in their Greatest World Music Albums of the last 5 years.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Remmy Ongala

Ramazani "Remmy" Mtoro Ongala (1947 10 Feb – 13 December 2010) was a Tanzanian guitarist and singer. Ongala was born in Kindu near the Tanzanian border, in what was the Belgian Congo at the time, and now is the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A rising musician since the 1980s, Remmy Ongala was part of the soukous scene (also known as "Congolese rumba"). In 1978 he travelled to Dar es Salaam where he joined Orchestra Makassy. Later with his own band, Orchestre Super Matimila (named after the businessman who owned the band's instruments), he helped to transmit the soukous style to the Tanzanian musical subculture often called Ubongo, the Swahili word for brain. This in turn contributed to the development of Tanzanian hip-hop, particularly in the city of Dar es Salaam during the 1990s.

The use of his music as a social instrument led him to address concerns in his hometown that entailed social issues including poverty, AIDS/HIV, urbanization and family life. Known as the Sauti ya Mnyonge (voice of the poor man), his fight was strong.

Ubongo is usually perceived by artists and listeners alike as "conscious" music, a style that actively contributes socio-political commentary to the Tanzanian soundscape. Believing in the abolition of racism and social injustice, Ongala infused his lyrics with these messages. His inspiring and sometimes didactic message led him to be nicknamed "Dr Remmy".

Following the end of British colonial rule in 1961, Julius Nyerere preached the value of Ujamaa, or familyhood, as a basic constituent of Tanzanian nationalism, placing an emphasis on equality and justice. This became a recurring theme in many Tanzanian artists' music, including Remmy Ongala's.

His song "Kipenda Roho" was used in Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers.

Ongala died on 13 December 2010 at his home in Dar es Salaam. Posthumously, he received the Hall of Fame trophy at the 2012 Tanzania Music Awards.

Veteran musician Ramadhan Mtoro Ongara better known as Dr. Remmy Ongala has passed on. The singer well known for his hit single ‘Kifo’ died on Monday morning at Muhimbili hospital. According to reports Remmy Ongala died as his family rushed him to hospital. Ongala's music is meant to be appreciated on a physical and mental level. As he looked around his homeland of the Congo, he noticed much poverty and social inequality. Outraged by the despicable way the poor are treated, he used song as a way of fighting back, and after long days of tedious and physically strenuous labor, Ongala would perform his music with ad hoc bands in nightclubs and hotels in the Congo, (then Zaire), and later, Uganda. Songs like "Ndumila Kuwili" ("Don't Speak with Two Mouths") and "Mnyonge Hana Haki" ("The Poor Have No Rights") reflected his working-class outlook. Despite a flourishing Congolese music scene, Remmy was unable to strike a universal chord with listeners across Africa, as his idols Franco and Joseph Kabasele had done so effortlessly. It wasn't until he ventured to Tanzania at the age of thirty-one that Ongala began to get a musical career on track. An uncle living in the Tanzanian capital of Dar-es-Salaam invited Ongala to come play music with him in the band Orchestra Makassy. When Makassy went to Kenya, Ongala stayed behind and joined Orchestre Matimila, which he later renamed Super Matimila. Ongala's group gets big band textures from the horn section and from elaborate arrangements for three guitars. The sound swept the local Tanzanian music scene, which, because of the closing of the border in 1977, had become isolated and quite unlike anything else in Africa. By 1981, Ongala and Orchestra Super Matimila, and were playing up to five nights a week in various nightclubs in Dar-es-Salaam. Because of the dearth of quality recording studios in the financially-strapped nation, most bands would simply record and release their live performances, and Orchestra Super Matimila was no exception. Soon, their songs were being played on Radio Tanzania and various Kenyan radio stations, and they helped to develop quite a following for the band. His inspiring message led him to be nicknamed "Dr Remmy". Following the end of British colonial rule in 1961, Julius Nyerere introduced the value of Ujamaa, or family hood, which emphasized equality and justice. Such became a recurring theme in many Tanzanian artists' music, including Remmy Ongala. Dr. Remmy will be remembered for publicly urging people to use condoms. Although he faced opposition, he went ahead and recorded a song ‘Mambo kwa soksi’. Ongala continued to record and perform in Tanzania--despite his international fame--and his songs are still as concerned with social injustice as ever. One song, urging men to use condoms--"Mambo Kwa Socks/Things with Socks"--appeared on the acclaimed AIDS awareness compilation Spirit of Africa, in 2001. When this song was first released, it proved too much for Radio Tanzania, which refused to play it. But live shows and black market tapes ensured that few urban Tanzanians missed the message. In a musical career approaching two decades, Remmy Ongala and Orchestra Super Matimila still made social issues sound funky. In 1989 he released his first studio album titled ‘Songs for the poor man’ which had songs like ‘Sauti Ya Mnyonge, Kifo ,Usingizi ,Muziki Asili Yake Wapi ,Pamella ,Dole

^{Source Wikipedia}

Ry Cooder

Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, and record producer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries

Cooder's solo work draws upon many genres. He has played with John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, David Lindley, The Chieftains, The Doobie Brothers, and Carla Olson & the Textones (on record and film). He formed the band Little Village. He also produced the Buena Vista Social Club album (1997), which became a worldwide hit. Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name (1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

Cooder was ranked eighth on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" (David Fricke's Picks). A 2010 ranking by Gibson placed him at number 32.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi, born January 17, 1952) (Japanese pronunciation: [sakamoto ɾʲɯːitɕi]) is a Japanese composer, singer, songwriter, record producer, activist, and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.

Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.

As a film-score composer, Sakamoto has won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and 2 Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto has also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France for his contributions to music.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Soccer Mommy

Sophia Regina Allison (born May 27, 1997), better known by her stage name Soccer Mommy, is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Nashville, Tennessee.

History
Allison was born in Switzerland in the late 1990s and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. She attended Nashville School of the Arts, a specialty high school where she studied guitar and played in the swing band.

She first picked up a guitar at age six and started making music. She began posting home-recorded songs to Bandcamp as Soccer Mommy in 2015, during the summer when she was about to leave for college at New York University (where she studied music business at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development). While in college, Allison played her first show as Soccer Mommy, at the community art space Silent Barn in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and shortly after landed a record deal with Fat Possum. She dropped out of college after two years in 2017 to return to Nashville and pursue her music career.

Her first full-length album as Soccer Mommy, For Young Hearts, was released in 2016 on Orchid Tapes. Her second album, Collection, was released in 2017 on Fat Possum Records. Her debut album proper, titled Clean, was released on March 2, 2018.

She has toured with Stephen Malkmus, Mitski, Kacey Musgraves, Jay Som, Slowdive, Frankie Cosmos, Liz Phair, Phoebe Bridgers and others. She joined Paramore and Foster the People on the first half of their 2018 summer tour. Soccer Mommy opened for Vampire Weekend in the fall. She also opened for a few shows for Wilco in the fall of 2019. In February 2020, she played at one of Bernie Sanders's presidential rallies and endorsed his 2020 presidential campaign.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Sparklehorse

Sparklehorse was an American indie rock band, led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous. Sparklehorse was active from 1995 until Linkous' 2010 death by suicide.

Sparklehorse's first album, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995), was a modest college radio success. In 1996, while touring Europe with Radiohead shortly after the album's release, Mark Linkous consumed a combination of anti-depressants, valium, alcohol, and heroin in a London hotel room. Unconscious and with his legs pinned beneath him for almost fourteen hours, the resulting potassium build-up caused his heart to stop for several minutes after his body was lifted up. The ensuing surgery almost caused him to lose the use of both legs and as a result he needed to use a wheelchair for six months and he required dialysis for acute kidney failure.

Good Morning Spider (1998) was recorded following this incident. Critics have conjectured that Linkous's brush with death inspired the sombre tone of the album, though Linkous stated that much of the material on GMS had already been written. One song that did result from it is "St. Mary", which is dedicated to the nurses at the eponymous hospital in Paddington where Linkous recuperated.

In 1999 Sparklehorse performed at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto. 2001 saw the release of It's a Wonderful Life, featuring appearances by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Bob Rupe, Nina Persson and Dave Fridmann. Whereas much of Vivadixie... and Spider were recorded solely by Linkous on his Virginia farm, the new album was a more collaborative work. Linkous expressed his satisfaction with the overall sound of It's a Wonderful Life, which was engineered by Joel Hamilton, while also claiming that he would have preferred to include more experimental and instrumental material.

On September 25, 2006, Sparklehorse released their fourth album, Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, collaborating with Danger Mouse, Christian Fennesz, and Steven Drozd. This album featured the radio release "Don't Take My Sunshine Away" and a remastered version of "Shade And Honey", which Linkous originally wrote for Alessandro Nivola to sing in the 2003 movie Laurel Canyon, as well as a virtually unchanged re-release of "Morning Hollow," the bonus track from It's a Wonderful Life.

In 2008, Sparklehorse recorded a cover of the song "Jack's Obsession," from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for the official compilation album Nightmare Revisited. In 2009, Sparklehorse teamed up with Danger Mouse and David Lynch in the project Dark Night of the Soul.

In 2009, Linkous teamed up with electronic ambient-music artist Christian Fennesz to create In the Fishtank 15, a wafting album EP of experimentation and dreamy atmospherics. The last four live shows, Linkous did together with Fennesz during a European tour that was held during October 2009.

^{Source Wikipedia}

Taj Mahal

Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr. (born May 17, 1942), better known by his stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor, and film composer. He plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments, often incorporating elements of world music into his work. Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, India, Hawaii, and the South Pacific.

Career

Mahal moved to Santa Monica, California, in 1964 and formed Rising Sons with fellow blues rock musicians Ry Cooder and Jessie Lee Kincaid, landing a record deal with Columbia Records soon after. Jesse Ed Davis, a Kiowa native from Oklahoma, joined Taj Mahal and played guitar and piano on Mahal's first four albums. The group was one of the first interracial bands of the period, which may have hampered their commercial viability. However, Rising Sons bassist Gary Marker later recalled the band's members had come to a creative impasse and were unable to reconcile their musical and personal differences even with the guidance of veteran producer Terry Melcher. They recorded enough songs for a full-length album, but only released a single and the band soon broke up. Legacy Records did release The Rising Sons Featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder in 1992 with material from that period. During this time Mahal was also working with other musicians like Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Muddy Waters.

Mahal stayed with Columbia for his solo career, releasing the self-titled Taj Mahal and The Natch'l Blues in 1968. His track "Statesboro Blues" was featured on side 2 of the very successful Columbia/CBS sampler album, The Rock Machine Turns You On, giving a huge early impetus to his career. Giant Step/De Old Folks at Home with session musician Jesse Ed Davis followed in 1969. During this time he and Cooder worked with the Rolling Stones, with whom he has performed at various times throughout his career. In 1968, he performed in the film The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. He recorded a total of twelve albums for Columbia from the late 1960s into the 1970s. His work of the 1970s was especially important, in that his releases began incorporating West Indian and Caribbean music, jazz and reggae into the mix. In 1972, he acted in and wrote the film score for the movie Sounder, which starred Cicely Tyson. He reprised his role and returned as composer in the sequel, Part 2, Sounder.

In 1976 Mahal left Columbia and signed with Warner Bros. Records, recording three albums for them. One of these was another film score for 1977's Brothers; the album shares the same name. After his time with Warner Bros., he struggled to find another record contract, this being the era of heavy metal and disco music.

Stalled in his career, he decided to move to Kauai, Hawaii in 1981 and soon formed the Hula Blues Band. Originally just a group of guys getting together for fishing and a good time, the band soon began performing regularly and touring. He maintained a low public profile in Hawaii throughout most of the 1980s before recording Taj in 1988 for Gramavision. This started a comeback of sorts for him, recording both for Gramavision and Hannibal Records during this time.

In the 1990s Mahal became deeply involved in supporting the nonprofit Music Maker Relief Foundation. As of 2019, he was still on the Foundation's advisory board.

In the 1990s he was on the Private Music label, releasing albums full of blues, pop, R&B and rock. He did collaborative works both with Eric Clapton and Etta James.

In 1995 he recorded a record fusing traditional American blues with Indian stringed instruments, Mumtaz Mahal, accompanied by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on Mohan veena and N. Ravikiran on chitravina, a fretless lute.

In 1998, in collaboration with renowned songwriter David Forman, producer Rick Chertoff and musicians Cyndi Lauper, Willie Nile, Joan Osborne, Rob Hyman, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of the Band, and the Chieftains, he performed on the Americana album Largo based on the music of Antonín Dvořák.

In 1997 he won Best Contemporary Blues Album for Señor Blues at the Grammy Awards, followed by another Grammy for Shoutin' in Key in 2000. He performed the theme song to the children's television show Peep and the Big Wide World, which began broadcast in 2004.

In 2002, Mahal appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album Red Hot and Riot in tribute to Nigerian afrobeat musician Fela Kuti. The Paul Heck produced album was widely acclaimed, and all proceeds from the record were donated to AIDS charities.

Taj Mahal contributed to Olmecha Supreme's 2006 album 'hedfoneresonance'. The Wellington-based group led by Mahal's son Imon Starr (Ahmen Mahal) also featured Deva Mahal on vocals.

Mahal partnered up with Keb' Mo' to release a joint album TajMo on May 5, 2017. The album has some guest appearances by Bonnie Raitt, Joe Walsh, Sheila E., and Lizz Wright, and has six original compositions and five covers, from artists and bands like John Mayer and The Who.

In 2013, Mahal appeared in the documentary film on Byrds founding member Gene Clark, 'The Byrd Who Flew Alone', produced by Four Suns Productions. Clark and Mahal had been friends for many years.

In June 2017, Mahal appeared in the award-winning documentary film The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon, recording Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere" on the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. Mahal appeared throughout the accompanying documentary series American Epic, commenting on the 1920s rural recording artists who had a profound influence on American music and on him personally.

^{Source Wikipedia}

The Heliocentrics

The Heliocentrics are an English, London-based musical collective that combines funk, jazz, psych, and library influences. The group is based around drummer and producer Malcolm Catto, bassist Jake Ferguson, guitarist Adrian Owusu, and multi-instrumentalist Jack Yglesias.

HISTORY

The Heliocentrics released their debut album Out There in 2007 on Now-Again Records. This was followed by collaborations with Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke on the album Inspiration Information (2009), which was awarded that year's Gilles Peterson Worldwide Winner Album of the Year award, Lloyd Miller & The Heliocentrics (OST) (2010), and Orlando Julius.

The Heliocentrics appeared on the track "Skullfuckery" on the UK release of the DJ Shadow album The Outsider, which was released in 2006.

In 2013, they released their second full album, 13 Degrees of Reality also on Stones Throw. The 2009 album with Astatke was included in a list of 'Five Essential Jazz Albums' chosen by pianist Jamie Cullum in 2013.

In 2017, they released A World of Masks with vocals by Barbora Patkova,[12] as well as The Sunshine Makers OST, the score they wrote for the 2015 British documentary The Sunshine Makers, directed by Cosmo Feilding-Mellen. Both records were released on Soundway Records.

^{Source Wikipedia}

The Touré-Raichel Collective

The formation and success of The Touré-Raichel Collective, the band led by Israeli keyboardist and songwriter Idan Raichel and Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré—icons in their own countries and abroad—is a reminder of the unique power of music to bridge geographic, ethnic, political and religious differences.

Although a collaboration between an Israeli Jew and a Malian Muslim has unavoidable political implications, what inspired Touré and Raichel to work together was not the potential to make a statement; they simply connected as artists and friends seeking to find musical common ground.

 They met for the first time by chance, in 2008 at the Berlin airport, where they expressed mutual admiration and a desire to get together and play. Touré’s father, the late great Ali Farka Touré, was one of Raichel’s musical heroes and inspirations. Raichel invited Touré to Israel, where they assembled a few musicians and convened an unscripted, improvised jam session. The chemistry between Touré and Raichel was instant and profound. They assumed the name The Touré-Raichel Collective and used the material from that first gathering as the basis for their first album, The Tel Aviv Session, which found poignant, musically beautiful common ground between the artists’ cultures.

^{Source cumbancha.com}