Archived Magazine 2013 December

DECEMBER 2013 ISSUE

A sneaky peak of just some of what is in the December 2013 issue!

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Mary J. Blige

 

Back in March this year, when the first bluebells were still dancing in the breeze and birds had barely begun to add a seductive tone to the dawn chorus, Mary J. Blige was happily turning her thoughts to… Christmas.

The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul had been contemplating making a Christmas album for years, having enjoyed recording occasional one-offs along the way [including successful team-ups with Rod Stewart and Andrea Bocelli, as well as a nice cover of Stevie Wonder’s Someday At Christmas. Somehow, though, she’d never found time in that always busy recording, touring and family schedule to make it happen how she’d dreamed. Then up pops producer David Foster, who calls her at exactly the right blank-diary moment and, whaddyaknow? She’s in a studio in New York, playing all her own favourite Christmas songs to herself, to put her in the right mood to do the job…

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Dianne Reeves

 

Jazz in the soul section? You betcha. Dianne Reeves’ latest album, Beautiful Life, her first proper [after her soundtrack to the 2005 Clooney movie Goodnight And Good Luck for Concord Records, positions itself elegantly on the cusp of both genres, the long-serving singer and songwriter allowing her penchant for soul [and soulful] source material to blend with her dextrous jazz delivery to produce one of the best albums of the year.

And, whatever you heard, it’s not just a covers project: five of the album’s dozen songs were either written or co-written by Ms Reeves, including the quite superb ballad Cold, surely destined to become one of her signature tunes for years to come. Meanwhile an impressive line-up of guests brings a bucketful of juice to proceedings – producer Terri Lyne Carrington lining up such as Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, George Duke, Gregory Porter, Gerald Clayton, Lalah Hathaway and Richard Bona, in various capacities.

“When I was sketching out what I wanted to do on this new album I found that quite a few of the young jazz musicians out there were referencing a lot of the soul music I grew up listening to… ”

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Chronixx

 

It’s been a great year for young Jamaican talent and Chronixx in particular. The island’s latest roots sensation has completed successful tours of Europe, America and the Caribbean, whilst Smile Jamaica was perched at No. 1 on 1Xtra’s reggae charts for weeks. He’s also been praised by no less an authority than Chris Blackwell, who sent Billboard an email praising his music as “completely fresh, uplifting and very pure.” Blackwell added that it was fantastic how someone so young was able “to communicate his message in the way he does and entertain at the same time.”

It was a performance at Usain Bolt’s Tracks And Records nightclub/restaurant in Kingston that changed his fortunes in Jamaica, backed by his own Zinc Fence Redemption band and a catalogue of songs that has helped restore faith in the entire genre. He’s since performed on all of the major stage shows in his homeland, including a prime slot at Reggae Sumfest, and his music enjoys regular exposure over the local airwaves…

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A Tribe Called Red

 

It might not have caught the attention of the British press but Canada’s first nations communities are in the middle of a resurgence. The protest movement Idle No More has helped spark the country’s first nations peoples into fighting for their individual rights and the rights to their environment. Debate around Canada’s history is being looked at through a fresh lens.

One of the musical representatives of this new wave of consciousness is A Tribe Called Red, a trio meshing traditional first nations pow-wow music with digital beats. Founded in Ottowa, the trio of Ian ‘DJ NDN’ Campeau, Dan ‘DJ Shub’ General and Bear Witness have called their music ‘electric pow-wow’, or ‘pow-wow-step’, a slightly unfortunate [if accurate] description for Nation II Nation, their second album, where samples from traditional pow-wow groups get spliced and slotted into electronic set-ups.

It’s a surprisingly organic mesh that adds up to more than the sum of its parts, not least because of the context in which it was made. The history of first nations people in North America is politically loaded – A Tribe Called Red can’t help that filtering into the music…

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