Women's History Month and the fight for Ukraine

 

I discovered Jinjer long before it became apparent that Ukraine might be facing a fight for survival. They quickly became one of my favorite groups of all time.  They are wildly creative, rule-breaking musicians.  They blend rock, jazz, metal and classical elements, into something that defies any concept of genre.  Last but certainly not least, they are led by the beautiful, incomparable Tatiana Shmailyuk.

 

Here is the most recent music video they released, and it’s a bit eerie how prescient it feels now:  

“Vortex”   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiaOSGZTwtY

 

If you want to see more,  I posted about them a few months ago:

https://zapatosjam.blogspot.com/2021/08/favorite-new-artists-my-turn-jinjer.html

International Women’s Week (7): More sad news, in a month filled with sadness

 

 

If you have been following this blog, you know that I consider Patricia Janečková one of the great emerging talents of classical singing.  She has the purity of tone of a young singer (she is only 23, which is training-wheels age for opera singers) and the expressive range of someone much more mature.  Many fans consider her one of opera’s brightest hopes in an era of declining support for the art form.

 

Janečková just announced her diagnosis with breast cancer, and has cancelled her performances for 2022.  The prognosis for young women diagnosed with breast cancer is significantly worse than for older women.  We do not know any details about her case, and can only hope and pray that she survives and recovers.

 

Here is something she recorded in late 2021.  This is my favorite of the “big three” Ave Marias (Gounod/Bach, Vavilov and Schubert).  Janečková and Vilém Veverka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil%C3%A9m_Veverka; oboe) turn in a magical, haunting performance. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQsVxuRR2EU

International Women’s Week (6): In a world of Taylor Swifts, dare to be a Lzzy Hale!

 

 

Suzi Quatro.  Joan Jett.  Chrissie Hynde.  Patti Smith.  The Wilson Sisters.  Tina Turner.  Pat Benatar.  Tina Weymouth.  Women in rock had a moment in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  And then, at least in the U.S., the moment ended. Most American female rockers today are in cover bands, like Zeparella, who just do Led Zeppelin covers.  But out of a small town in Pennsylvania come Halestorm, founded and led by Lzzy Hale, who writes original material, sings, plays multiple instruments and generally kicks a**.

 

“I Miss the Misery”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpJAmlnBxoA

 

“Love Bites (So do I)”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awz0Qf7uPSw

 

 

International Women's Week (5): Now, THIS is courage!

 

Consider our culture of narcissism, in which music has to be all about emotional confession, and picking at the scabs of one’s teenage traumas is considered courageous.  Now imagine a group of teenaged girls in a conservative Muslim village in Indonesia, starting a rock group in the face of opposition from their parents and death threats from the conservative cultural police.  That, to me, is actual courage. That is Voice of Baceprot. 

 

They started off as junior high-schoolers, performing covers of well-known western rock bands, and meanwhile worked at writing their own music.  They are now releasing their original music, have gone viral on youtube, and are starting to tour internationally. 

 

They consider themselves faithful Muslims, and wear hijab on stage (with some enhancements, hence “the costumes”).  They still get opposition and threats from various people angry that girls are playing rowdy music and speaking their mind, but they are not backing down.  Even the name of the band is defiant: “Baceprot” means “noisy” or “loud”.

 

Personnel:

 

Firdda Marsya Kurnia (vocals and guitar)

Widi Rahmawati (bass, vocals)

Euis Siti Aisyah (drums)

 

They are largely self-taught.  Rahmawati in particular is emerging as a world-class bass player.

 

“God Allow me (Please) to Play Music” is about people who use religion as an excuse to persecute artists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPVo_QyS0Hw

 

“Not Public Property”  A song about self-ownership, which is still controversial even in the good ol’ USA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjmcZfOlopU

 

“School Revolution”, their original breakout song, is about having the right to have ones’ own thoughts, free of judgement from society:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aZX-C8HKJc

International Women's Day: The greatest classic rock band you’ve probably never heard of

Show-Ya were founded in 1981, locked in their lineup in 1982, and are still touring with that lineup today (for a few years in the 1990s, they had a different lead singer). They were inspired by bands like the Beatles, Stones, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, whose tours of Japan in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s triggered the birth of Japanese rock music.  The big door-openers for them, however, were the Runaways, an American all-female hard rock band that never made it big in the U.S. but were received with Beatlemania-like excitement in Japan.  Show-Ya’s early work was mostly covers of the aforementioned bands as well as others including KISS and AC/DC.  In the mid-1980’s they began releasing and performing their own material, and never looked back.

 

Lineup: 

Miki Nakamura (keyboards) 9/27/1961

Miki “Sun-Go” Igarashi (guitars) 11/21/1962

Keiko Terada (vocals) 7/27/1963

Satomi Senba (bass) 8/28/1963

Miki Tsunoda (drums) 12/7/1963

 

Terada has one of the best rock voices I’ve ever heard, a sort of husky version of Pat Benatar, with hints of Tina Turner.  Sun-Go is a true guitar hero who can play heart-wrenching blues and yet go toe-to-toe with the great shredders of the 80’s and 90’s.  The fact that Show-Ya were not bigger in the U.S. is an indictment of the U.S. music establishment, which repeatedly turned down opportunities to promote them here.  Instead, we got BTO, Foreigner, Bob Seger and Kansas.  Shame on us.

 

The following are roughly chronological:

 

“Still be Hanging On” (live in L.A., 1988, their first US appearance). This was written by Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick but never released.  He gave it to Show-Ya and they made it their own:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyNI9TSZv8c

 

私は嵐 “Watashi Wa Arashi” (“I Am the Storm”) 2005 live concert. This was the biggest hit from their 1989 album Outerlimits.  You'll hear a strong Deep Purple vibe.  It was a daring song for the times—she is essentially daring a man to have the courage to get romantic with her.  As you watch these women rock, keep in mind that they are all in their mid-40s: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ_5Gv3vFjQ

“Cry for Freedom” (2008) They have been sponsoring an annual rock festival (NAONのYAON) just for female rock musicians, and mentored many of the bands that are emerging now. This is from their headlining appearance at the 2008 edition.  Classic rock ballad, with an exquisite solo by Sun-Go:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS-SdwC-bHE

 

“One Way Heart” (mid 2010’s) Straight-up rocker; Sun-Go tears it up on lead:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KCATewd2zM

 

“Look At Me” (from their live appearance at NAONのYAON 2021) The live audience was cancelled at the last minute because of COVID, so it was live-streamed instead.  They still pull out all the stops:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUzOGHtUC0M

Look out, Metallica! When the cover is better than the original

 

 

Just in case you don’t know who they are, Metallica are one of the biggest bands of all time; they are also one of the bands that defined Heavy Metal. Founded in 1982, they are still going strong, and their secret is simple: while most other metal bands were engaged in an arms race to be the loudest, darkest and most abrasive, Metallica stayed melodic and accessible.  They have also inspired a lot of covers.  Here are two of the best.

 

The Hu:  “Sad but True”

Metal is normally defined by the emphasis on electric instrumentation.  But it is more than that, it is an attitude, and no one has more attitude than The Hu.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxA_ZxGX_M

Alessia Cara and The Warning:  “Enter Sandman”

Metallica invited a number of artists from various genres of music to contribute to the Blacklist Album: an album of covers of Metallica’s biggest songs.  This is perhaps the best one on the album, though it is so different from the original that it’s not clear it should even be called a cover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tKQgesCcTc

 

 

Great Voices (10): Diana splits the world open

 

 

My previous posts on Diana Ankudinova featured some of her performances when she was 14 and 15.  If you haven’t seen them, it’s worth checking them out.  You’ll see the emergence of a unique talent:

 

https://zapatosjam.blogspot.com/2021/12/great-voices-9-shaman-diana-ankudinova.html

 

https://zapatosjam.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-mysterious-case-of-diana-ankudinova.html

 

 

This post contains only one clip.  It features Diana, now 18, performing “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, originally made famous by Elvis Presley, for an audience of professional singers.  This is one of those covers that is so different that it’s not really a cover.  The performance itself is less than three minutes long, but I have a lot to say about it.  Of course, if you prefer, feel free to skip to the link.

 

Arrangement: Diana transposed this into a minor key, and stripped out most of the lyrics, turning an innocent love song into something much darker.  A simple but ominous piano intro sets the tone.  The song goes through four distinct stages, each turning up the emotional intensity.  She keeps repeating one line, giving it an obsessive quality.

 

Vocal:  Diana starts in the high baritone register, with the hollow resonance that is her signature sound.  Then she jumps an octave, up into her head voice.  She pushes a lot of extra air without increasing the volume, giving this passage a rushing sound, like wind in the trees.  Then she swoops up into her soprano register, and turns up the intensity.  Even this high, her tone retains the thickness of her lower range, which is extremely unusual.  Finally, she drops back into a full belt in the tenor register, and pours on the power.  Her ending high note made me wonder if the world was splitting open.

 

Staging: They start with Diana alone in a spotlight on a dark stage, and then build an abstract light show around her, finally framing her in something that looks like a closeup of the sun.  The use of the fan adds a touch of madness to her intense expression.  It is a simple, minimalist approach to staging in a world of chronic overproduction, and it is all designed to make the most of her natural stagecraft.

 

Ok, all of this is just by way of trying to convey a sense of how this performance came about.  There is, of course, nothing like seeing it:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w06R8iI0dg0