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KRISTOFFERSON

Kris Kristofferson, who died Saturday at age 88 in Maui, Hawaii, had not one but two successful careers: the first as a country-music songwriter and the second as a movie actor.
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FUNMI ONONAIYE: OMNIPRESENT

Funmi Ononaiye, the regal, omnipresent music connoisseur, who was an inspiring ray of light in his capacities as A&R director, event producer, artist manager, performing musician, and mentor to many people, died on December 18, 2023, at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City.
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A DANGLING CONVERSATION

It began with Larry telling me he had been watching a music documentary series on Sky Arts about how so many black musicians and writers were paid only a pittance for their catlogues, because of signing contracts that they didn´t realise were offering royalties that were less than one per cent of what recording companies were offering to white musicans.
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TWO TOGETHER: Welch & Rawlings

And our taste is almost more than what you like. It’s what you dislike that is really important in a collaborator.
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WHEN WAS NOW AND THEN?

photo book She is just such an artist. I grew up in the same generation as Linda Ronstadt did and I love her rock and roll and country-rock songs and in an early middle age I loved her harmonies with Emmylou and Dolly Parton on the Trio releases. Then there were a couple of soul classic singles with Aaron Neville before she moved into Spanish language recordings, stage musicals and Opera.
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LIVE FOLK LORE MUSIC at Spanish Artisan Fair

have mentioned before on these pages that I find it remarkable that Lanzarote, its people and its government and its churches and its social services try, and succeed in doing so, to create a powerful unity of politics and religion and the arts and the artisans into almost every public event. I am sure that is what puts the smiles on the faces of those partaking and those in the audience.
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Meet AMY ALLEN: Singer-Songwriter Starlet

Allen approaches songwriting—and co-writing—holistically. She prefers to come up with the melody, lyrics and chords all at the same time, rather than try writing to somebody else’s track. “It feels like the emotion has been taken out of it,” she admits. “For me, in some way, I know people that are great at doing that, and they can write great, great songs that way, but my entry point to writing a song is finding the emotion in it from the very beginning. I have to story-tell from the early seed and then build everything around it.” Allen cites someone like John Prine as a guiding songwriting force, given how his stories are so concise and “each line needs to be there for the next one to make sense.” “And if one line was taken out, the story wouldn’t be conveyed,” she continues. “That’s how important each one is. Each part of it is so important to me that I like to be on the ground floor of it.”
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EMMET COHEN: VIBE PROVIDER

Funmi Anonsaiye was the Vive Provider, but he taught us all that we have that inside of us.
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MAGNA CARTA: a musical body of work

Sometime in April 1969 the English folk rock band Magna Carta was founded in London. Founder and band leader Chris Simpson is still performing fifty years later and is the only original band member.