![]() ![]() Washington High School–the same arts high school that Erykah Badu and Roy Hargrove attended. Under her mother’s watch, she took up piano and voice and won several national awards while at Booker T. The 22-year-old Dallas native has exotic good looks, thanks in part to her absentee father, Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar. Jones has in her favor that down-home charm everyone suddenly finds so charming, plus a winning back story of her own. Jones’s label, the mainstream jazz institution Blue Note, undoubtedly hopes to win over some of “natural” R & B’s relatively upscale constituency–not to mention the demographic that sent the O Brother, Where Art Thou? sound track up the charts. In the Top 40, the trend is manifest in a buffet of aural comfort food, most prominently Alicia Keys and India.Arie, both of whom write palatable, melodic songs and act a good bit more girl-next-door than, say, Gwen Stefani. Outside the mainstream it’s coming from downtempo stylists like Tosca and Thievery Corporation, rock acts like Her Space Holiday and Tristeza, and ambient techno groups like Boards of Canada. These days all sectors of an increasingly fragmented music community are busy investigating the possibilities of texture. Drum ‘n’ bass has retreated from the wild sounds of the Breakbeat Era into the chilly, laid-back styles of Reid Speed and DB. ![]() ![]() Most of the anger expressed in hip-hop and rap metal these days seems to be theatrical the hard beats that propelled hip-hop into the mainstream have been replaced by exotic rhythms (“Get Ur Freak On”) or virtuosic turntabling. That’s all well and good, but it’s also firmly middle-of-the-road, and when, you might wonder, did that become the new edge?īlame it on extremity, which in some genres has been working on a bad name for a while now and in others has simply fallen out of vogue. It’s not loud, chaotic, or even particularly passionate–it’s just 14 intimately rendered songs about love and loss with a focus on musicianship. Yet the recording is as noteworthy for what it isn’t as for what it is. The song, “Don’t Know Why,” leads off one of the more talked-about releases of the season: Rolling Stone picked Jones as one of ten artists to watch this year, and the New York Times Magazine expended 1,000 words comparing her to the likes of Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughan. That’s a damned good hook: the music put visions of back porches, dusty roads, and big, big sunsets in my mind while the lyrics built a lament that tugged at my heartstrings, and the CD wasn’t half a minute along. Sommelier Series (paid sponsored content).Best of Chicago 2021 ballot: Bonus round of nominations. ![]()
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