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Ali Akbar Khan

April 14, 2024

Ali Akbar Khan (14 April 1922 – 18 June 2009) was an Indian Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, he also composed numerous classical ragasand film scores. He established a music school in Calcutta in 1956, and the Ali Akbar College of Music in 1967, which moved with him to the United States and is now based in San Rafael, California, with a branch in Basel, Switzerland.

Khan was instrumental in popularizing Indian classical music in the West, both as a performer and as a teacher. He first came to America in 1955 on the invitation of violinist Yehudi Menuhinand later settled in California. He was a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Khan was accorded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1989.[4]Nominated five times for the Grammy Award, Khan was also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Heritage Fellowship.

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World Music Wardruna

April 14, 2024

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Daily Roots Valerie Stuart

April 14, 2024

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Cosmos NGC 253

April 13, 2024

The Sculptor Galaxy (also known as the Silver Coin Galaxy, Silver Dollar Galaxy, NGC 253, or Caldwell 65) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. The Sculptor Galaxy is a starburst galaxy, which means that it is currently undergoing a period of intense star formation.

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Al Green

April 13, 2024

Albert Leornes Greene (born April 13, 1946), known professionally as Al Green, is an American singer, songwriter, pastor and record producer best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including “Take Me to the River“, “Tired of Being Alone“, “I’m Still in Love with You“, “Love and Happiness“, and his signature song, “Let’s Stay Together“. After his girlfriend died by suicide, Green became an ordained pastor and turned to gospel music. He later returned to secular music.

Green was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. He was referred to on the museum’s site as being “one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music”. He has also been referred to as “The Last of the Great Soul Singers”. Green is the winner of 11 Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received the BMI Icon award and is a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. He was included in the Rolling Stone list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, ranking at No. 65, as well as its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time, at No. 10.

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Lowell George

April 13, 2024

Lowell Thomas George (April 13, 1945 – June 29, 1979) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer, who was the primary guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and founder/leader for the rock band Little Feat.

Lowell George was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Willard H. George, a furrier who raised chinchillas and supplied furs to the movie studios.

George led an overindulgent lifestyle of binge eating, alcoholism and speedballs (heroin and cocaine mixed together), and he became morbidly obese in the last years of his life, weighing 308 pounds (140 kg/22 stone). On June 15, 1979, George began a tour in support of his solo album, Thanks I’ll Eat it Here. On June 29, the morning after an appearance at Washington, D.C.’s Lisner Auditorium, where the bulk of Waiting for Columbus had been recorded in 1977, George collapsed and died of a heart attack in his Arlington, Virginia, hotel room at the Twin Bridges Marriott.

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Jack Cassidy

April 13, 2024

John William Casady (born April 13, 1944) is an American bass guitarist, best known as a member of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. Jefferson Airplane became the first successful exponent of the San Francisco Sound. Singles including “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” charted in 1967 and 1968. Casady, along with the other members of Jefferson Airplane, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Casady was born in Washington D.C., the son of Mary Virginia (née Quimby) and William Robert Casady. His father was of half Irish Protestant and half Polish Jewish ancestry. His mother was a relative of aviator Harriet Quimby; some of her family had been in North America since the 1600s.

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Bud Freeman

April 13, 2024

LawrenceBudFreeman (April 13, 1906 – March 15, 1991) was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing tenor saxophone, but also the clarinet.

In 1922, Freeman and some friends from high school formed the Austin High School Gang.Freeman played the C melody saxophone with band members such as Jimmy McPartland and Frank Teschemacher. before switching to tenor saxophone two years later. The band was influenced by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Louis Armstrong. While Armstrong was in King Oliver‘s Creole Jazz Band, Freeman attended performances at Lincoln Gardens with McPartland. They were nicknamed “Alligators”.

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World Music Kathryn Tickell

April 13, 2024

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Daily Roots Leroy Brown

April 13, 2024

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Temple Israel Erev Shabbat Service

April 12, 2024

Friday April 12th 2024. 6:00 p.m. Erev Shabbat Service Celebrating the Rappaport Family, Recipients of the Gainsley Award, and Temple Israel’s Gold LEED Certification. Music with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Jeff Bailey, Pete Whitman and mick laBriola.

 

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Cosmos Gum 41

April 12, 2024

Located in the picturesque southern constellation of Centaurus, the Gum 41 nebula takes up most of this image brought to you by the VLT Survey Telescope, hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Let’s take a closer look at this intricate structure.

Set against a colorful backdrop of stars, Gum 41 is a pleasantly symmetric example of a Strömgren sphere: a shell of hydrogen gas atoms glowing in rosy hues due to the radiation of the dazzling central star. While this star, called HD 100099, may appear to be one very bright object, it is actually thought to be two young, massive stars orbiting in such a tight embrace that they cannot be separated at the scale of this image.

This romantic region is home to many pairs like this, including the luminous object on the lower right outskirts of the nebula, HD 99944. Sadly, the love story in these stellar couples will have a tragic ending: unlike our Sun, these hot and massive stars tend to have short lifetimes of only a few million years, and eventually there will be no young stars left to make the nebula glow. One day, Gum 41 will fade into transparency and be lost to future astronomers forever.

Gum 41 is also a member of a much larger region, affectionately called the Running Chicken Nebula. Whether Gum 41 forms the foot or the head of the chicken is surprisingly controversial.

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Herbie Hancock

April 12, 2024

Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd‘s group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. In the 1970s, Hancock experimented with jazz fusion, funk, and electrostyles, using a wide array of synthesizers and electronics. It was during this period that he released perhaps his best-known and most influential album, Head Hunters.

Hancock’s best-known compositions include “Cantaloupe Island“, “Watermelon Man“, “Maiden Voyage“, and “Chameleon“, all of which are jazz standards. During the 1980s, he enjoyed a hit single with the electronic instrumental “Rockit“, a collaboration with bassist/producer Bill Laswell. Hancock has won an Academy Award and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for his 2007 Joni Mitchell tribute album River: The Joni Letters.

Since 2012, Hancock has served as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he teaches at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is also the chairman of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz  (known as the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz until 2019).

Hancock was born in Chicago, the son of Winnie Belle (née Griffin), a secretary, and Wayman Edward Hancock, a government meat inspector. His parents named him after the singer and actor Herb Jeffries.He attended Hyde Park High School. Like many jazz pianists, Hancock started with a classical education. He started playing piano when he was seven years old, and his talent was recognized early. Considered a child prodigy, he played the first movement of Mozart‘s Piano Concerto No. 26 in D Major, K. 537 (Coronation) at a young people’s concert on February 5, 1952, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (led by CSO assistant conductor George Schick) at age 11.

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Shakey Jake Harris

April 12, 2024

James D. “Shakey Jake” Harris (April 12, 1921 – March 2, 1990) was an American Chicago blues singer, harmonicist and songwriter. He released five albums over a period of almost 25 years. He was often musically associated with his nephew Magic Sam.

James D. Harris was born in Earle, Arkansas, and relocated with his family to Chicago, Illinois, at the age of seven. He played in several Chicago blues ensembles in the late 1940s. He also worked as a mechanic and as a professional gambler (his nickname came from a dice players’ expression, “shake ’em”). His debut recording was the single “Call Me if You Need Me”, backed with “Roll Your Moneymaker”, released by Artistic Records in 1958, featuring Magic Sam and Syl Johnson on guitar and produced by Willie Dixon. Harris was not paid for the session, but he won $700 shooting craps with label owner Eli Toscano.

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April 12, 2024

Theodore RooseveltHound DogTaylor (April 12, 1915 – December 17, 1975) was an American Chicago blues guitarist and singer.

Taylor was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1915, though some sources say 1917. He first played the piano and began playing the guitar when he was 20. He moved to Chicago in 1942.

Taylor had a condition known as polydactylism, which resulted in him having six fingers on both hands. As is usual with the condition, the extra digits were rudimentary nubbins and could not be moved. One night, while drunk, he cut off the extra digit on his right hand using a straight razor.

He became a full-time musician around 1957, but remained unknown outside the Chicago area, where he played small clubs in black neighborhoods and at the open-air Maxwell Street Market. He was known for his electrified slide guitar playing (roughly styled after that of Elmore James), his cheap Japanese Teiscoguitars, and his raucous boogie beats. In 1967, Taylor toured Europe with the American Folk Blues Festival, performing with Little Walter and Koko Taylor. Taylor died of lung cancer in 1975. He was buried at Restvale Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois.

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Flamenco Fridays Demarco Flamenco

April 12, 2024

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Daily Roots Johnny Osbourne

April 12, 2024

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Cosmos Eclipse Passage

April 11, 2024

Start at the upper left above and you can follow the progress of April 8’s total eclipse of the Sun in seven sharp, separate exposures. The image sequence was recorded with a telescope and camera located within the narrow path of totality as the Moon’s shadow swept across Newport, Vermont, USA. At center is a spectacular view of the solar corona. The tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun is only easily visible to the eye in clear dark skies during the total eclipse phase. Seen from Newport, the total phase for this solar eclipse lasted about 3 minutes and 26 seconds.

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Will Wampach

April 11, 2024

William Wampach (April 11 1951) Born St Cloud, MN. Mostly know as a Electric Guitarist also a songwriter, painter, sculptor and artist. Growing up in Brooklyn Center, Mn. Will worked with bands like Blackbone, Angry Souls, The Mystic Evolution, CCLC. Later Will delved into Calypso and Reggae with Lloyd Cordner in Macumba, later working with Peter Nelson in Shangoya touring Trinidad. Will then became Lead guitarist in the Maroons a Minneapolis based premier Rock Steady/Reggae group blending R&B, Rock and Human Rights issues.

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Neville Staple

April 11, 2024

Neville Eugenton Staple (born 11 April 1955), sometimes credited as Neville Staples, is a Jamaican-born English singer, known for his work with the 2 Tone ska band the Specials, the pop group Fun Boy Three, as well as with his own group, the Neville Staple Band. He also performed with Ranking Roger in the supergroup Special Beat.

Staple was born in Manchester, Jamaica. He left Jamaica to live in the English town of Rugby, Warwickshire at the age of five but later moved to Coventry. Neville was a regular fixture at the Locarno Ballroom in Coventry, where he met the resident DJ there, Pete Waterman. Waterman briefly managed the Specials and would later write the foreword to Staple’s 2009 biography, Original Rude Boy.

Staple’s early vocal style was mostly “toasting“—or chanting over a rhythm—a forerunner of rappingbrought to Britain in the 1960s by musicians from Jamaica. Staple honed his toasting skills in the sound system scene in Coventry during the 1970s, first on his cousin’s “Messenger Sound” and later his own system called “Jah Baddis”.

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