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Winston Rodney OD (born 1 March 1945), better known by the stage name Burning Spear, is a Jamaican roots reggaesinger-songwriter, vocalist, and musician. Burning Spear is a Rastafarian and one of the most influential and long-standing roots artists to emerge from the 1970s.
more...Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023 Harlem) was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte’s career breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
Belafonte was best known for his recordings of “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)“, “Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)“, “Jamaica Farewell“, and “Mary’s Boy Child“. He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He also starred in films such as Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), Buck and the Preacher (1972), and Uptown Saturday Night (1974). He made his final feature film appearance in Spike Lee‘s BlacKkKlansman (2018).
Belafonte considered the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson to be a mentor. Belafonte was also a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and acted as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justiceissues. He was also a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations.
Belafonte won three Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award,[4] and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the academy’s 6th Annual Governors Awards and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category. He is one of the few performers to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT), although he won the Oscar in a non-competitive category.
more...Ralph Towner (born March 1, 1940 Chehalis, WA) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion, trumpet and French horn.
more...Friday February 28th 2025 6pm JEWL Family Shabbat featuring 4th & 5th graders. Music with Inbal Sharett-Singer, Jayson Rodovsky, Pat Okeefe and mick laBriola.
more...The Rosette Nebula (also known as Caldwell 49) is an H II region located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The open cluster NGC 2244(Caldwell 50) is closely associated with the nebulosity, the stars of the cluster having been formed from the nebula’s matter.
The nebula has been noted to be having a shape reminiscent of a human skull, and is sometimes referred to as the “Skull Nebula”. It is not to be confused with NGC 246, which is also nicknamed the “Skull Nebula” 5200 ly.
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Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones (28 February 1942 – 3 July 1969) was an English musician and founder of the Rolling Stones. Initially a slide guitarist, he went on to sing backing vocals and played a wide variety of instruments on Rolling Stones recordings and in concerts.
After he founded the Rolling Stones as a British blues outfit in 1962 and gave the band its name, Jones’s fellow band members Keith Richards and Mick Jagger began to take over the band’s musical direction, especially after they became a successful songwriting team.
When Jones developed alcohol and drug problems, his performance in the studio became increasingly unreliable, leading to a diminished role within the band he had founded. In June 1969, the Rolling Stones dismissed Jones; guitarist Mick Taylor took his place in the group. Less than a month later, Jones died by drowning at the age of 27 in the swimming pool at his home at Cotchford Farm, East Sussex. His death was referenced in songs by many other pop bands, and Pete Townshend and Jim Morrison wrote poems about it. In 1989, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Rolling Stones.
more...John Aloysius Fahey ( February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been enormously influential and has been described as the foundation of the genre of American primitive guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate 20th-century classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian influences into his work.
Fahey spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence in the late 1990s, with a turn towards the avant-garde. He also created a series of abstract paintings in his final years. Fahey died in 2001 from complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th on Rolling Stonemagazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Fahey as 40th greatest guitarist of all time.
more...William Correa (February 28, 1934 – September 15, 1983), better known by his stage name Willie Bobo, was an American Latin jazzpercussionist of Puerto Rican descent. Bobo rejected the stereotypical expectations of Latino music and was noted for his versatility as an authentic Latin percussionist as well as a jazz drummer easily moving stylistically from jazz, Latin and rhythm and blues music. After a period of ill health, Bobo died at the age of 49, succumbing to cancer.
more...Bulerías is one of flamenco’s most flexible forms: constantly changing, spontaneous, humorous, equally at home on a concert stage or at a private juerga. It’s the Rock’n Roll of flamenco – fast, rhythmic party music laced with social commentary that mocks the rich as it entertains them.
Cantes por bulerías began with Jerezano singer Loco Mateo (c. 1832-1890), who would conclude his specialty, the soleares, with a remate(ending) por bulerías. Bulerías is closely associated with the City of Jerez de la Frontera, specifically Barrio San Miguel, the home of many of flamenco’s most influential artists, including Loco Mateo, Agujetas, and Don Antonio Chacón.
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“A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.” —Laura Ingalls Wilder
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