1GL Participants' Info
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Percussionist
and ethnomusicologist Mustapha Tettey Addy was born into a
Ghanaian
family of ritual drummers, ascending to the position of dadefoiakye
(“master
drummer”) upon his Akon priest father’s death. He performed with the
Ghana
Dance Ensemble while studying at the University of Ghana and toured
Western
Europe during the late 60’s before settling in Düsseldorf, where he taught
at
Die Werkstatt center for African arts, recorded numerous LPs for Germany’s
WeltWunder
Records,
and established his famed Ehimomo ensemble in 1974. Addy returned to West Africa
in
1982; formed his Obonu Drummers group in 1986; founded Ghana’s Academy of
African
Music
and Arts in 1988; recorded landmark album The
Royal Drums of Ghana in
1991; received
the
Ivory Coast’s prestigious Marché des Arts et Spectacles Africains honor in
1997; and
continues
to tour and record with the Obonu Drummers.
By
the time he was 20, reggae prodigy Horace Andy had already cut hit tracks for
Jamaica’s
legendary Studio 1, tuning his alternately subtle and overpowering tenor to
some
of second-generation reggae’s most innovative songwriting. After a tenure with
legendary
dub producer Bunny Lee, Andy found greater creative autonomy with New
York
producer Everton DaSilva, recording his seminal In
the Light album
– released
with
a second LP of dub interpretations – in 1977. Horace Andy has since become
something of a
collaborative
mainstay, furnishing vocal backdrops for myriad projects including Massive
Attack’s
trip-hop
masterpieces Blue
Lines (1991),
Protection
(1994)
and Mezzanine
(1998).
Despite
competing for most of her career with her prolific older sister Lata
Mangeshkar,
reigning Bollywood playback chanteuse Asha Bhosle emerged in the
mid-90’s
as an equally adept Indipop star, a master of vocal versatility with the
ability
to perform in a range of styles and languages. Classically trained by her
singer-actor
father Dinanath Mangeshkar, Bhosle made her soundtrack debut in
1948’s
Chunariya
and
broke into the sultry playback elite in the late 50’s as the top choice of
composers
O.P Nayyar and S.D Burman. Future husband R.D Burman contemporized Bhosle’s
sound
during the 70’s and 80’s, helping her earn the National Award for Best
Singer for her
work
in 1987’s Ijaazat.
Bhosle proved her enduring relevance in 1997 with debut Indipop
album
Jaanam
Samjha Karo and
through her inspiration of Cornershop’s homage single
“Brimful
of Asha.”
Chameleonic
singer, songwriter, actor and dancer Tim Booth has built James into
one
of the most consistently surprising acts in contemporary British music. Booth
joined
James in 1982 while studying drama at Manchester University, and the
group
was instantly embraced and endorsed by post-punk icon Morrissey. Though
they
experienced crossover success with “Sit Down” (1991) and “Laid” (1993),
Booth
and James have remained rebellious and highly respected cult artists, enlisting
Brian
Eno
for James’ ambient worldbeat experiment Wah
Wah (1994)
and composer Angelo
Badalamenti
for Booth’s solo outing Booth
and the Bad Angel (1996).
Tim Booth made his
professional
acting debut in a 1998 production of Edward Bond’s controversial play Saved;
he
regularly teaches shamanic dancing, and in 2001 he released James’ 11th
original LP
Pleased
to Meet You.
Indian
classical music’s greatest flautist and ambassador, composer-performer
Pandit
Hariprasad Chaurasia has expanded the sonic possibilities of the North
Indian
bamboo flute with his innovative blowing technique and incorporation of
alap
and
jor
expositions.
Like many other international musicians, Chaurasia
rejected
patriarchal career edicts, studying flute under Pandit Bholanath despite
his
wrestler father’s insistence that he take up the sport. Through his
innumerable performances
and
accolades, in India and abroad, Chaurasia has evangelized the North Indian
bamboo flute,
making
it an essential element of nearly any Indian classical music concert, and he
continues
to
tour internationally.
The
daughter of West African percussionist Amadu Jah and Swedish artist Moki
Cherry,
Neneh Cherry, as a solo artist, collaborator and band member, made
significant
aesthetic and conceptual contributions to trip-hop, alternative rap,
pop
and R&B. Popularly known for her international hit cover of “Buffalo
Stance,”
Neneh
Cherry is retroactively acknowledged as a formative influence on the 21st
Century’s
most groundbreaking artists. Raised in New York City and Stockholm, Cherry
performed
in
punk and funk outfits before releasing her classic solo albums Raw
Like Sushi (1989)
and
Homebrew
(1992)
to critical and commercial acclaim. Cherry’s 1996 album Man
featured
“7
Seconds,” her hit collaboration with Youssou N’Dour.
Stewart
Copeland, formerly of prog-rock outfit Curved Air, used textured polyrhythmic
drumming
to anchor The Police’s forays into reggae, punk, pop and world musics.
Seeming
to perform in all the group’s modes simultaneously, Copeland enabled
their
cross-genre experimentalism to cohere and thrive, contributing additional
songwriting
to classic Police albums like 1979’s Regatta
de Blanc.
As
a solo artist,
Copeland
has focused on composing and film scoring. His credits include Oliver Stone’s Wall
Street
(1987)
and Talk
Radio (1988),
as well as the African rhythm pilgrammage The
Rhythmatist
(1985).
A
noted philanthropist, author and spiritual teacher, Ram Dass earned widespread
notoriety
when, alongside Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Allen Ginsberg, he
became
involved in human consciousness experiments that researched the effects
of
psychotropic substances. After his abrupt dismissal from Harvard University in
1963,
Ram Dass continued his research under the auspices of private organizations,
ultimately
traveling to India, where he studied under the spiritual teacher Neem Karoli
Baba.
A
practitioner of Hinduism, karma, yoga and Sufism, Ram Dass has written and
lectured
internationally
and founded a number of charitable organizations. His 1971 classic Be
Here
Now
sold
over a million copies, and through the Seva and Hanuman foundations, Ram Dass
has
addressed myriad spiritual and social causes.
Over
the last 30-plus years, avant-God Brian Eno has revolutionized our conceptual
understanding
of popular media without sacrificing its most fundamental aesthetic
exigencies
or resorting to self-congratulatory navel gazing. After studying contemporary
composers
in art school, Eno began toying with tape recorders, creating collagist
“signals”
for performance art troupes and experimental rock bands. As a founding
member
of glam superstars Roxy Music, he supplied electronic flourishes and keyboard
arrangements,
and as a solo musician Eno is credited with inventing ambient music – a highly
impressionistic
mix of sonic atmospherics he developed while recovering from a car crash in
1975
and immortalized on Discreet
Music.
Brian Eno has since lent his sublime vision to scores
of
progressive pop masterpieces, including Talking Heads’ worldbeat opus Remain
in Light
(1980)
and U2’s The
Joshua Tree (1987).
UK
PR guru and futurist Lynne Franks is a formidable corporate watchdog and an
advocate
for a dizzying array of human rights causes. Founding Lynne Franks PR in
1972,
Franks built her business into the English voice for Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin
Klein,
Swatch, and the British Labour Party, but sold her firm in 1992 to explore
the
interaction between global economy and grassroots society. Upon returning,
Franks
founded the UK’s first women’s radio station and worked on the Reebok Human
Rights
music
tour, the What Women Want festival, and Beijing’s UN Women’s Conference.
Franks’
autobiography,
Absolutely
Now!: A Futurist’s Journey to Her Inner Truth,
appeared in 1998, and
her
second book, The
SEED Handbook: The Feminine Way to Create Business (2000),
is the
manifesto
for her current Globalfusion communications consulting enterprise.
Oakland-born
protest MC Michael Franti’s socially conscious lyricism is rivalled only
by
the increasing complexity of his projects. The mixed-race child of white
adoptive
parents,
Franti joined avant-radical alt-funk-industrial act The Beatnigs while
attending
USF on a basketball scholarship in 1986. Their first single “Television”
paid
homage to poetic predecessor Gil Scott-Heron. In 1990 Franti formed The
Disposable
Heroes of Hiphoprisy, lambasting gangsta rap’s misguided misogyny, homophobia,
and
intolerance with 1992 debut Hypocrisy
Is the Greatest Luxury,
which led to collaborations
with
Public Enemy, U2, Nirvana, and William S. Burroughs. Franti evolved yet again in
1994
with
the activist R&B of Spearhead, whose 2001 release Stay
Human couched
its anti-government,
pro-personal
message in a fictional community radio station’s vigil on behalf of a
marijuanaprescribing
healer
on death row.
Few
images in the history of film are as visually or metaphorically potent as
Dennis
Hopper and Peter Fonda, the embodiment of counterculture, motorcycling
across
a physically emancipated but spiritually repressed American countryside.
Where
Easy
Rider’s
America seemed impossibly alien to Hopper’s version of personal
freedom
and alternative morality, his values have since been codified in DIY art,
“outside-the-box”
corporate practice, and thriving political idealism. Not surprisingly, Dennis
Hopper
(b. 1936) is individuality’s greatest star and spokesman, the uncompromising
artist and
personality
who refused to submit to an untenable America, instead forcing a cultural
assimilation
of
his own prophetic ideals. Rebel
Without a Cause (1955),
Easy
Rider (1969),
Apocalypse
Now
(1979),
Blue
Velvet (1986),
Hoosiers
(1986)
– Hopper’s acting and directorial credits run a
stylistic
gamut without betraying the singularity of character that is his greatest
artistic asset.
London
MC, DJ, and label entrepreneur Maxi Jazz was a significant evangelist of
the
early-90’s jazz/hip-hop/dance fusion movement. Following his 1984 formation
of
the Soul Food Café Sound System DJ collective and its attendant pirate radio
show,
Maxi assembled the live-instrument acid-jazz Soul Food Café Band in 1990,
touring
and collaborating with kindred spirits Jamiroquai, Soul II Soul, Jah
Wobble,
and Galliano. Maxi’s greatest notoriety came with his membership in the
seminal
London
club act Faithless, in which he shared vocal duties with 1
Giant Leap co-founder
Jamie
Catto
and through which he became a devoted Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist. Maxi Jazz
continues
to
spread dancefloor enlightenment – sporting the MC epithet G.O.D. (Grand Oral
Disseminator)
–
most recently on Faithless’ 2001 LP Outrospective.
Born
into the Fulani fisherman’s caste of Podor, Senegal, African pop superstar and
Grammy
nominee Baaba Maal rose above his social rank to become the premier
artistic
voice of Senegal, as well as a leading spokesman for African AIDS awareness
and
the United Nations Development Program. First performing with the 70-piece
Asly
Fouta collective while attending school in Dakar, Maal proceeded to tour
Africa
with friend and guitarist Mansour Seck. He later studied at Paris’
Conservatoire des
Beaux
Arts before returning to Senegal in the early 80’s to form Daande Lenol
(“The Voice of
the
People”), a warrior chant and indigenous worker music group. Baaba Maal
continues to
hone
his fusion of traditional African music and contemporary pop – most recently
on 2001’s
Missing
You (Mi Yeewnii) –
without forsaking his role as the voice of a people.
The
women of South Africa’s most accomplished vocal group, Mahotella Queens
(Hilda
Tloubatla, Mildred Mangxola, Nobesuthu Mbadu), rose to local prominence
in
1964 as the backing singers for the late Simon “The Lion of Soweto”
Mahlathini
and
his grooving Makgona Tsohle Band, helping to originate the soulful mbaquanga
style,
an afro-pop blend of Zulu music, South African jazz, and American R&B that
would
serve as the sound of the populist resistance to apartheid. Rocketing to
worldwide
renown
with 1987 megahit “Kazet” from their Paris
– Soweto release,
the Queens and
Mahlathini
collective set out on a 40-city 1990 US tour with Stevie Wonder and Sting. In
2000,
Mahotella Queens were recognized with the World Music Expo Award for outstanding
contribution
to world music, and a year later they released their most recent album, Sebai
Bai.
A
pioneer in the proliferation and performance of indigenous African musics, Pops
Mohamed
has dedicated his musical life to the rediscovery of his continent’s cultural
heritage.
A master of the Zimbabwean mbira (thumb piano) and the West African
kora
(21-string harp), in addition to more traditional instruments, Mohamed has
notably
recorded the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert, releasing the raw album
Pops
Mohamed Presents the Bushmen of the Kalahari and
fusing their sounds with contemporary
genres
and studio artistry on 1999’s How
Far Have We Come.
A curator, performer and cultural
activist,
Mohamed embodies the cross-cultural, preservationist spirit of 1
Giant Leap.
Stockton,
California’s Grant Lee Phillips endured teenage stints as a juggler, stuntman,
drill
press operator, ventriloquist, magician, and impersonator before hitting the
road
for L.A., where he would form alt-Americana trio Grant Lee Buffalo. The rootsy,
bluegrass-meets-bullocks
songcraft of their 1993 debut Fuzzy
rendered
Grant Lee
Buffalo
an instant critical favorite, while ensuing folk-rock masterpieces earned
the
group high-profile gigs opening for Paul Westerberg, Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and The
Smashing
Pumpkins.
One of the most credible and generally admired groups of the early 90’s
roots-rock
revival,
Grant Lee Buffalo outperformed the commercial mainstream, refusing to compromise
their
ethereal aesthetic and slice-of-life lyricism to chase a fickle consumer market.
Grant Lee
Phillips
issued his acoustic solo debut Ladies’
Love Oracle in
2000, exploring minimalist
instrumentation
with characteristic beauty and wit.
Glasgow
native Eddi Reader has been a musical traveler, literally and figuratively,
for
the better part of her life. After touring Europe with a roving circus, Reader
briefly
became a session vocalist, collaborating with the Eurythmics, the
Waterboys
and Gang of Four before developing her own platform with the doubleentendre
titled
Fairground Attraction. Critical support propelled “Perfect” – from
Fairground
Attraction’s 1992 debut First
of a Million Kisses –
to Number One in the UK, and
Reader
went on to record a number of fine solo albums, including her 1994 self-titled
major
label
debut and 2001’s subtle, swirling Simple
Soul.
North
Carolina-born seriocomic Taoist author Tom Robbins is one of the most
important
contemporary torchbearers of the American literary counterculture.
Stints
with a travelling circus, Washington and Lee University’s journalism program,
the
US Air Force in Korea, various US newspapers, and LSD preceded Robbins’ 1965
decision
to settle in Washington State, where he set to work on first novel
Another
Roadside Attraction (1971),
detailing the exploitative display of Christ’s corpse at a
roadside
zoo. Characterized by oblique, painstakingly crafted metaphors, the mingling of
the
dramatic-sacred
with the comic-profane, and the omnipresence of visionary characters, Robbins’
eight
novels – including Even
Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976),
Skinny
Legs and All (1990),
Still
Life
With Woodpecker (1994),
and most recently Fierce
Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
–
remain compulsory reading for the twenty-something soul searcher.
One
of England’s most successful women, The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick is a
controversial
critic of global industry and an advocate of the power of the individual
consumer;
her career proves that entrepreneurship and ethical responsibility can
happily
and lucratively co-exist. After developing the foundations of her grassroots
activism
during 1960’s travels to Israel, Tahiti, Australia, South Pacific islands, and
South
Africa, Roddick began manufacturing her own line of women’s cosmetics –
using natural
methods
learned from pre-industrial tribes – and opened the first Body Shop in
Brighton in
1976.
Though her progressive principles-before-profits approach was often belittled
throughout
the
80’s, it has been retroactively recognized as the model for the eco-conscious
corporation
of
the 90’s and beyond. Roddick’s autobiography, Business
as Unusual,
appeared in 2000, and
at
present The Body Shop serves over 84 million customers worldwide.
Renaissance
woman Gabrielle Roth has devoted her professional career to teasing
out
the interplay of entertainment and emotion. A renowned musician, director,
philosopher,
writer and dancer, Roth teaches a unique communion of mind and
body,
using physical ecstasy to catalyze spiritual bliss and vice-versa in an emotive
imitation
of the life cycle’s natural rhythms. Alongside her husband Robert Ansell
and
their Mirrors ensemble Roth has released 14 albums, including the genre-defining
ambient
tribal
work Totem,
and two best-selling books, Maps
to Ecstasy and
Sweat
Your Prayers.
Generically
protean, Roth’s art continues to influence modes as diverse as trip-hop, new
age
and
progressive trance.
Peerless
electric mandolin prodigy U.Shrinvas has transformed a relatively obscure
stringed
instrument into a transcendent medium of musical expression. Born in
Andhra
Pradesh, Shrinvas displayed innate prowess on his father’s mandolin at age
six,
and under the guidance of Carnatic music teacher Subbaraju, displayed his
mastery
at the Sri Thyagaraja Aradhana festival in Gudivada when he was just
nine.
Developing his classical approach to the raga as he toured the world –
including
showstopping
sets at 1983’s West Berlin Jazz Festival and 1992’s Olympic Arts Festival
–
Shrinvas
inspired awe in all who heard him. Capturing his genius on a wealth of
recordings
(most
recently 2001’s Mandolin
Magic),
U.Shrinvas, who has received every significant Indian
musical
honor, also administrates the Shrinvas Institute of World Musique and is a
member of
John
McLaughlin’s world-fusion group Shakti.
Though
considered anachronistic at their inception, the Soweto String Quartet
has
successfully woven strands of European-style classical music into the indigent
musical
tapestry of their native South Africa. Precluded by apartheid from
membership
in the National Symphony Orchestra, brothers Thami (violin) and
Reuben
(cello) Khemese followed their sibling Sandile’s musical guidance upon his
1986
return from violin study in England, forming the Soweto String Quartet in 1989
with
childhood
friend Makhosini Mnguni (viola). Initially criticized for their use of
Eurocentric
instruments,
the Quartet combined technical prowess with native African inflections to forge
a
vital
new style. Full vindication came with a performance at Nelson Mandela’s 1994
inauguration,
and
their Best New Artist, Best Instrumental Performance, and Best Pop Album wins at
the
1995
South African Music Awards for debut album Zebra
Crossing.
One
of the first and most successful “alternative” rappers, Speech imbued the
hiphop
protest
tradition with an unprecedented degree of literacy and nuance. Speech
spent
most of his childhood in Ripley, Tennessee before moving to Atlanta to
study
at the city’s Art Institute, where in 1988 he collaborated with classmate Tim
Barnwell
to form Arrested Development. In 1992 their critical and commercial
masterpiece
Three
Years, Five Months and Two Days in the Life Of… earned
two Grammy Awards,
fusing
blues-inflected instrumentation, poetic lyricism and traditional hip-hop on
crossover
hits
like “Tennessee.” At a critical juncture in hip-hop, when more abrasive
gangsta and hardcore
modes
threatened to undermine rap as social protest, Speech galvanized a palatable yet
insistent
forum for African-American unity.
Frontman
to alt-rock troubadours R.E.M., Michael Stipe has evolved from a college
radio
icon into a respected art patron and an advocate for socio-political concerns.
Founding
R.E.M. in 1980 while studying visual art at the University of Georgia,
Stipe
went on to dizzying musical success with early post-punk groundbreakers
Murmur
(1983)
and Reckoning
(1984),
and later, multi-platinum masterpieces
Document
(1987),
Out
of Time (1991)
and Automatic
for the People (1992).
Stipe’s C-Hundred
Film
Corp (co-founded in 1987 with writer-director Jim McKay) produced music videos,
no-budget
films, and an award-winning PSA series. In 1993 Stipe launched Single Cell
Productions
to fund higher-profile films such as American
Movie and
Being
John Malkovich.
Stipe
is a visible supporter of environmental, animal rights, and voter awareness
causes; he
recently
released R.E.M.’s 13th original LP, 2001’s Reveal.
A
student of music composition, devotee of jazz and new age recontextualization,
and
onetime journeyman guitarist, Andy Summers is regarded as a pioneer of
instrumental
texture and improvisation. Most famous for his late-70’s and early-
80’s
work with British reggae-punkers The Police, Summers projected an uncanny
mix
of showmanship and reserve, allowing his guitar parts to stand out from the
trio
without undermining their trademark single-engine dynamic. Beginning in 1982,
Summers
pursued
a variety of solo projects, ultimately reinterpreting jazz greats Thelonius Monk
and
Charles
Mingus, respectively, on the most rewarding recordings of his career, 1999’s Green
Chimneys
and
2000’s Peggy’s
Blue Skylight.
Turntable
exhibitionist, human analog recording medium, collagist punk-rocker:
these
are some of the alter- and alter-alter-egos DJ Swamp might inhabit in a
single
DJ set, his behavior as fluid and volatile as his musical progressions.
Indeed
Swamp projects personality as DIY medium – a reflexive interpretation of
the
turntable’s unlimited potential for recombination, reassembly, and above all,
mutability.
For the last four years, Swamp has performed behind Beck, the world’s premier
pastiche
artist, though as a solo performer he frequently uses pitch manipulation and
real
effects
pedals to approximate a full band sound, finding the relevance in seemingly passé
Black
Sabbath and Journey tracks.
Though
all are accomplished singers, composers, actresses, dancers, and teachers,
together
the women of Ulali (Pura Fé Crescioni, Soni Moreno and Jennifer
Kreisberg)
form contemporary music’s foremost First Nations female a capella
group,
mixing far-ranging indigenous-American styles with gospel and blues.
Performing
as a trio since 1987, Ulali enjoyed widespread renown for their
contributions
to Robbie Robertson’s 1994 Music
for The Native Americans documentary
score,
later
working with Indigo Girls (Shaming
of the Sun)
and Apache storyteller Dovie Thomason
(Lessons
from the Animal People)
in 1997, and performing on the soundtrack for 1998
Sundance
Audience Award-winner Smoke
Signals.
Ulali have performed at Woodstock ‘94, the
‘96
Olympics, and Carnegie Hall, and are currently signed with Columbia Records’
jazz imprint
to
record a Branford Marsalis-produced follow-up to their 1997 solo debut Mahk
Jchi.
Indiana-born
writer and humorist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is the author of 14 fiction
novels,
including Cat’s
Cradle (1963),
Slaughterhouse
Five (1969),
and most recently
Timequake
(1999).
Though typically categorized as science fiction, Vonnegut’s
work
is less concerned with alternate realms of time and space than with satirical
insight
into humanity’s vast potential for good and evil, played out through modern
technology
and seemingly random, often cruel causation. After studying biochemistry at
Cornell,
Vonnegut enlisted in the US Army in 1943 and served in Europe before enrolling
in the
M.A.
Anthropology program at the University of Chicago in 1945. Vonnegut’s first
published
novel,
Player
Piano (1952),
was inspired by his late-40’s stint as a public relations man for
General
Electric, while his most renowned work, Slaughterhouse
Five,
drew upon his firsthand
experience
of the bombing of Dresden during WWII.
If
one assesses pop relevance on the basis of album sales, Robbie Williams’ teen
outlet
Take That was the most significant British band since The Beatles.
Ironically,
and perhaps this attests to the inadvisability of such an approach, his
most
creative and rewarding work has occurred since he departed the group in
1995.
As a solo performer, Williams injected his pop with a necessary self-awareness,
and
despite the debacle of his first single – a cover of George Michael’s
“Freedom ‘90” – he
went
on to release three excellent genre-hopping albums, including 1997’s Life
Thru a Lens and
the
US-only compilation The
Ego Has Landed (1999).