Got Music Talent!

Teenage Dream (cover) by Savannah Outen

Jamos — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:36:48 +0000

Teenage Dream by Katy Perry is one of the hottest songs on the charts, so it's only right that it's well represented on YouTube, too - and Savannah Outen's cover is certainly does represent it well.

The Lone Songbird in the Woods: Michèle Choinière Gives New Voice to Long-Lost Franco-American Songs on La Violette

Jamos — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:36:42 +0000

World Music Wire:

Along the borderlands between the U.S. and Canada, a lone songbird sings with a voice clear, rich, and distinctly French. Her name is Michèle Choinière, and nestled in the northwestern Vermont woods, she continues a once thriving Franco-American oral tradition that recalls the bright cheer of kitchen parties, the wry pleasures of courtship, and the sway of a waltz.

Known for her originals and her distinctive interpretations of traditional songs, she has returned to her family and cultural roots on La Violette, a tribute to the ties that bind and their musical vitality. Drawing on francophone songs unique to northwestern Vermont, as well as French folk classics and popular gems, Choinière puts a contemporary polish on songs as old as the hills, with a festive tenderness.

Choinière was raised with French as her first language, at a time when many of her peers were no longer learning their parents’ mother tongue. Many Francophones on the American side of the border wanted their children to assimilate. These immigrant families, who came to the U.S. for work during the hard times of the 1920s and 1930s, maintained a quiet presence, farming and working in an area where they were not particularly welcome. But their children, now adults, are frustrated that they were not privy to this Franco-American inheritance.

Choinière’s family was the exception to this rule. Not only did her parents speak French at home, her parents both taught her songs: her mother through the everyday songs sung in the kitchen while preparing meals, and her father through his harmonica playing. But the main venue for the passing of these traditions was the soirée–the kitchen party–where families and friends would gather, push the table to the corner, pull out the harmonica, fiddle, and the accordion, stomp on the table for percussion, dance, drink, and of course, sing.

With this unique background, Choinière often laughs when she is told that she is the only Franco-American singer in the whole state of Vermont, a lone voice recalling a rich and beautiful tradition. Her songs come from a variety of sources beyond her vibrantly musical family.

She’s mined treasured recordings of elderly local singers and turned to dusty cassettes of funky French-Canadian broadcasts from the 1950s and 60s. In a world of chords, sheet music, and fake books, Choinière works almost exclusively off the page, diving into oral traditions and transforming as she goes. It is an organic process of showing the skeleton of a piece to musicians and having them add their own flavors to the song.

For a woman who never set out to be a professional singer, Choinière has slid gracefully into the role, unfolding as a musician as an adult. Singing with her father, she found herself featured on a Smithsonian Folkways recording of Franco-American music from New England, Mademoiselle, Voulez-Vous Danser? (1999)

And soon she began writing her own songs, originals that came together on Coeur Fragile (2003). “My piano became my therapy,” she smiles, “and as for my voice, I never wanted voice lessons. I wanted to sing in my own way.” Her voice embraces a distinctively French sound, yet remains sweet, velvety, and whispery, twisting and twirling the nuanced strands of the language. But Choinière’s voice can pack a potent—and potently upbeat—punch. La Violette is at its heart a dance album.

From the starting notes and percussion of the opening track, “Fue a de Lou,” her voice lilts through waltzes and dance tunes opening into unique musical spaces and images: from the antiquated upright piano emanating a tinkling tone from the corner of the family living room, to the lively musical moments of a soirée.

“Fue a de Lou,” Choinière feels, “has a driving force to it, like you’re on the ocean, in a boat, moving forward.” Its playful movement, and nonsense chorus, add to the festive feel of the song, which is unique to Franco-American Vermont. This is followed by another lively party tune, “La Violette,” and is a shining example of how Choinière creates her own version of traditional tunes.

While some Franco-Americans may insist she adhere strictly to the tradition, Choinière believes strongly in ‘modernizing’ the songs she has learned from her family and her community. Through her own arrangements, she gives fresh voice to the music. “La Bergere Encore,” a jazz arrangement of a traditional children’s song, is a surprising shift in tone and style, yet reveals how flexible and powerful Franco-American music can be.

For Choinière, this album is a living memoir of her family. Several songs, including “Quand le soleil dit bonjour” and “Par un Samedi matin,” were sung by family members frequently throughout her youth, including at her parents’ wedding.

And many illustrate the importance of place in the collective memories of the immigrant experience. “Vive la Rose” draws on the experiences of the Acadians in the Maritime provinces, while “Brind’amour” is a 1920s French café song once popular among Franco-Americans. “Rame, Rame, Rame, Donc” recalls the St. Lawrence seaway in Québec, evoking the repetitive motion of rowing on a river, while the words imagine rowing away from hardship towards a more peaceful place.

The true inspiration for this colorful, poignant collage of distinctively French music, however, lies not with past generations, but with the family’s newest member, Choinière’s daughter Isabella. Each song serves as a momentum of what Choinière hopes to pass on to her little girl, a menagerie of ideas, values, histories, and poetic images of what it means to be Franco- American in 2010. And it’s an album little Isabella can dance her heart out to.

La Violette connects generations to their history in New England, in Quebec, and in France to their history as Franco-Americans. It tells a story of a people connected through musical, linguistic, and cultural traditions, historical snapshots evoking time and place for the nearly lost roots of New England’s Francophones. With sprightly songs, Choinière beckons to audiences to listen to her cultural call, and increasingly, they do.

Use Somebody (cover) by UrbanGermany

Jamos — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 16:38:44 +0000

UrbanGermany does a great job of covering the top pop hits of today and years passed--like this cover of the Kings of Leon's Use Somebody.

Yesterday (cover) by Lily Violet Springhall and Conor Maynard

Jamos — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:40:57 +0000

Lily Violet Springhall and Conor Maynard cover Toni Braxton's Yesterday, delivering a full-sounding performance of the hit Braxton performed with Trey Songz.

I Never Told You (cover) by Sam Hart

Jamos — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:34:02 +0000

Captivating, clear, soulful, penetrating...these are all words YouTube fans have used to describe Sam Hart's music and his voice, which is well-matched to this cover of Colbie Caillat's I Never Told You.

But I Neglected to Say (cover) by Raja Burrows

Jamos — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:31:09 +0000

Here's a beautiful cover of a beautiful song, just right for those low-key moods.

That La La La Girl (original) Mash Up by David Choi and Auburn

Jamos — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:33:46 +0000

This video has some amazing vocal sound, a collaboration between David Choi and Auburn, mashing up their songs, La La La and That Girl.

The Ballad of Steven Slater (original) by Jonathon Mann

Jamos — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:35:34 +0000

This isn't your mother's folk music. In fact, we probably should warn that lyrics are not so appropriate for younger ears, so before you listen you may want to take a look around, but other than that there are probably more than a few of us who can relate to this modern folk song featuring the story of that now-famous JetBlue flight attendant, Steven Slater!

Laya Project’s Tsunami of Music: Sounds Embrace Survival from the Maldives to Myanmar, from India to Indonesia

Jamos — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:24:37 +0000

World Music Wire

On a beach, a fisherman pours his heart into a love song for his wife, taken by the sea. A worn but beautiful woman, at first shy and retiring, sings an unexpectedly passionate welcome. A couple selling trinkets to sun-hungry tourists opens an arresting trove of traditional instruments and plays them with astounding zeal.

On the shores of great tragedy and destruction, the sounds and images of the Laya Project reveal an abundance of life-affirming music made by ordinary villagers, sounds from coastal communities affected by the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, the Maldives, India, and Myanmar (Burma). Recorded on site during impromptu sessions over the course of more than two years in dozens of overlooked areas, the interwoven songs and tunes that became the Project span national, ethnic, and religious boundaries and reflect a unifying triumph of human resilience and creativity.

Envisioned as a response to the tsunami, the epic journey of the Project—envisioned from the start as both a 2-CD set and a documentary film—was initiated and entirely supported by friend and patron of music arts Sastry Karra, who along with the many dedicated members of the multi-national team behind the Laya Project, felt they needed to do something more than simply provide material relief. “While the massive aid that came in addressed the basic crisis of food, clothing, and shelter,” Project director and producer Sonya Mazumdar recalls, “there was little assistance for music or the local performing arts, which form the cultural spine of villages in rural communities of the region.”

Putting together yet another compilation of big names or international celebrities for a cause left them cold. The EarthSync crew longed to capture the depth and breadth of ordinary people, their extraordinary songs, and to pay tribute to their resilience, their celebration of life, their joy.

The team opted for one of most difficult and exhaustive approaches imaginable: to research, record, and work with material from everyday people most directly and devastatingly affected by the tsunami. This meant tackling a tangle of visas, permits, and paperwork before they even arrived on the ground. Once they landed, they travelled difficult roads to remote places. They made recordings using a car battery to power their portable studio, and faced the toll the tragedy had taken on often threatened local cultures.

What they found when they began working with people, however, was joy, strength, and a wealth of music, some of it never before documented and recorded. Guided by indefatigable Indonesian researcher Ernest Hariyanto and a plethora of knowledgeable locals and music lovers, sound designer and engineer Yotam Agam, music producer Patrick Sebag, film director Harold Monfils, and their tireless crew captured hundreds of hours of performances by people who came forward to share their music.

“Part of what became ‘A New Day’ was a song sung by a fisherman in one of the first villages we visited in Sri Lanka as part of the Project,” recounts Agam. “He was singing a love song for his wife, whom he’d lost in the tsunami. It was deeply moving.”

It wasn’t just the crew who were moved, however; the local people they encountered felt moved to come forward and bring their music. There were the Jarasathusorns, husband and wife who sold soap flowers on Phuket Island, Thailand’s tourist hot spot: “We didn’t expect to find much traditional music there,” Agam notes, “and yet here was this couple who could sing and play all sorts of Thai instruments, as you can hear on ‘Water Side Tales.’”

Then there was Shaheema, the Maldives woman whose experienced and striking face graces the Project’s cover. “While recording a group of male percussionists on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, a woman approached us from the bush and requested to sing us a welcome song. This was surprising because the women had been in the background most of the time,” Agam remembers. “Once she started singing, though, the song she sang was so pure and beautiful.” That rare moment became “Farihi.”

The team had an embarrassment of riches garnered from such moments, and Agam and Sebag, returning from the field faced the formidable task of transforming gorgeous music recorded in less than ideal settings into a whole. They judiciously mixed, remixed, and added gentle infusions of keyboards and other instruments to gems from various sessions and locations, making sure to honor the spirit of the people and places involved.

In their careful work, Agam and Sebag strove to create a framework and a context for listeners outside of the communities where the music originates, in hopes of creating a link across cultures. “We really wanted to spark the emotional reaction appropriate to music,” Mazumdar explains. “That meant adding some production, to help people connect.”

Fusing beautiful yet disparate moments lies at the heart of the Project’s motive and mission. “‘Laya’ is a really resonant and rich Sanskrit word with many contextual meanings,” Mazumdar muses. “It can mean fusion; the union of song, dance and instrumental music; time or a pause in music; rest; embrace; the supreme being; destruction; to set in motion, among other things. It’s a word that best encapsulates the essence of the project.”

What started as an epic journey has taken on a life of its own, and the Laya Project has unfolded in several other media, in an effort to continue the efforts to provide sustainable exposure and outlets for local creativity.

The award-winning film, directed by Monfils and available on DVD, reveals the lush visual side of the sounds uncovered during the crew’s many travels, with post production by Arturo Calvete, Henrik Silkstrom and Jose Garrido. Artists Agam and Sebag first met in the middle of nowhere have become new and important collaborators. And a live show featuring Laya artists has begun to tour internationally, spreading the vibrant music of the South Asian coasts from India to Israel.

“The tsunami did not differentiate between cultures, races, religion, or economic backgrounds,” reflects Mazumdar. “Neither does music, except that one destroyed and the other heals.”

Don’t Quit! Not Quite! (original) by Jakub Andrew

Jamos — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:29:03 +0000

Jakub of HeyHiHello showcases his vocal and acoustic guitar talents here in this acoustic version of the band's original song, Don't Quit! Not Quite!