BLACK MUSICIANS FROM THE WORLD

Bob Marley Bob Marley gave the world brilliant and evocative

music; his work stretched across nearly two decades and yet still remains timeless and universal. Bob Marley & the Wailers worked their way into the very fabric of our lives.

"He's taken his place alongside James Brown and Sly Stone as a pervasive influence on r&b", says the American critic Timothy White, author of the acclaimed Bob Marley biography CATCH A FIRE: THE LIFE OF BOB MARLEY. "His music was pure rock, in the sense that it was a public expression of a private truth.”

It is important to consider the roots of this legend: the first superstar from the Third World, Bob Marley was one of the most charismatic and challenging performers of our time and his music could have been created from only one source: the street culture of Jamaica.

The days of slavery are a recent folk memory on the island. They have permeated the very essence of Jamaica's culture, from the plantation of the mid-nineteenth century to the popular music of our own times. Although slavery was abolished in 1834, the Africans and their descendants developed their own culture with half-remembered African traditions mingled with the customs of the British.

STEVIE WONDER Stevie Wonder (born Stevland Hardaway Judkins

on May 13, 1950, name later changed to Stevland Hardaway Morris is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. A prominent figure in popular music during the latter half of the 20th century, Wonder has recorded more than thirty US top ten hits, won twenty-two Grammy Awards (a record for a solo artist), plus one for lifetime achievement, won an Academy Award for Best Song, and been inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame. He has also been awarded the Polar Music Prize.

Blind from birth, Wonder signed with Motown Records at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for the label. He has ten US number-one hits on the pop charts including twenty R&B number one hits, and album sales totaling more than 100 million units. Wonder has recorded several critically acclaimed albums and hit singles, and writes and produces songs for many of his label mates and outside artists as well. Wonder plays the piano, synthesizer, harmonica, congas, drums, bass guitar, bongos, organ, melodica, and clavinet. In his childhood, he was best known for his harmonica work, but today he is better known for his keyboard skills and vocal ability. Wonder is the first Motown artist and first African American musician to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song for his 1984 hit single "I Just Called to Say I Love You".

Louis Armstrong Most historians agree; when it

comes to influential musicians in this century, one name stands above the rest. Not Gershwin or Porter, Lennon or Presley. It is, indeed, Louis Armstrong who blasted the music of the world out of a tired tradition of classic orchestra and mundane Tin Pan Alley pop into the exciting era of hot jazz and swing. Not single-handedly, admittedly; but Armstrong set standards of originality and spontaneity that are yet to be surpassed.

Duke EllingtonIronically, Ellington's own name covers

an even greater spectrum of sounds: his approximately 1,500 compositions

encompass all moods from the revelry of a "Saturday Night Function" to

reverence "Come Sunday" and the blues when it's "Monday Every Day." They fit into all forms from three minute pop

songs to hour-long symphonies, ballets and musical comedies. They embrace all tonal colors from the highs and lows of

black and white Americans to exotic sounds from Africa and the Far East. It's

no coincidence that two of Ellington's most important albums of the '60s were collaborations that found the maestro

fitting in equally well with major musicians who had each incorporated

some of Ellington's principles to a great degree in their own music. They were John Coltrane and Frank Sinatra, who would normally never even get into a

sentence together, yet had in common their Ellington influence and experience.

Ella Fitzgerald From Harlem to Hamburg, Fitzgerald

thrilled her audiences with a crystal clear voice, gliding effortlessly from low ntes to high, from be-bop to ballads.Born in Virginia and raised in New York, Fitzgerald began her professional career at the age of 16. She intended to dance at amateur night at the Harlem Opera House, but she lost her nerve when she got on stage. Over the years, Fitzgerald won dozens of awards. She dominated the early Grammy ceremonies, winning best female vocal performance three years in a row. In all, she won 13 Grammy awards -- more than any other jazz musician. But she maintained always an aura of graciousness -- she was at a loss for words when the Society of Singers named an award after her.

"I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do," she said. "I think I do better when I sing."

Ray Charles RAY CHARLES taught himself piano

at age three. When he lost his sight at the age of seven, he entered the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, where he learned classical piano and how to compose scores in Braille. This sound would become known as "soul" due to the emotional intensity invested into each lyric. He played in concerts and on TV around the world, and in the seventies he created his own label (Crossover). By the eighties, with over seventy top singles, he was a living legend: everyone from the Beatles to Billy Joel (who named his daughter Alexa Ray in honor of Charles) had claimed him as an influence. He has won both the Kennedy Center and National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Awards. Charles' classic "I've Got a Woman" is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; so is he.

Michael Jackson

Aretha Franklin ARETHA FRANKLIN, if you really

don't know, is the Queen of Soul. Under the auspices of Jerry Wexler, she sang fierce, frantic hits like "I Never Loved a Man," "Respect," "Natural Woman," and "Chain of Fools." In 1968, she made the cover of Time. In 1980, she did a cameo performance in The Blues Brothers. Her 1985 album, Who's Zoomin' Who, racked up her biggest sales yet. A 1989 gospel album, inspired by her father's coma and death (he was shot by a burglar) in 1984, earned another Grammy for her crowded shelf. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Celia Cruz Cuban salsa singer, and was one of the

most successful Salsa performers of the 20th century, with twenty-three gold albums to her name. She was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" as well as "La Guarachera de Cuba".[1] She spent most of her career living in New Jersey, and working in the United States and several Latin American countries.

Celia Cobo of Billboard Magazine once

said "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban music." Cruz once said in an interview "If I had a chance I wouldn't have been singing and dancing, I would be a teacher just like my dad wanted me to be".

Tina Turner American rhythm-and-blues

(R&B) singer, whose career has spanned four decades of hit songs. Influenced by gospel music, Turner is known for her passionate and emotional style of singing. In 1985 Turner's song What's Love Got to Do With It" won two Grammy Awards, helping make her a superstar at the age of 46. She followed in 1989 when she won a Grammy Award for her album Tina Live in Europe (1988). Her 1985 biography, I, Tina, was released as a motion picture, What's Love Got to Do With It, in 1993. In 1991 Tina and Ike Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Marvin Gaye Marvin Gaye was born Marvin Pentz

Gay, Jr. on April 2, 1939 in Washington DC. The son of an apostolic minister, he grew up learning "the essential joy of music," as he called it, by playing the organ and singing in his father's church. Sixteen years later, Marvin joined his first band, the DC based group, Rainbows which included Billy Stewart and Don Covay. From 1964 to 1967, he became known as the master of make believe with songs like, "Ain't no mountain high enough","Your Precious Love," "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You," and "You're All I Need To Get By."

HARRY BELAFONTE

Harold George Belafonte, Jr. (born March 1, 1927) is a Jamaican American musician, actor and social activist. One of the most successful popular singers in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso," a title which he was very reluctant to accept (according to the documentary Calypso Dreams) for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing the "Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for civil rights and humanitarian causes. He has been a vocal critic of the policies of the Bush Administration.

B.B.King Throughout the 1990's as

well as the 1980's, 1970's, 1960's and 1950's, there has been only one King of the Blues - Riley B. King, affectionately known as B.B. King. Since B.B. started recording in the late 1940's, he has released over 5O albums -- many of them considered blues classics, like 1965's definitive live blues album "Live At The Regal," and 1976's collaboration with Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Together for The First Time."

James Brown Over a 39 year period, James Brown

amassed an amazing total of 98 entries on Billboard's top 40 R&B singles Charts, a record unsurpassed by any other artist. Seventeen on them reached number one, a feat topped only by Stevie Wonder and Louis Jordan, and equaled only by Aretha Franklin.James Brown's status as "The Godfather Of Soul" remains undiminished. Indeed, he has picked up a new generation of fans who have become familiar with his funk grooves through their frequent use as samples on rap records. A charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Brown added to his collections of accolades when he received a special lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 1992.

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday remains (four decades after her death) the most famous of all jazz singers. "Lady Day" (as she was named by Lester Young) had a small voice and did not scat but her innovative behind-the-beat phrasing made her quite influential. The emotional intensity that she put into the words she sang (particularly in later years) was very memorable and sometimes almost scary; she often really did live the words she sang.

Nat King Cole Nat King Cole, American pianist

and singer, one of the most advanced jazz pianists of the 1940s and a leading popular singer of the 1950s and 1960s. Born Nathaniel Adams Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, he grew up in Chicago.” In 1946 Cole's recording of singer Mel Torme's “The Christmas Song” became a hit, and in 1948 Cole achieved even greater success with “Nature Boy,” which sold more than a million copies soon after its release. His other hits include “Route 66” (1946), “Unforgettable” (1950), and “Mona Lisa” (1950), which won an Academy Award in 1950 as the theme song for the movie Captain Carey, U.S.A.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti Born in Abeokuta, Nigeria in

1938, was a singer-composer, trumpet, sax and keyboard player, bandleader, and politician. Kuti was one of Africa's most controversial musicians and throughout his life he continued to fight for the rights of the common man (and woman) despite vilification, harassment, and even imprisonment by the government of Nigeria. Born to Yoruban parents, Kuti was strongly influenced by both parents, his mother being Funmilayo, a leading figure in the nationalist struggle. Practically all of his records are dominated by political events and discussions from the approach of Pan-Africanism.

Youssou n'Dour Was born in Dakar in 1959 and

began singing as a child performer at neighborhood gatherings in the tough Medina section of Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. He took formally to the stage at age 12 and by his mid-teens was singing regularly with the Star Band, the most successful group in Senegal at that time. In 1979, he formed his own ensemble, the Etoile de Dakar, which, by 1981, had evolved into The Super Etoile. The most famous band in Africa, The Super Etoile, guided by Youssou N'Dour has crafted and invented a thoroughly modern African pop style, one which has gone on to influence artists as diverse as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon.

Miriam Makeba South African diva Miriam Makeba is well known

throughout the world known as the Mama Africa and the Empress of African Song. Born in 1932 in South Afica, she first came to the public's attention as a featured vocalist with the Manhattan Brothers in 1954. She soon left to record with her all-woman group the Skylarks while touring Southern Africa with Alf Herberts' African Jazz and Variety, an 18 month tour that launched the careers of many African artists.

In 1959, Makeba's incredible voice help win her the role of the female lead in the show, King Kong, a Broadway-inspired South African musical. She then went to conquer America where she sang at President Kennedy's birthday and worked in New York with Harry Belafonte creating such classics as "The Click Song" and "Pata Pata".

In 1963 she testified about apartheid before the United Nations, as a result the South African government revoked her citizship and right of return. She stayed in the U.S. and married Stokely Carmichael, a Black Panther leader. That began her exile from her South African homeland. After harassment by U.S. authorities she fled to exile in Guinea.

Makeba returned to world prominence when she performed with Paul Simon on the Graceland tour. Finally in the late 1980's she returned to her homeland as a free South African.

Ismael Lo Born in 1960, is the son of a

Senegalese civil servant who loved American soul music. Lo grew up listening to stars like James Brown, Wicked Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding. Lo built his first guitar from a cooking oil can, and learned to play harmonica and guitar together by nailing his harmonica to the wall.

Lo was a guitarist for Super Diamano, a mbalax blues band, for five years before leaving to start his own solo career. Lo is often called the "Bob Dylan of Senegal" because of his guitar and harmonica combination coupled with his deeply satisfying lyrics. As Lo himself says:

"I speak of racism, poverty, famine, and the relationships among people"

Baaba Maal Also known as The Nightingale because

of his clear high-pitched voice, was born in the riverside town of Podor in the Northern region of Senegal. He sings in Pulaar, the language of the Fula ethnic group, a nomadic people also found in Niger, Somalia, Guinea, Mali, and Benin. As a young boy he learned to play the kora and later turned to the guitar as his instrument of choice.

Maal was trained at the music conservatory in Dakar and won a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he studied composition and arrangement of Western music. While in Paris Maal hooked up with his longtime friend, blind singer Mansour Seck, they returned to Senegal and put together the group Dande Lenol (Voice of the People). Their landmark release, Firin' in Fouta, was worldwide success.

Angélique Kidjo Kidjo was born in Cotonou, Benin. Her father is from the Fon people of Ouidah and

her mother from the Yoruba people. She grew up listening to James Brown, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, and Santana.

By the time she was six, Kidjo was performing with her mother's theatre troupe,giving her an early appreciation for traditional music and dance. She started singing in her school band Les Sphinx and found success as a teenager with her adaptation of Miriam Makeba's "Les Trois Z" which played on national radio. She recorded the album Pretty with the Camerounese producer Ekambi Brilliant and her brother Oscar. It featured the songs Ninive, Gbe Agossi and a tribute to the singer Bella Bellow, one of her her role models. The success of the album allowed her to tour all over West Africa. Continuing political conflicts in Benin prevented her from being an independent artist in her own country and led her to relocate to Paris in 1983.

She has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002. With UNICEF, she has travelled to many countries in Africa. Reports on her visits can be found on the UNICEF site: Benin, Senegal, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Syria, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Kidjo founded The Batonga Foundation which gives girls a secondary school and higher education so they can take the lead in changing Africa. The foundation is doing this by granting scholarships, building secondary schools, increasing enrollment, improving teaching standards, providing school supplies, supporting mentor programs, exploring alternative education models and advocating for community awareness of the value of education for girls.

She has campaigned for Oxfam at the 2005 Hong Kong WTO meeting, for the their Fair Trade Campaign and travelled with them in North Kenya and at the border of Darfur and Chad with a group of women leaders in 2007 and participated to the video for the In My Name Campaign with Will I Am from The Black Eyed Peas

She has hosted the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's Prize for Achievement in African Leadership in Alexandria, Egypt on November 26, 2007 and on November 15, 2008

Positive Black Soul Also known as PBS, is a hip hop

group based in Dakar, Senegal, one of the first such collectives in the country. Founded in 1989, the group is composed of Didier Sourou Awadi (alias DJ Awadi) and Amadou Barry (alias Doug E. Tee or Duggy-Tee), both of whom had previously been in other hip hop groups. They perform in the English, French, and Wolof languages and use traditional Senegalese instruments as part of their songs. Political and social activism have played important roles in the group since it was founded.

Daara J (Pronounced [daːɻa ʄiː], which means

"School of Life" in Wolof) are a Senegalese rap trio that consists of N'Dongo D, Aladji Man, and Faada Freddy. Their music takes influence from hip hop, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and reggae and is performed in English, French, Spanish, and Wolof.

Daara J was formed in 1997 and quickly became popular in Senegal from the release of their first cassette album, Daara J. They followed in 1999 with a more politically themed recording, Xalima, which integrated numerous musical ideas and instruments from Senegal and other African countries. 2003's Boomerang was critically acclaimed and furthered the combination of various musical and lyrical influences of the previous two recordings. Activism has also been an important aspect of the group's philosophy since it was founded.

Rafael Hernández Is considered by many to be the greatest

composer of Puerto Rican music. Was born in the town of Aguadilla, Puerto

Rico, into a poor family. As a child, he learned the craft of cigar making, from which he made a modest living. He also grew to love music and asked his parents to permit him to become a full-time music student. When he was 12 years old, Hernández studied music in San Juan, under the guidance of music professors Jose Ruellan Lequenica and Jesús Figueroa. He learned to play many musical instruments, among them the clarinet, tuba, violin, piano and guitar. However, according to many Puerto Rican music historians, it was when he learned how to write music that his life and the history of Puerto Rican music would change forever. At the age of 14, he played for the Cocolia Orquestra. Hernández moved to San Juan where he played for the municipal orchestra under the director Manuel Tizol.

Rafael Cortijo

Born in Santurce's Parada 21, Puerto Rico, d. 1983, New York, USA. Bandleader, percussionist, (timbales, conga, bongo, maracas and other percussion), composer Cortijo is a significant figure in the history of Latin music. In the 50s, with his Combo, he pioneered a modernized brass and saxophone-led danceband form of the Puerto Rican music and dance idioms, bomba and plena.

Catalino “Tite” Curet Alonso Was born on 12 Febuary 1926 in Guayama and raised in

the Barrio Obrero section of Santurce. His father was a Spanish teacher and a musician with the orchestra of Simón Madera.

In 1968 he began his career as a professional songwriter with the song La Tirana, a tune recorded by Lupe Victoria Yoli, better known “La Lupe”. La Lupe brought international fame to the song and Curet went on to become an internationally respected composer, musicologist, and journalist.

He continued writing romantic themes and dance tunes that would be recorded a who’s-who of Latin American artists such as the Fania All-Stars, Tito Rodriguez, Olga Guillot, Chucho Avellanet, Lucesita Benitez, Elena Burke, Cheo Feliciano, Rafael Cortijo, Ismael Miranda, Roberto Llanes, Ismael Rivera, Miguilito Valdes, Jose Luis Monero, Joe Valle, Sophy, Danny Rivera, Vicentico Valdes, Tommy Olivencia, Ruben Blades, Willie Colon, Hector Lavoe, and Frankie Ruiz.

Curet Alonso’s music has won countless awards at international music festivals in countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and Paraguay and he has gained recognition as Puerto Rico’s best composer. He was named best Latin American composer for two consecutive years by the Record World Magazine, but perhaps most telling is the sheer popularity among so many great performers and music fans of all age groups.

TEGO CALDERON Tegui Calderón Rosario (born February 2,

1972) is a Puerto Rican rapper. He is best known as Tego Calderón, or by the nickname "El Abayarde", which refers to a tiny, slow-moving species of fire ant found in Puerto Rico. The name is in reference to his behavior as a child; mischievous and troublesome.]

He not only records hip hop music but also mambo, salsa (e.g. "Planté bandera" on his debut album, and "Llora, Llora" and "Llámame" with Oscar D'León) in 2006, blues ("Mardi Gras", on the 2006 album) and reggaetón. In addition, he has also made songs that are pure reggae, (e.g. "Chillin'" from the 2006 album The Underdog/El Subestimado). He also believes that Jamaican dancehall reggae and hip hop along with Salsa are the roots of Reggaeton. His album El Abayarde made him a major Latin star. Calderón has received awards for his work, including a Source Award for "International Artist of the Year" and a Tu Música award. He has also received nomination in several ceremonies, including the Latin Grammy, Billboard Award, Premios Lo Nuestro and Premios La Gente.

Susana Baca Susana Baca de la Colina (b. Chorrillos,

Lima Province, Peru, 1944) is a prominent Peruvian singer of Afro-Peruvian descent. She has been a key figure in the revival of Afro-Peruvian music within Peru (see, for example, dancers from the Perú Negro troupe, as well as "Festejo" music), which, like the culture that produced it, had previously been little recognized, but which is now regarded as an important part of Peruvian culture. Baca has contributed much to its international popularity, which began in 1995 with the release of the compilation CD The Soul of Black Peru. The album, which features the Baca song "Maria Lando", was released by the Luaka Bop record label, which belongs to ex-Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.

Gilberto Gil Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira (born June 26, 1942),

better known as Gilberto Gil (IPA: [ʒiu[berto ʒiu[]), is a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, known for both his musical innovation and his political commitment. From 2003 to 2008, he served as his country's Minister of Culture in the administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Gil began playing music as a child and was still a teenager when he joined his first band. He started out as a bossa nova musician, eventually writing songs that reflected a new focus on political awareness and social activism. He was a key figure in the Música Popular Brasileira and Tropicalismo movements of the 1960s, alongside artists such as longtime collaborator Caetano Veloso. The Brazilian military regime that took power in 1964 saw both Gil and Veloso as a threat, and the two were held for nine months in 1969 before they were told to leave the country. Gil moved to London, but returned to the Brazilian state of Bahia in 1972 and continued his musical career, as well as working as a politician and environmental advocate.

Gil's musical style incorporates an eclectic range of influences, including rock, Brazilian genres including samba and forró, African music, and reggae.

Milton Nascimento Nascimento was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His mother was the

maid Maria do Carmo Nascimento. When he was just a few months old, the boy was adopted by the family for whom his mother had previously worked: the couple Josino Brito Campos, a banker, mathematics teacher and electronic technician; and Lília Silva Campos, a music teacher and choir singer. At 18 months, his biological mother died and he moved with his adopted parents to the city of Três Pontas, in the state of Minas Gerais. Nascimento was also an occasional DJ on a radio station that his father had run at one point.[1] He lived in the boroughs of Laranjeiras and Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro.

In the early stages of his career, Nascimento played in two samba groups, Evolussamba and Sambacana. In 1963, at age 19, he moved to Belo Horizonte where his friendship with Lô Borges led to the Clube da Esquina ("corner club") movement.[2] Other members included Beto Guedes, Toninho Horta, Wagner Tiso, and Flávio Venturini, with whom he shared compositions and melodies. One of these was "Canção do Sal" which was first interpreted by Elis Regina in 1966, leading to a television appearance with Nascimento.[1] The collective, as well as some others, released Clube da Esquina in 1972. Several singles were released along with it which became hits.[3]

Nascimento is famous for his falsetto and tonal range, as well for highly acclaimed songs such as "Maria, Maria", "Canção da América" ("Song from America"), "Travessia", "Bailes da Vida" and "Coração de Estudante" ("Student's Heart"). The lyrics remember the funeral of the student Edson Luís, killed by police officers in 1968. The song became the hymn for the Diretas Já social-political campaign in 1984, was played at the funeral of the late President of Brazil Tancredo Neves the next year, and was also played at Ayrton Senna's funeral.

While his reputation within Brazil was firmly established with his Clube da Esquina works, Nascimento's international breakthrough came with his appearance on jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter's 1974 album Native Dancer. This led to widespread acclaim, and collaborations with American stars such as Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, George Duke and Quincy Jones. Angelus (1994) features appearances by Pat Metheny, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Jack DeJohnette, Nana Vasconcelos, Jon Anderson, James Taylor, and Peter Gabriel. Through his friendship with guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, Nascimento came to work with the pop rock band Duran Duran in 1993. Nascimento co-wrote and performed the song "Breath After Breath", featured on the band's 1993 album Duran Duran.[3] He also performed with the band in concert when they toured in Brazil in support of that album.