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Johnny Mathis to Get ELLA Award

Photos AP Photo

Tue Jun 13,10:08 AM ET

Pop singer Johnny Mathis will receive the 15th annual ELLA Award

from the Society of Singers, the group announced.

The award, named after its first recipient,

jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, honors entertainers for their

professional success and contributions to charitable and

humanitarian causes. Mathis, 70, is celebrating 50 years in show business.

"Johnny sings from the heart, with one of the most identifiable voices

and individual vocal styles of our time," Jerry F. Sharell, president and chief executive officer

of the Society of Singers, said in a statement issued Monday. "He was also one of the

first singers to join SOS and while he doesn't seek publicity for doing it, Johnny has been hosting and performing at charity events for decades."

Mathis' hits include "Chances Are," "The Twelfth of Never" and "Wonderful! Wonderful." He earned a Grammy nomination for his 2005 album "Isn't It Romantic: The Standards Album."

He will received the ELLA Award on Sept. 12 at the Beverly Hilton.

Previous ELLA recipients include Frank Sinatra, Elton John, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Julie Andrews, Placido Domingo, Barry Manilow and Celine Dion.

 

ok, so I was a bit concered at first, because WHY would Johnny Mathis

get an award. right? but considering that his fellow recipients include both

Barry Manilow AND Celine Dion, I suspect my theories are correct.  Once more,

the award seemed to be in fine for at its onset, Ella Fitzgerarld, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett.

Sadly, their standards must have dropped ;-)

 

 

Mwaha, This is what I spent the last 20 hours doing... 

 (when I wasn't checking the website)

 

 

 

Ani DiFranco: An Anathema to the Corporate Music World,

Heroine of the Independents

By Joni A.E. Lee

joeekhoff@yahoo.com

American Music-A Cultural History

Hubertus Zander

Summer 2006

Artist Ani DiFranco is truly unconventional in terms of mainstream music. In a music industry supported by corporate record companies and filled with bureaucracy, DiFranco’s success as an independent is most impressive. Her funky voice and erratic guitar playing, coupled with politically charged lyrics, set DiFranco apart from the corporate-made “Pop Tarts” and make Ani DiFranco one of the most interesting artists of the 21^st Century. This paper argues that Ani DiFranco’s  unique position as an independent musician and record producer allows her many freedoms not shared by other corporately signed musicians, and has allowed her to retain her creativity and artistic integrity as well as an intimate relationship with her audience throughout the last two decades of her career in the music industry.

Ani DiFranco was born in the fall of 1970 in Buffalo, New York.  She is the daughter of a Jewish-American mother and an Italian-American father, who were both intensely interested in folk music (Wikipedia).  DiFranco grew up listening to great folk artists such as Arlo and Woody Guthrie, Joni Mitchell and the Beatles.  Her music career began at the age of 9, when her guitar teacher helped her land a gig playing covers of Beatle standards at a local coffeehouse (Answers.com).  Ani grew up in a troubled home and her experiences throughout her childhood and adolescence would later become the material for her songs, the angsty teenage poetry that she wrote to cope with her life soon developed into lyrics (Righteous Babe). 

At the early age of 15, DiFranco declared her independence and left her crumbling family life to go live with friends while she toured the Buffalo club circuit (Wikipedia). Four years later at the age of 19, DiFranco had written over 100 original songs (Answers.com).  At her concerts she was flooded with so many requests from adoring fans pleading for copies of her performances that she recorded a demo and pressed 500 tapes to sell at her shows (Answer.com).  After these first recordings were sold out, DiFranco decided to create her own record label, Righteous Babe, so that she could better distribute her recordings (RighteousBabe). Since the creation of her label, DiFranco has produced a new record every year since 1990, not including compilation albums and recorded live performances (Bell).

Unlike many of today’s musicians, who owe their success to sound studio enhancements, and expensive advertising paid for by their record labels, DiFranco owes much of her success to her time spent in front of live audiences. Ani is a true show-woman and her amazing and energetic stage presence and intense live performances are her best publicity (Clark). DiFranco attributes her onstage antics and percussive guitar playing to her early days of playing in noisy crowded bars, when she would have to invent interesting and innovative ways of making herself heard and holding her audiences attention (Righteous Babe). During her performances she often tells off the cuff stories about her life as she tunes her guitar. Although the venues that she plays in front of today are much larger than the smoky bars and college cafeterias of her youth, she still maintains an intimate feel to her shows whether she is playing for an audience of 15 or 1,500 people (Clark).  

Since she hit the road in the early 1990s, she has spent most of her time on tour (Prasad).  DiFranco finds touring to be a very important part of the song writing process.  She feels that audience reaction and interaction to new material allows the song to grow and develop past the words and chords, and really take on a life of its own (Prasad).  Currently, Ani is on tour throughout the United States and Canada, promoting her newest album Reprieve which will debut on 8 August, 2006 (Righteous Babe).   

Ani DiFranco’s musical style is very difficult to classify, as she uses an eclectic range of styles and moods throughout her music (Answers.com).  Her songs are often characterized by popular media as being “angry girl” feminist music, which often alienates her from mainstream attention.  DiFranco resents this label, as she feels that this label pigeonholes her and ignores what she feels to be the universal nature of her creative output (Dietz).  Although Ani DiFranco identifies herself as a folk singer, this description does not necessarily align her with the long haired, guitar-strumming musicians of her parent’s generation. In an interview with Pavement magazine, she describes her somewhat alternative definition of the term “folk:” 

           

"Folk music is not an acoustic guitar--that's not where the heart of it is. I use the word 'folk' in reference to punk music and rap music. It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority (Pavement)."

 

Each one of Ani’s 18 albums is different from the rest in style, mood and instrumentation (Wikipedia). Throughout her career, DiFranco has been highly experimental and has worked with a wide array of styles. She combines elements from many different types of music including: folk, jazz, funk, blues, punk, soul and rock.  She often uses innovative and unusual instruments, often regarded as risky by other artists such as the banjo and accordion in the opening riff of “Angry Anymore,” from her album entitled Up, Up, Up; and a brass ensemble in “Deep Dish” from Little Plastic Castles.  Ani DiFranco’s music is constantly evolving and changing from year to year and album to album (Bell). She has reinvented herself time and again, but still has remained true to her artistic creativity and integrity. 

Although Ani DiFranco often travels with a 5-piece band and has performed with artists such as Prince and Cyndi Lauper, at heart she is a one woman show (Wikipedia).   DiFranco’s unique staccato, finger picking method of guitar playing and unconventional vocals allow her to stand alone as an artist (Meikle). Ani DiFranco uses a wide vocal and audio range in her music. She not only sings, she also whispers, yells, moans, groans and howls.  DiFranco often delivers her lyrics as read poetry, unaccompanied by music. She is known for her unique style of melodious speaking, which is notable for its rhythmic variation, staccato punctuation and humorously sarcastic tone (Miekle).

Ani DiFranco is also known for her technical ability on the acoustic guitar.  Throughout her performances, she uses a variable arsenal of six guitars, each with its own unique sound and voice, (Ouellette, Prasad).   Her rapid finger picking technique is filled with complicated riffs, punctuated by percussive notes. DiFranco has become famous in many guitar circles as a guitar player who makes use of a plethora of unconventional alternate tunings (Answers.com).   DiFranco uses her guitar not only as an accompaniment to her singing, but her playing often acts as a second vocalist itself.  She uses her guitar to emphasize what she is singing, and in the instrumental portions of her songs, her guitar coveys almost as much emotion as her lyrics.  Except for a few singles, most of DiFranco’s music is too edgy and avant-garde to receive airtime on mainstream radio stations (Bell).

Ani DiFranco’s lyrics also set her apart from other contemporary musicians. Her songs are filled with alliteration and witty word play that keep the listener interested (Answers.com). Her music is often like a running monologue sang in a conversational tone that makes the listener feel as though they have entered into an intimate conversation with her.

Although painting pretty word pictures about love and romance is easier and sells more records, Ani DiFranco bares her soul in her lyrics and writes about real life experiences and her perceptions of the world around her (Meikle).  She is not afraid to make ugly music and she does not shrink away from making people uncomfortable or angry (Bell).  Throughout her albums, DiFranco sympathetically tackles socially charged issues such as rape, sexism, reproductive rights, homophobia and American foreign policy (Prasad).  Instead of being repelled by her often politically charged lyrics, DiFranco’s audience is drawn in with the compassion and emotional intensity that Ani uses to discuss these topics. Much of Ani DiFranco’s early popularity can be attributed to a loyal fan-base of politically-minded college students, who embraced DiFranco’s unapologetically honest lyrics and enthusiastically spread her popularity through word of mouth to college campuses all throughout the United States and Canada (Answers.com). 

One of the most surprising and inspiring aspects of Ani DiFranco’s success is that she has done it all on her own, without the support of the corporate music industry.  At the age of 20 years old, DiFranco created Righteous Babe Records, a channel through which she could produce and distribute her own music on her own terms (Gillen, Artistic Integrity). In lieu of her success, corporate giants have attempted to entice DiFranco away from her grassroots background with promises of higher record sales and more public visibility. Much to their chagrin, DiFranco has remained true to herself and to her independence (Davis). “I just don’t think you can say something meaningful within the corporate music structure,” says DiFranco, “And I know that I don’t want to be a part of that structure. I don’t want to support it, and I want to do everything I can do to actively challenge it on a daily basis (Gillen, Artistic Integrity).”

As an autonomous musician and producer, DiFranco has the opportunity to express herself not only through singing, guitar playing and producing; but also through the song writing, poetry and painting that she includes in her albums (PZ).  Being self-sustaining also means that she determines her own release dates for her albums and her own touring schedule a luxury not afforded to musicians signed under corporate agreements. 

Although the road to success was not a quick one for DiFranco, her staying power seems much more concrete than many of her early contemporaries (Gillen, Plugs In).   These contemporaries were helped along by corporate labels and exploded on to the music scene in the early 1990s with huge success; however, they have since faded into a distant memory (Gillen, Plugs In).  In contrast, Ani receives little to no attention from alternative and college radio stations, and remains largely unnoticed by the mainstream media.  Despite this, her records continue to sell and her label continues to grow.  She has even added several new fledgling artists to her label, as well as produced several albums for folk legend Utah Phillips (Righteous Babe).

In recent years DiFranco has also aligned herself with the Not in Our Name project, a group of artists and politically aware citizens who actively protest the Iraqi war. Along with other members of this project, DiFranco released her song, “Self Evident” directly to the internet, free of change, in the form of Mp3s and RealVideo, yet another slap in the face of the large record labels, who in recent years have been scrambling to tighten their hold on the rights and distribution of music in the age of digital file sharing (Scherzinger). 

In conclusion, Ani DiFranco is one of the most talented, yet underrated artists of the 21^st Century. As an independent musician she is able to produce unique, unconventional and uncensored music that remains true to her beliefs.  Although DiFranco flies under the radar of mainstream attention, she retains a loyal and devoted fan base, and is able to not only sustain, but also grow her record company Righteous Babe Records in Buffalo, New York.  In a time when many of the large corporate record companies are suffering cutbacks from a downward spiraling sales trend, DiFranco is able to support her small staff as well as stay afloat financially (Gillen, Artistic Integrity). As more and more artists follow DiFranco’s footsteps and step out into the world of musical independence, the world will begin to see a shift from the bland, homogenous corporate sponsored music that currently proliferates, to independent music that is unique in its form and socially relevant in its content.

Bibliography

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5. Clark, Rick. "Continental Drift". Billboard October 22, 1994
6. Davis, Alisha. "You Can't Fence Her In". Newsweek Jan. 18, 1999: 56
7. Dietz, Roger. "Female folk artists fight pigeonholing". Billboard Nov. 11, 1995: 13.
8. Gillen, Marilyn A. "Ani DiFranco: Envisioning A Future That Makes Artistic Integrity A Top Priority And Puts Black Ink on The Bottom Line". Billboard Jan. 8, 2000: 60
9. Gillen, Marilyn A. "Righteous Babe's DiFranco Plugs In". Billboard May 18, 1996:1
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11. Ouellete, Dan.  “What They Play.” Acoustic Guitar. Issue 149. (May 2005).  http://acousticguitar.com/issues/pastissues/toc.asp?IssueID=157
12. Prasad, Anil. "Songwriting: Ani DiFranco Knuckles Down". Guitar Player April 2005:31.
13. PZ, "Ani DiFranco". Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine May-July 1996: 130.
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