Hill returns to the festival’s stage after a surprise cameo performance at last year’s festival with her former Fugees bandmate, Wyclef Jean. In 20, Essence was staged virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. New Orleans has hosted every festival except for 2006, when it moved to Houston while the Superdome underwent Hurricane Katrina -related repairs. It’s exciting that throughout out each night we’ll feature younger artists alongside the legends.” We’re attracting younger generations now so we’ve had to grow. It’s important to have the attention of the audience we’re serving. “That’s representative of the growth and the direction we’re taking the event. “This is the first time three black women emcees are headlining,” Holmes noted. Hakeem Holmes, a New Orleans native and newly appointed vice president of the festival, describes the festival as a “crown jewel of Black culture” that “plays a pivotal role in the amplification and celebration of the contributions of the Black community through business, music and more.” Blocks away, the Superdome will host nightly ticketed performances by artists including headliners Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott and Megan Thee Stallion as the festival commemorates 50 years of hip-hop. Morial Convention Center will hold most of the free workshops, vendor exhibits and celebrity meet-and-greets. The Essence Music Festival has since morphed into the Essence Festival of Culture, which, in its 29th year, kicked off Thursday and goes through July 3 across various venues in downtown New Orleans. “No matter what age you are, there’s something about the music that lets you get inside it.NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Nearly 30 years ago, creators of Essence Magazine came to New Orleans to celebrate the publication’s 25th anniversary with a salute to Black women highlighting culture, empowerment conversations with the nation’s thought leaders and, of course, music. “It’s going to live on,” she says, mentioning that her recording engineer has a Steely Dan cover band. Gryner sees no end to the allure of yacht rock and the Dan. You can hear it on Midnite Cruiser – “The time of our time has come and gone / I fear we’ve been waiting too long” – and on Reelin’ in the Years: “Your everlasting summer and you can see it fading fast, so you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last.” The Steely Dan album Can’t Buy a Thrill turned 50 last year, and even in 1972 Fagen was already in a wistful state of mind. “It’s showing our musical expertise and not being ashamed of it.” One does not hire studio cats of that level for an exercise in irony. On the sessions were drummer Shannon Forrest, keyboardist Pat Coil and guitarist Pat Buchanan, who have toured with Toto, McDonald and Hall & Oates, respectively. Gryner decided to make Business & Pleasure when she realized the heavy musicians of the yachting era were dying off and taking their magic tricks with them. A bonkers interview Fagen gave during the pandemic motivated lead track, Loose Wig.īut the music is serious. The song Jack was inspired by General Hospital’s Jack Wagner’s keening ballad All I Need from 1984 and the actor-singer’s love of golf. Some of the Business & Pleasure’s lyrics (written by Gryner’s partner, the poet Michael Holmes) are tongue in cheek. Instead, she ended up making an album with Mollin, whose credits appear on records by Jimmy Webb, Dan Hill, America, Johnny Mathis and others. She tried to pitch a song to Michael McDonald (of Doobie Brothers fame) through producer Fred Mollin. Her new album, Business & Pleasure, was made with the purest of yacht intentions. “I championed the lo-fi aesthetic, but eventually who you are has to come out.” “I’m as much to blame as anyone,” says the Canadian singer-songwriter, who released her debut album, And Distrust It, independently in 1995. Gryner understands the snobbish attitude. As Pappademas points out in his book, Steely Dan came to represent “an affront to the values that indie rock had inherited from punk – a genre often romanticized as having emerged as a necessary corrective to slick mainstream 1970s and ‘80s music made in expensive studios by self-regarding cocaine addicts.” Some later sneered at the quest for the pristine. “They had the greatest session drummers ever, but they wanted something slightly more perfect,” Pappademas says. Fagen and Becker even commissioned the invention of a US$150,000 drum-sampling machine. In a bid to capture grace, warmth and magnificence on magnetic tape, the whims of precisionists were indulged: Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler was hired for hours of work on Gaucho, but only 40 seconds of his efforts were ultimately used. Fagen and the late Becker were obsessive craftsmen working in an analogue era in which recording budgets were as sky-high as the people who made the music.
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