| Norah Jones. Feels Like Home (Blue Note/Capitol/Gala)
American singer, pianist and songwriter Norah Jones won eight Grammy Awards last year and her albums are selling well around the world. Even in Russia. No one knows where this success comes from. Extremely sparse music, combining elements of country, folk, and some distant echo of jazz standards, and even sung in a quiet voice - how can this be in demand by millions of people? There are a thousand explanations for why this happens in the West. The relative fame of Miss Jones in our country is more understandable - she fell into the niche where Sade was 10-15 years ago. Despite all the stylistic dissimilarity, there is an obvious coincidence: both can be called “jazz for everyone” or “variety for the smart.” The consumer of such music is an educated, middle-aged person with some money. It is impossible to “load” it with the MTV format; such a consumer treats Russian pop, Russian rock and chanson radio stations (that is, the entire radio space) with innate disgust, and goes to a music store as if on a hunt: in the literal sense of “catching” new interesting music about which there is no information anywhere.
Norah Jones' new album Feels Like Home differs from her previous one (Come Away With Me, 2001) for the better. It's more uptempo, tighter, with a rocking rhythm. Norah Jones Group - "quiet storm"; Such a small semi-acoustic line-up and such sparse arrangements create a certain power. Almost all the songs on the disc were written by Nora and her band (unlike, again, the previous one, where there were several covers of American folk and country classics). Here is only a cover of Tom Waits (!) The Long Way Home. There's also a fun experiment in turning Duke Ellington's Don't Miss You At All into a song by "adding lyrics."
And one more thing. What’s especially nice is that the Russian reprint of Feels Like Home is made just like the American one.
Cheb Mami. Du Sud Au Nord (Virgin France)
The work of the French singer of Algerian origin Sheba Mami is rather uneven. Cheb performs the Algerian musical style "rai" with elements of European pop; Some of his recordings can be enjoyed only by fans of French chanson, others are of interest only to collectors of music from the Middle East, but there are also some that can be recommended to absolutely everyone. The latter includes the unforgettable Je n'ai regrette de rien - Sheb performed it on last year's album - a dedication to Edith Piaf. Obvious successes in getting into the pop theme include the new disc Du Sud Au Nord (“From South to North”), a collection of duets both released on the albums of other artists and unreleased. As a result, we have genre and stylistic diversity. Relaxed sunny reggae from Ziggy Marley and the group Aswad is contrasted with the furious rap from the mouths of 113 and K-Mel, and they, in turn, are countered by the pseudo-rock Italian Zucchero with his famous 1996 song Cosi Celeste. The great success of the album (and Sheba) is a duet with the English singer of Indian origin Sushila Raman (several years ago she performed at our club "Dom"). Together they perform the charming ballad Nagumomo from Raman's solo album Salt Rain. Egyptian singer Samira Said - as if especially for those who have warm memories of the Egyptian stage - that is, a killer rhythm and the maximum of the Arabic word “habibi” (i.e. “beloved”) in the lyrics. The song (with Sheb) is from her 2002 album Youm Wara Youm. Despite the somewhat random nature of this half-album-half-compilation, Du Sud Au Nord represents world-mix at its best. The stunning clash of Sheba's heavenly vocals with various famous people from other countries may help spread the singer's fame. If, of course, such a goal was set. Alexander BELYAEV
|
