Evolutionary Blues: West Oakland's Music Legacy | |
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Directed by | Cheryl Fabio |
Written by | T. Watts |
Produced by | Cheryl Fabio |
Cinematography | Godofredo Dizon |
Edited by | Meadow Holmes |
Release date |
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Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | USA |
Language | English |
Evolutionary Blues: West Oakland's Music Legacy, is a 2017 United States documentary film directed by Cheryl Fabio and co-produced by director herself with KTOP and Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice. [1] [2] The film revolves around the musician West Oakland and the Oakland Blues where described how postwar development impacted African Americans and their musical heritage. [3]
The film received positive reviews and won several awards at international film festivals. [4] The film premiered at the Grand Lake Theatre on 27 September 2017. [5]
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as perhaps "the first ever rock star".
Marvin Pentz Gaye Jr. was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He helped shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of successes, which earned him the nicknames "Prince of Motown" and "Prince of Soul".
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1957.
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was an American blues singer and influential early-blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers. Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing. Her qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues".
Randall Hank Williams, known professionally as Hank Williams Jr. or Bocephus, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. His musical style has been described as a blend of rock, blues, and country. He is the son of country musician Hank Williams and the father of musicians Holly Williams and Hank Williams III, and the grandfather of Coleman Williams. He is also the half brother of Jett Williams.
Berry Gordy III known professionally as Berry Gordy Jr., is an American retired record executive, record producer, songwriter, film producer and television producer. He is best known as the founder of the Motown record label and its subsidiaries, which was the highest-earning African-American business for decades.
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York.
MGM Records was a record label founded by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946 for the purpose of releasing soundtrack recordings of their musical films. It transitioned into a pop music label that continued into the 1970s. The company also released soundtrack albums of the music for some of their non-musical films as well, and on rare occasions, cast albums of off-Broadway musicals such as The Fantasticks and the 1954 revival of The Threepenny Opera. In one instance, MGM Records released the highly successful soundtrack album of a film made by another studio, Columbia Pictures's Born Free (1966).
Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., better known by his stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician. He plays the guitar, piano, banjo, harmonica, and many other instruments, often incorporating elements of world music into his work. Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa, India, Hawaii, and the South Pacific.
The Funk Brothers were a group of Detroit-based session musicians who performed the backing to most Motown recordings from 1959 until the company moved to Los Angeles in 1972.
The Chicago Blues Festival is an annual event held in June, that features three days of performances by top-tier blues musicians, both old favorites and the up-and-coming. It is hosted by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and always occurs in early June. Until 2017, the event always took place at and around Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park, adjacent to the Lake Michigan waterfront east of the Loop in Chicago. In 2017, the festival was moved to the nearby Millennium Park.
Robert Joseph Bare Jr. is an American singer-songwriter and musician.
Tony Saunders is an American bass player and synthesizer player in the genres of jazz, gospel, R&B, pop and world music. He is a composer, arranger, music producer, and head of his own studio.
Stan Shaw is an American actor. He began his career performing on Broadway musicals Hair and Via Galactica, before making his feature film debut appearing in Truck Turner (1974). Shaw later appeared in films such as The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976), Rocky (1976), The Boys in Company C (1978), The Great Santini (1979), Runaway (1984), The Monster Squad (1987), Harlem Nights (1989), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Rising Sun (1993), Cutthroat Island (1995), Daylight (1996) and Snake Eyes (1998).
The Gordys are an African-American family of businesspeople and music industry executives. They were born to Georgia-reared parents Berry "Pops" Gordy Sr. and Bertha Gordy and raised in Detroit, where most of the siblings played a pivotal role in the international acceptance of rhythm and blues music as a crossover phenomenon in the 1960s. The accomplishment is attributable to the creation of Motown, a company founded by the seventh-oldest sibling, Berry Gordy Jr..
Walfredo Reyes Jr. is a Cuban American musician who is an expert in drum set and auxiliary percussion, and a music educator and clinician. He has performed with many jazz, Latin, World music, World fusion, Afro-Cuban, and rock bands as a touring, session recording, and full-time player/performer. Reyes is known for his fusion of many of the world's percussion techniques, including the ability to play a drum set with his hands in addition to the traditional use of drumsticks; it was said that he can "sound like a drummer and a percussionist at the same time" He was a long-term member of Santana. He was also a member of Chicago as the percussionist from 2012 to 2018, at which point he took over the drum seat. He also performed in the band of former Nazareth guitarist Manny Charlton.
Nathan Williams Sr. is an American zydeco accordionist, singer and songwriter. He established his band Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas in 1985.
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992 is a 2017 American documentary film directed by John Ridley about the decade preceding and including the 1992 Los Angeles riots. It was produced by Lincoln Square Productions, a subsidiary of ABC News, and was released in theaters in Los Angeles and New York on April 21, 2017. A shorter version aired on ABC on April 28, 2017. A rebroadcast of the film took place on June 16, 2020. The film has received critical acclaim.