32 minutes ago

AUSTIN, Texas - South by Southwest has always been known as a music festival that flourishes with indie-rock bands, singer-songwriter types, classic blues players, metal acts and even some country artists. But hip-hop? Not so much.

That’s been changing thanks to SXSW music programmer Matt Sonzala, who has worked steadily to increase the profile of rap at the festival, which hosts hundreds and hundreds of acts each year. Among the 150 hip-hop performers at this year’s event include Ice Cube, Bun B, The Clipse, Dizzee Rascal, 2 Live Crew, Talib Kweli, and the Cool Kids.

“Honestly I didn’t know too much about this, and people would say, ‘What — you don’t know what that is? … If you don’t go, you trippin’!'” said Del the Funky Homosapien, playing SXSW for the first time this year. “That’s when I started realizing.”

While the genres at SXSW have always been varied, it is more known for its rock. But with the growth of Southern rap, especially nearby Houston’s burgeoning rap scene, Sonzala felt something needed to be done about the dearth of hip-hop at the festival.

“Early on, I was trying to get artists to come down,” Sonzala, who has been working for SXSW for five years, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “Most of the people I brought were from Houston.”

Getting more mainstream artists and those from other regions proved to be more challenging.

“When I would talk to the labels,” he said, “people would tell me things like, ‘Why would I send my artists to that hippie festival? Why would I send them to this rock festival?”

But once labels started seeing the benefit of playing the SXSW — including garnering key publicity and making key industry contacts — Sonzala doesn’t have that much of a problem anymore.

“I guess word of mouth, they see what it is, it’s really the world’s biggest music festival,” he said. “Word has just spread.”

Groundbreaking Houston rapper Bun B, who along with the late Pimp C was part of the group U.G.K., said he reached out to acts like Kweli and Banner to appear this year. He said for many rappers, SXSW wasn’t on their radar: “(But) I think it absolutely should be.”

Besides increasing rap’s profile on the key music festival circuit, Bun B said SXSW has helped him understand how broad his fan base is.

“You don’t even know where you register on that scale sometimes,” he said.

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On the Net:

http://www.sxsw.com

By Jennifer Netherby 54 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The two latest bands to offer their new albums online for free are advancing divergent versions of the business model Radiohead introduced in fall 2007.

Where Nine Inch Nails' approach, like Radiohead's before it, draws fans in with free music and then offers additional music for purchase in more extravagant configurations, the Charlatans UK release doesn't seem connected to any such game plan.

From the start, Nine Inch Nails planned to put out some tracks for free and charge for others from its instrumental album "Ghosts I-IV." NIN began giving away nine tracks on its own Web site March 2 and uploaded those same tracks onto Pirate Bay, where fans were encouraged to share the music. But fans were given other options, too: $5 for a digital version of all 36 tracks from the album via Amazon or nin.com, $10 for a double-CD, $75 for a deluxe edition or $300 for an ultra-deluxe edition that includes a vinyl version and Trent Reznor's autograph.

In the first week, the band says its release resulted in more than 781,000 transactions, including free and paid downloads and physical preorders. Though NIN didn't break out sales by format beyond that figure, the band does say that pre-orders sold out all 2,500 copies of the $300 limited-edition release. Sales through nin.com topped $1.6 million in the first week, and digital sales though Amazon on the first day of release totaled $1 million, according to the band's manager, Jim Guerinot.

Guerinot, for his part, insists that the free offerings weren't meant as a quid pro quo to get fans to buy the album. "The only strategy behind it was (Reznor's) notion for how he would do this as a fan and what would he want to see as a fan," Guerinot says.

Still, in contrast with the NIN release, the Charlatans UK seem to be putting out their free album without a playbook. The band partnered with U.K. radio station XFM to deliver an MP3 version of "You Cross My Path," which the band says was downloaded 60,000 times in the first week.

Frontman Tim Burgess speculates that fans attained additional copies through torrent sites. The Charlatans UK and XFM have no revenue-sharing plan for future releases; at this point, they're merely using each other for purposes of promotion. The band carried the cost of recording, while XFM handled the digital distribution for free.

The Charlatans UK will also put out "You Cross My Path" in CD, double-CD and vinyl versions May 12 through Cooking Vinyl. But even those releases came as an afterthought, says Burgess, who adds that the band expects to make money on touring and merchandise.

"If people get a chance to have our music," he says, "they might be interested to come out and see us play live."

NIN and the Charlatans UK decided to go free after leaving major labels, following the path carved when Radiohead released "In Rainbows" on a pay-what-you-want basis on its Web site last fall. NIN's contract with Interscope expired in October, and the Charlatans UK decided not to sign with Universal after that major bought and closed Sanctuary, which put out the band's last release, "Simpatico."

But the free model may not work for developing bands, says Guerinot — who notes that NIN, like Radiohead, built its fan base in advance.

Reuters/Billboard

By Larry Blumenfeld 15 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Danilo Perez stood before a blackboard at Loyola University in New Orleans in November. As a visiting instructor for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, the pianist addressed seven masters students.

He implored them to search within themselves, not just as musicians but as people. It is the same challenge laid down, he said, by the legendary musicians he has played with: most recently, saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

Scrawled on the blackboard were complex diagrams of Afro-Caribbean rhythms: Perez was also drawing these students outward, into his world. Little did they know how far that process would extend. In January, the Monk students participated as both performers and guest instructors in the Panama Jazz Festival, which Perez founded five years ago in his native land.

It was the latest stop in a journey of transformation for these seven musicians that began in fall 2007, when the Monk Institute's masters program relocated to New Orleans from its previous home at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. At an announcement of the move in April, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, the program's artistic director, invited the students to his native city — to an environment that has nurtured so many important jazz musicians and is now a city in need.

COMMUNUAL EFFORT

Blanchard's recent Blue Note album, "A Tale of God's Will (A Requiem for Katrina)" — which recently won a Grammy Award for best large jazz ensemble album — represented a personal healing. And the Monk Institute initiative, he said, was a more communal, perhaps more important offering.

"I thought long and hard about what to do after Katrina," Blanchard said at an opening celebration, "and education seemed the key."

Other than guitarist Davy Mooney, a New Orleans native, the Monk masters students hail from other parts of the United States and beyond: Carmichael, California (trumpeter Gordon Au); Kansas City, Missouri (bassist Joe Johnson); Long Island, New York (saxophonist Jake Saslow); Denver (drummer Colin Stranahan); and San Diego (vocalist Johnaye Kendrick). Pianist Vadim Neselovskyi was born in Odessa, Ukraine.

For the past six months, they've soaked up instruction from Blanchard and other world-class visiting artists, including saxophonist Benny Golson and bassist Ron Carter. They've offered it, too, fanning out as teachers in New Orleans schools, helping to support a troubled education system that has nevertheless long been a breeding ground for jazz musicians.

Along the way, the seven musicians have formed a tightly knit ensemble; they've written a steady stream of compositions performed during semi-regular gigs at such New Orleans clubs as Snug Harbor and Tipitina's. (Some of that material can be heard at monkinstitute.org/downloads.php.)

The Monk students so impressed one jazz aficionado, author and NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, that he hired them to record tracks for his new audiobook, "On the Shoulders of Giants." And these students found perhaps their most expansive showcase before the thousands assembled in Panama City's Plaza de la Independencia for the closing concert of Perez's festival.

PASSION FOR LEARNING

Yet more satisfying than the applause, more thrilling than even a chance to hang out at the home of salsa/film star Ruben Blades, Panama's Minister of Tourism, was the experience of teaching music in Panama. Perez describes the event he founded as "an educational and cultural convention, as opposed to a traditional jazz festival." Like Blanchard in New Orleans, Perez thinks that jazz education is the greatest gift he can offer his birthplace.

"I'm concerned that the economic boom in my country doesn't really translate to education," he says. "To give Panama stability and balance, we need to focus more on culture."

Perez knew that the experience of teaching a wide range of musicians in Panama — some natives, some who had traveled from throughout South and Central America — would be invigorating.

"They have been chosen for the best education in the world," he says of the Monk students. "Now, they go to a place where students are craving information. That passion is sometimes easy to forget."

"It was interesting to compare with clinics I've seen in Europe," Neselovskyi says, "where often clinicians have to wait for questions in complete silence for few minutes."

Au recalls the seemingly endless stream of trumpeters arriving at the clinic he taught. "They drank up every bit of the festival like it was their last chance," he says. "For most of them, actually, the festival really is a once-in-a-year experience, since most don't have any music program, much less jazz music, at their schools."

"A horn player would solo, sit down, and then another would take his place," Mooney adds. "And this would have gone on all day, I think, if we hadn't run out of time."

During his inaugural speech in 2007, Blanchard said that jazz education depends upon "an old African culture of how information is passed on from generation to generation." He described how Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, both central figures in the Monk program, had passed such things on to him.

"I pass that on to these students," he said. "And they pass it on to younger students." In two distinct points along the diaspora of which that oral tradition speaks — New Orleans and Panama City — the process seemed intact, and it made for good music.

Reuters/Billboard

By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan woman who sang her way to the top three of Afghanistan’s version of “American Idol” has been voted out.

Lima Sahar was the first Afghan woman to make it to the top three of the country’s popular “Afghan Star” television show, which is now in its third year. Conservative critics had taken aim at the 20-year-old woman for singing in public in the conservative Muslim country.

Sahar, who comes from Afghanistan’s most conservative tribe — the Pashtuns, thanked everyone who had voted for her. She also reminded the audience that there had been very little music in Afghanistan in the last two decades, which have been mostly consumed with war.

Under the Taliban regime that was overthrown in 2001, women were not even allowed out of their homes unaccompanied, while music and television were banned.

“I am very happy to have come in third place,” Sahar said on the show broadcast Friday night. “This is an honor for me that the people voted for me. I really thank them and I also congratulate them.”

The country’s conservative cleric’s council has protested to President Hamid Karzai over “Afghan Star” and Indian dramas shown on Tolo TV, the country’s most popular station. But younger Afghans say the show is helping women progress.

“Afghan Star” will pick its winner between the two remaining contestants next Friday.

The top three finishers this season each represented one of Afghanistan’s major ethnic groups. The two finalists are Hameed Sakhizada, a 21-year-old Hazara with a mop of black hair, and Rafi Naabzada, a 19-year-old ethnic Tajik who often wears a white leather jacket.

The show follows the same format as “American Idol,” although the two are not connected. it has become one of Afghanistan’s most popular TV shows, gathering large crowds around TVs in restaurants and homes. About 2,000 hopefuls auditioned for the third season of the show.

The singers perform in front of a studio audience and three judges, and past winners have been given recording deals. A woman finished fifth in the show’s first season, but no female has risen as high as Sahar.

The winner this year will take home around $5,000 — a king’s ransom in Afghanistan.

Daud Sadiqi, the show’s host, said “Afghan Star” has been a runaway hit that shows the world the “peaceful face of Afghanistan.”

By Hazel Davis 41 minutes ago

LONDON (Billboard) - What do you get if you cross a Chinese guitarist with Spanish repertoire and a Welsh composer? The answer lies in critically acclaimed Beijing-born, London-based classical guitarist Xuefei Yang's new album.

"40 Degrees North" (EMI Classics), Yang's second album, will arrive April 7 in the United Kingdom and elsewhere later in the year.

"I was born just after the end of the Cultural Revolution, when Western music and instruments were banned," 31-year-old Yang says.

The artist, who studied classical guitar at London's Royal Academy of Music, recounts that her life was transformed after hearing British classical musician John Williams playing Spanish guitar on the radio.

"In Spain, the guitar repertoire is rich. In China there is very little," she says. "I have a dream to contribute something back to the musical community by helping create a Chinese guitar repertoire."

The new disc includes Yang-arranged Spanish works by Isaac Albeniz and Enrique Granados plus four compositions, based on Chinese themes, by Welsh guitarist/composer Stephen Goss.

Yang released her first album, "Romance de Amor," in 2006 through EMI Classics. A regular on international concert stages, she is scheduled to perform recitals this year in Germany, the United States, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom.

Reuters/Billboard

By Cristina Black 39 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Billboard) - With its popular Take-Away Shows — on-the-spot live music videos — French music Web site La Blogotheque is becoming an important point of exposure for emerging North American indie bands.

Each shot in one take in an offbeat location, the videos have drawn more than 6 million views on blogotheque.net, YouTube and band Web sites.

The brand has recently expanded to include sites dedicated to local scenes in specific markets, such as One Take New York and One Shot Seattle, giving regional bands exposure on the international indie market. La Blogotheque's English and French versions average 7,000 hits per day.

"La Blogotheque has become as relevant as a radio station like (noncommercial) KEXP (Seattle) or a magazine like Mojo," Ed Horrox, head of A&R at label 4AD, says.

Helmed by Parisian producers Chryde (aka Christophe Abric) and Vincent Moon (aka Mathieu Saura), Take-Away Shows began in 2006 and quickly evolved to include dozens of artful videos.

Popular clips include Arcade Fire in an elevator in Paris, Vampire Weekend in a tour van in England and various street performances by Beirut, which commissioned La Blogotheque to shoot a live video for every song on its 2007 album, "The Flying Club Cup," a series that is now available for viewing and for purchase on DVD through La Blogotheque's site and flyingclubcup.com.

"Here's something an artist can do in an afternoon," says Ben Goldberg, head of Beirut's label Ba Da Bing. "There are no overdubs or trickery, so it benefits any artist who plays well live."

Profits are to be split 50/50 between La Blogotheque and acts, but La Blogotheque has yet to turn a profit. Most of the videos are distributed free, but Moon and Chryde are looking into licensing content to French labels and are also in talks with Chunnel rail line Eurostar about providing video programming for passengers. The pair pay for the low-budget productions themselves, they say, with outside gigs producing Web videos and blogs; Moon directs traditional music videos for such acts as R.E.M.

"We're being careful about what kind of deals we make because we want to retain editorial control," Chryde says. "We don't want to damage this trust we have with the artists."

Reuters/Billboard

By MIKE SILVERMAN, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Now the soprano at “Tristan und Isolde” is sick, too.

Already missing tenor Ben Heppner because of a virus, the Metropolitan Opera lost Deborah Voigt in the middle of the second act Friday night because of a stomach ailment.

Heppner withdrew from the first four performances of the highly anticipated six-performance run and was replaced by John Mac Master in Monday’s opener and by Gary Lehman on Friday.

Voigt sang the opener but didn’t sound at her best Friday and had trouble with the high notes during the first act. Her stomach didn’t feel quite right during the entire act, spokesman Albert Imperato said, but she tried to make it through.

She hurried offstage near the beginning of the second-act love duet, and music director James Levine kept conducting. Then the curtain came down, Lehman started singing and the orchestra stopped.

An announcement was made that Voigt suddenly had taken ill, and Janice Baird came on and replaced her about 15 minutes later. Baird and Lehman received enthusiastic applause at the end of the act.

Mac Master received mostly negative reviews following Monday’s opener of the revival. Lehman made his Met debut Friday, and the Tristan for the next two performances is listed as TBA, including the March 22 matinee that is to be telecast to theaters worldwide.

Heppner and Voigt, two of the world’s most acclaimed Wagnerian singers, were to be performing “Tristan” together for the first time.

___

On the Net:

http://www.metopera.org

http://www.benheppner.com

http://www.deborahvoigt.com

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer 28 minutes ago

AUSTIN, Texas - Besides performing at showcases, Ben Jelen came to South by Southwest to help raise money for his new environmental charity. But the singer-songwriter admits that trying to keep green while touring is harder than it seems.

“It’s difficult because at the end of the day, you are putting CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the air because of your activities,” Jelen told The Associated Press. “One day we will have a tour bus that doesn’t run on gas.”

Jelen, 27, held court Friday at the Eastport Cafe, a converted bar and gifting suite for which sponsors donated about $10,000 to his Ben Jelen Foundation. Jelen said the charity had four goals: to educate teens about environmentalism, aid those affected by climate change, to invest in alternative and clean energy sources and to finance organizations that campaign for a better climate.

Though he acknowledges that tour buses, including his, can create a lot of waste, he also said he is a big recycler.

Jelen released his second album, “Ex-Sensitive,” last summer, and performed at showcases here in Austin for SXSW.

“It’s random ears that might make a difference in your career,” said Jelen.

But he joked that his charity may have made a bigger splash than his music.

“I can’t seem to raise a penny for myself, but when it comes to a cause, it’s different!” he said.

____

On the Net:

http://www.benjelen.com

Joal Ryan Fri Mar 14, 12:29 PM ET

Los Angeles (E! Online) - Who's American Idol's biggest winner so far? The answer might surprise you.

David Archuleta has the buzz. Chikezie just might have had the performance of the week. But it's Jeff Buckley who scored the No. 1 hit.

"Hallelujah," a Leonard Cohen song released by the late Buckley 14 years ago, came out of nowhere to top iTunes' sales chart this past week after one Idol performance, and one big Idol shout-out.

According to Buckley's record label, the song, which slipped to No. 5 by Friday, is the first No. 1 anything on a U.S. chart for the acclaimed singer-songwriter who accidentally drowned in 1997 at the age of 30.

"We couldn't pay people to make that choice," said Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, of Jason Castro's decision to sing "Hallelujah" on the Mar. 4 Idol.

The song earned Castro raves, Cohen a rare prime-time mention for a poet, and Buckley a tribute from none other than the Dark Lord of the Sith, judge Simon Cowell.

"The Jeff Buckley version of that song is one of my favorite songs of all-time," Cowell said.

Less than 48 hours later, Buckley's "Hallelujah," a six-minute-plus novel compared to Castro's 90-second condensed version, was the second most downloaded song on iTunes—and climbing.

The power of Idol, not to mention the pull of Buckley, an influential, though never top-selling, performer, had spoken. And not just on iTunes. Grace, the 1994 album that featured "Hallelujah," stood in 10th place, and in the company of giants such as Michael Jackson's Thriller, on Billboard's latest pop catalog album chart.

"It really has translated on that level," Guibert said of the surge in album sales. "Once they heard ["Hallelujah"], they wanted to hear more about the artist.

"And Jeff is going to take them to meet Nina Simone, Van Morrison, and a bunch of other people."

"Hallelujah" itself is a testament to Buckley's penchant for cross-referencing. Guibert said her son found the Cohen song by way of John Cale, who'd recorded it for a French-issued Cohen tribute album.

Buckley's version, just vocals and guitar, became a staple of his live shows.

"He used it at the end of the encore," Guibert said. "There was never a dry eye in the house."

Buckley has no known connection to "Hallelujah's" latest interpreter, Jason Castro. Guibert said she doesn't know the 20-year-old Idol finalist from Texas, and marveled that he was able to slip in a song that was first recorded, but never a hit, in the 1980s onto the show's 1980s-themed week.

"A choice like this indicates to me that it was a personal choice," Guibert said.

As it turns out, Guibert was among the tens of millions watching Castro and Idol on Mar. 4. A friend who'd seen the show in an earlier time zone tipped her off, and she tuned in. Anxiously.

"I held my breath through the whole thing for the artist," Guibert said. "You never know what people are going to say. I wanted it to be positive for the young man who was singing."

Guibert was not disappointed.

"Even, bless his heart, Simon Cowell didn't have a bad word to say out it," Guibert said. "He would have gotten a letter from me had he."

The mentions for Buckley and Cohen were bonuses. Her son, Guibert thinks, would have especially appreciated the spotlight on Cohen.

"I'm sure Jeff would just be pleased as punch that something he did went on to honor that gentlemen," Guibert said.

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer 26 minutes ago

AUSTIN, Texas - Kaki King, the acclaimed guitarist nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on the “Into the Wild” score, is marking her fourth year at the South by Southwest music festival — and she can chart her growth in success by the number of shows she’s performing over the five-day festival.

“The first time I played once or twice, I hung around for the week,” she told The Associated Press after performing at the BMI & Billboard showcase Friday afternoon. “This time it’s been a full week — been doing two to three shows a day, loads of interviews … I’m definitely doing things and am in situations that I certainly didn’t do the first time around.”

The 26-year-old, who just released her latest album “Dreaming of Revenge,” was nominated for best original score at the Golden Globes for collaborating with Eddie Vedder and Michael Brook on the music for the Sean Penn-directed film “Into the Wild.”

King — who also wrote music for the film “August Rush” — said the nomination definitely raised her profile.

“Everyone knows who Eddie Vedder is, but for myself and Michael, (people might say), ‘Oh wow, who are these young artists’ and probably went and checked us out,” she said. “It’s really just kind of a nice feather in my cap.”

King, who also collaborated with the Foo Fighters on their Grammy-winning album “Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace,” said her new album helped challenge her as a musician.

“I’ve had to learn new techniques,” she said. “The thing about guitar is that you’re always learning no matter what, and you never stop learning. No one has ever mastered the guitar, because you change one little thing … there’s always something totally new to learn.

___

On the Net:

http://www.kakiking.com