SOUNDTRACK: NAIA IZUMI-“Soft Spoken” (TINY DESK CONTEST WINNER 2018).
I didn’t pay much attention to the Tiny Desk Contest this year (even though there were lots of opportunities to watch various front runner videos). But this year’s winner was just announced.
Naia Izumi is a 34-year-old musician from Georgia who regularly busks on the streets of Los Angeles, where he now lives. And now he has gotten some national exposure.
Naia starts the song with a simple percussion loop and then he sets out on some amazing finger tapping jazzy guitar playing. It’s impressive and pretty at the same time. And then he starts singing on top of it!
The bridge or chorus (I haven’t figure doubt what’s what yet) is strummed with some cool fluid soloing and then it’s back to the tapping–such a great melody. There’s a short but pretty solo in the middle and then a quiet section before he resumes the drum loop again.
He starts singing some great falsetto notes (a good vocal range too, this guy) and then the song returns to the fingertapping before it abruptly ends.
I have no idea how it compares to anything else, but it’s pretty darn good.
Watch it here.
[READ: January 15, 2018] The Iceman #2
A whole bunch of books from Holloway House Publishing Co. came across my desk recently. Interestingly, in 2008
Kensington Publishing has acquired most of the publishing assets of Holloway House Publishing in Los Angeles, the original publisher of such classic black crime writers as Donald Goines, adding an historic trove of gritty African American popular literature to its publishing program. The acquisition includes about 400 backlist titles which will become part of a new imprint at Kensington called Holloway House Classics. Holloway House also publishes a range of popular fiction and nonfiction titles including biographies of famous African Americans.
So this book and many other are likely to be reissued.
But this particular book (and the ones that came with it) were originals gifted to the library from someone. There were quite a few books written by Joseph Nazel and I decided I’d read this one because it looked awesome. And it was.
The premise of this series is:
Henry Highland West – he rose up out of the streets of Harlem to become one of the richest, most powerful Blacks in the world, earning the nickname Iceman due to his cold, calculating will to survive. He owns The Oasis, a multi-million dollar pleasure palace glistening in the desert of Las Vegas. And his success is a thorn in the side of those who envy the phenomenal success of the Black man! He’s already fought one battle. One vicious, backstabbing betrayal that left the desert stained with Mafia blood. And now he’s challenged again as modern-day carpetbaggers, hungry for the glitter of gold and the merciless exploitation of slave labor in Africa, waste an old friend in hopes of getting the very land that The Oasis is built on! He’s not alone in the fight. Besides his old street friends he’s got his own private army of voluptuous women trained in the martial arts. And he’s going to need them all, as his survival is threatened by the gold greed of men out to take what he’s so desperately earned! It’s high-stakes action on chopped Harleys and dune buggies as Iceman pulls all the stops just to keep the honkies from giving him the shaft!
And it was just as good as that description sounds. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 