Have you ever had a genuinely mystical phenomenon happen to you?
The very first song that Angela ever wrote, The Slow Club, which ultimately became the title cut of her acclaimed jazz CD, is about a nightclub in Paris. At the time she wrote it she'd never been to the city of lights. The story in the song is fiction. The club itself is fiction. And in the song she describes in great detail what the mood and look and walls and smell are like in this place. A few years after writing it and performing it around town, she was singing it at a club one night, and a French woman came up to her afterwards. This was the exchange:
"I enjoyed your song very much. It makes me think back with fond memory of my days at the Slow Club."
"I beg your pardon? Your days at the Slow Club? But this song is fiction."
"Oh, no. The Slow Club in Paris, France, oui?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I think you may be thinking of someplace else. There isn't really a Slow Club. It's just a made-up place for a made-up song. I think I would know, since I wrote it. I just sort of have this fixation for that city, for some reason."
"And mademoiselle, I believe I would know. I'm the one who's been to this place you sing about. On the Rue du Rivoli, right down the way from the Louvre. I would say that is some pretty powerful fixation."
Angela's jaw was dropped for the next two years, as she sang this song around town, told this story, and relished in her, and her song's, spooky allure. Until she finally made it to Paris for the first time several years later, and looked up the Slow Club in her tourist guide book. And there it was, with a Rue du Rivoli address, as promised. The first chance she got, Angela went there and walked in, unprepared for an even newer set of phenomena. Every single detail she speaks of in the song was personified before her eyes, from the winding staircase that takes one down into it, to the smoky, blue ambience that invited secret rendezvous on the stairs.
She stood there and grinned from ear to ecstatic ear at the wonders of her life, and decided that she must've been that Slow Club chanteuse in another lifetime, simply recalling pockets of memory from a long-dormant nether-plane.
Thus began Angela's journey as a writer and a songsmith, and carrying with her at all times the wonders that art simply begets.
Now to date, Los Angeles native and recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, contemplative singer-songwriter Angela Carole Brown's unique use of the poetic to craft themes of elevated thought, combined with a keen harmonic sensibility, stands her enigmatic music out from the rest.
She has been a veteran of the L.A. music scene for two decades as a vocalist, recording artist, and songwriter. She has recorded voice-overs, movie cues, jingles, and CDs for herself and other artists, her most recent being Josh Groban's hit single "You Raise Me Up" for Warner Bros. Records; and for South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker. And she just finished playing the venerated Playboy Jazz Festival, as a featured artist, inside Pasadena's legendary Rose Bowl Stadium.
She is also a writer and an award-winning poet (Heritage Magazine Award), who last year brought us her debut novel, TRADING FOURS, which was released on Infinity Publishing, and about which she was interviewed on KUCI's BlackListed with TR Black, KPFK's Arts in Review with Julio Martinez, and given honorable mention in Music Connection Magazine. It follows the story of four Los Angeles musicians whose lives collide in a single day, and has already been called "A Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for musicians." It can be found on Amazon, or at www.angelacarolebrown.com.
Two years ago, Angela released two very different albums of original music on her own Rue de la Harpe Records label. RESTING ON THE ROCK is an ambient folk experimentation, utilizing instruments from around the world and taking inspiration from the folk vocabulary of different cultures, and from America's roots and blues movement. She is presently recording her second folk album, entitled MUSIC FOR THE WEEPING WOMAN, inspired by Picasso's famed series.
And with her acclaimed jazz ensemble (who were featured performers at this year's Playboy Jazz Festival) she released THE SLOW CLUB. Her second album with this ensemble, entitled EXPRESSIONISM, which is in post-production, and will be an album of all her favorite songs from other artists. Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, and Elliott Smith, to name a few, will be given her ensemble's own expressionistic stamp.
Angela is also honored to be the lead singer (and graphics designer) in a new project created and composed by guitarist Linda Taylor called Threshold, which is celebrating the release of its debut cd, SUM BLUES, best described as politically-charged and consciousness-raising R&B.
Today, however, Angela speaks to us most uniquely through her own canon of original songs, and as a woman of letters.
angelacarole's Genres: Literary novels, poetry, essays
|
(0) items
