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| Tipitina's Foundation enters next phase of its recovery efforts After 27 years of hosting Louisiana music icons on its stage, Tipitina's opens its doors 11:00am-5:00pm, Monday-Friday, as a Musician's Community Center. This facility, which opened November 21st, offers New Orleans beloved musicians a venue to learn business skills and network with music and business professionals. The center offers: * A music co-op office equipped with work stations providing high speed internet, fax and email access. * Educational music programs for students: workshops, peer support, seminars and jam sessions. * Meals for musicians. * Limited Backline gear to be used for gigs in New Orleans on a per night basis. * Resources and information on networking, gigs, grants, loans, housing and healthcare in conjunction with the New Orleans Musician's Clinic. |
| BLUE NOTE TO RELEASE "HIGHER GROUND" BENEFIT CD OF HIGHLIGHTS FROM JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER'S LANDMARK HIGHER GROUND HURRICANE RELIEF BENEFIT CONCERT Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Wynton Marsalis, Bette Midler, Art & Aaron Neville, Dianne Reeves, James Taylor, Cassandra Wilson, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Kent, Marlon, Stephanie & Rachel Jordan Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit CD New Orleans, La. Sylvain's Music Notes -- On November 22, 2005, Blue Note Records will release Higher Ground, a CD that documents Jazz at Lincoln Center's Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert, a landmark evening of musical offering that was mounted by Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Artistic Director, Blue Note recording artist and New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis on September 17, less than three weeks after Hurricane Katrina imparted its devastation upon the Gulf Coast. The concert and auction produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center have already raised over $2 million to date, and all proceeds from sales of the CD will also go directly to the Higher Ground Relief Fund established by Jazz at Lincoln Center and administered through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a non-profit community foundation, to benefit the musicians, music industry related enterprises and other individuals and entities from the areas in Greater New Orleans who were impacted by Hurricane Katrina and to provide other general hurricane relief. |
| Katrina Related Deaths - Let's Not Forget Them Laura Stevenson of 9th ward. In her 70s. Died New Year's Day.(reported by Lonette Pritchett) Ronald G. Baptist, Sr., age 69 Octavia T. H. Morrison, age 87 Austin Leslie, age 71 Irvin Mayfield, Sr. Sister Francis, age 67 Cecile Alexis Joan Blackwell Carolyn Blunt Frank Elijah Caliste Alfred J Gourrier, Sr., age 92 Gregory Lucas Anthony Atiim Jones, Sr., age 32 George "Georgie" Poche, age 89 Eustis Guillement, Sr., age 92 Louise T. Lewis, age 75 William Porter, age 73 |
GRAND SLAM Poets gather in New Orleans to express their pain and exorcise their demons Saturday, October 14, 2006 By Brian Thevenot The words found Frederick "Hollywood" Delahoussaye as he trudged through chest-high water on Elysian Fields Avenue. By the time he had dried out, after rescuing a cousin from a rooftop, he had etched much of the poem into his memory. You are the soul where souls find the soil to stand even when your bowl overflowed I long to hold you But arms grow weak like levees New Orleans, you are not just where I live You are who I am He wrote more of it, again in his head, while standing in a long line waiting for a $100 donation card from the Red Cross. Somewhere between the water line And the color line is the poverty line And we stand in line Waiting for shelter, safe haven And overdue reparations More than a year later, the 7th Ward native sat Thursday night on a barstool at Club Dream on Decatur Street, getting ready to host a poetry slam. Part of the Akoben Words-in-Action Festival, a weeklong, predominantly African-American literary gathering, the competition has lured poets from across the country who not only compose their own verse but also memorize it and perform it live. Poets clashed for a second round, dubbed the "erotic slam," on Friday at Ray's Boom Boom Room. The finals will be tonight, at Treme Villa. On Thursday, Hollywood, a host and featured performer at the first-round slam, rushed through the poem he wrote while wading in the flood, this time avoiding the teary breakdown that more often accompanies his on-stage rush of flashbacks. Club Dream, a high-ceilinged upper-Quarter club that basks in a dark red glow, puts on open-mike spoken-word performances every Thursday. As the city's creative juices have reached new heights and poets have re-established themselves in the area, slamming, a postmodern form of performance poetry that occurs within a competitive event, has been reborn at the French Quarter joint. Five other venues that once featured spoken word performances -- Ebony Square, True Brew Coffee House, Sweet Loraine's, the Hard Rock Café and Pozazz -- have yet to renew their shows. If the scene has been consolidated, it appeared more concentrated than diluted Thursday, as rapid-fire verse captured the rapt attention of back-slapping patrons, dressed in everything from tailored suits to tattered T-shirts. The place to be The Akoben festival moved this year to New Orleans from Norfolk, Va., to capitalize on the torrent of emotional verse welling up inside New Orleans wordsmiths. The festival will return to New Orleans at least one more year, organizers said. Before the storm, the city already had a strong reputation in the spoken-word circuit, Hollywood said. The city's poetry slam team, which competes in national competitions, has grown in stature nationally since it formed about 12 years ago. "When we go out of town, people say our team is one of the best in the country, but people don't even know that it's here," Hollywood said. The spoken word scene in New Orleans started maybe 15 years ago, Hollywood said, growing from the backs of little cafes to audiences of hundreds. One of the scene's core members and a competitor at Thursday's slam, a performer called African-American Shakespeare from St. Bernard Parish, recently drew the national spotlight when Spike Lee featured him reciting verse in his Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke." This weekend's festival, though baudy and boozy at night, turns to public service during the day. Poets cannot compete unless they work on the city's recovery by gutting houses in the 9th Ward, holding seminars at public high schools or planting seeds in the Treme Community Garden. "A lot of poets speak a lot. . . about the 'revolution' and whatnot, but they don't do much," said Reston Bell, a volunteer coordinator for the event and also a poet. She offered a few lines of her own verse: New Orleans wade in the water This is your baptism, evidence that Christ has risen. We, unable to make peace and break free from our past for the first time are just now living Drama on display Like many other seasoned spoken word poets, Hollywood takes an almost spiritual, free-flowing approach to writing. "The words, they come when they come. They find you," he said. "I don't write any of it down. The way I write, I'll be driving in my car or whatever, and repeat it and memorize it." If that tactic has a downside -- Hollywood freely admits he has forgotten some of his best work -- it seems to exemplify the blend of elegance and chaos on display in Thursday's performances, all done from memory and punctuated with screams, whispers and dramatic pauses. Like many others, Hollywood has drawn sorrowful inspiration from his family and his community's experiences since the flood: relatives trapped in the city; the demolition two weeks ago of the 7th Ward home his mother left him; the exile to Utah of his brother, a Mardi Gras Indian, where the one-way evacuation plane just happened to drop him and where he now wrestles with whether he'll sew a new suit this year or even return for Carnival. Though so many remain displaced, the creativity of black New Orleans, so integral to the city's history and charm, has nonetheless planted new roots and taken new directions in a slowly rebounding city. And that history of oral narrative, gospel, jazz, dance and hip-hop has fueled the distinctive rhythmic stylings of local spoken word poetry, an often overlooked niche of that creative resurgence. The style, essentially a rant wrapped in rhythm and rhyme, forms the vessel for messages often dark and defiant, only occasionally punctuated with humor, more often with suffering. Queen Sheba, one of Akoben's co-founders, set the stage for the competition by picking judges: not experts, but random members of the crowd. Or, mostly random. "Do we have a white person in the house?!" she deadpanned in a light-hearted attempt to diversify the judging panel with a minority. She was thrilled to find a woman who gave her name as "M.C. Shellshock." Queen Sheba made clear no conflicts of interest would be accepted between judges and poets. "Nobody who owes money to a poet, nobody trying to get that child support, no friends-with-benefits, none of that," she cracked. As the show rolled forward, poets with one-word stage names such as Tuere, Xero and Peaches spewed stories, respectively, of rape and abuse, a hard-working father's stroke, and a promiscuous, gold-digging mother and the dysfunctional legacy she leaves to her daughters. From Tuere, of the 9th Ward: After he awoke He commenced to beating again If a (man) ever lay his hands on me, they'll be second-lining behind his ass tomorrow From Xero, of Baton Rouge: My father had a stroke Monday morning He never did mind Working a little overtime For his sons, in the sun From Peaches, of New Orleans: And she's letting ya'll know You'll never catch me sliding down poles Little did she know, her little girl got her ear to the door every night she's, 'not, being a ho' And ya'll know how that go Daughter grow up on the come-up, she get it from her mama that's why she acts so grown-up 'Widow's' autobiography Sitting at the corner of the club's endless black-topped bar before the show, a woman with a red Afro sat sipping a red cocktail, occasionally whipping out a loose-leaf notebook, scribbling nearly as fast as the poets speak on stage. A fan and friend of Hollywood's, she calls herself Black Widow, but her real name is Danielle Wilmore, 25, of Kenner, an only child who as a child often scrawled in her journal, an art that nine years ago morphed into verse and found its way onto stages at Ebony Square and elsewhere in the city. Now full of energy and angst over the prospect of selling a half-written autobiography, Black Widow said she is taking a hiatus from poetry. "I'm 10 chapters in, and I'm only up to 22 years old," she said. She's 25 now, "but a lot happened in those last three years," she said, laughing. None of that matters this weekend, as Black Widow communes with friends and well-known players on the spoken word circuit like Hollywood, Lionel King, and Peaches. And what is Peaches real name? "Peaches is just Peaches," Black Widow said of the poet with a spiky, peach-colored Afro, one of the Thursday slam's more competitive performers Black Widow allows a certain amount of ego to surface in her spoken word performances, which gives her an instant hit of feedback. "It's selfish, really," she said. "I write. I come here, get on stage, I read, they clap, and I go home." Like many poets on stage Thursday, Black Widow paints a dark, unvarnished view of the struggles of African-American life. She offered this verse: To no one's surprise The caged bird still cries Immune to police raids, Gunshots and stabbings, Look behind the yellow tape And you see youths laughing Hollywood, one of Black Widow's heroes, hosted Thursday's show, so he couldn't compete. And that's a good thing for the rest of the field. He's scary good, as any of them will tell you. He's happy to promote the voices of others who, like him, strive to give voice to the voiceless. "Those cats that live here and grind here and survive here, their stories need to be told," he said. "We're a city of culture. People don't come here for the oil. As hard as it is to be a Mardi Gras Indian, you can't do it in Seattle. "New Orleans isn't just where we live. It's who we are." Brian Thevenot can be reached at bthevenot@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3482. |
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An open letter to Oprah From Saul Wiliams Dear Ms. Winfrey, It is with the greatest respect and adoration of your loving spirit that I write you. As a young child, I would sit beside my mother everyday and watch your program. As a young adult, with children of my own, I spend much less time in front of the television, but I am ever thankful for the positive effect that you continue to have on our nation, history and culture. The example that you have set as someone unafraid to answer their calling, even when the reality of that calling insists that one self-actualize beyond the point of any given example, is humbling, and serves as the cornerstone of the greatest faith. You, love, are a pioneer. I am a poet. Growing up in Newburgh, NY, with a father as a minister and a mother as a school teacher, at a time when we fought for our heroes to be nationally recognized, I certainly was exposed to the great names and voices of our past. I took great pride in competing in my churches Black History Quiz Bowl and the countless events my mother organized in hopes of fostering a generation of youth well versed in the greatness as well as the horrors of our history. Yet, even in a household where I had the privilege of personally interacting with some of the most outspoken and courageous luminaries of our times, I must admit that the voices that resonated the most within me and made me want to speak up were those of my peers, and these peers were emcees. Rappers. . Yes, Ms. Winfrey, I am what my generation would call “a Hip Hop head.” Hip Hop has served as one of the greatest aspects of my self-definition. Lucky for me, I grew up in the 80’s when groups like Public Enemy, Rakim, The jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and many more realized the power of their voices within the artform and chose to create music aimed at the upliftment of our generation. As a student at Morehouse College where I studied Philosophy and Drama I was forced to venture across the street to Spelman College for all of my Drama classes, since Morehouse had no theater department of its own. I had few complaints. The performing arts scholarship awarded me by Michael Jackson had promised me a practically free ride to my dream school, which now had opened the doors to another campus that could make even the most focused of young boys dreamy, Spelman. One of my first theater professors, Pearle Cleage, shook me from my adolescent dream state. It was the year that Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” was released and our introduction to Snoop Dogg as he sang catchy hooks like “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks…” Although, it was a playwriting class, what seemed to take precedence was Ms. Cleages political ideology, which had recently been pressed and bound in her 1st book, Mad at Miles. As, you know, in this book she spoke of how she could not listen to the music of Miles Davis and his muted trumpet without hearing the muted screams of the women that he was outspoken about “man-handling”. It was my first exposure to the idea of an artist being held accountable for their actions outside of their art. It was the first time I had ever heard the word, “misogyny”. And as Ms. Cleage would walk into the classroom fuming over the women she would pass on campus, blasting those Snoop lyrics from their cars and jeeps, we, her students, would be privy to many freestyle rants and raves on the dangers of nodding our heads to a music that could serve as our own demise. Her words, coupled with the words of the young women I found myself interacting with forever changed how I listened to Hip Hop and quite frankly ruined what would have been a number of good songs for me. I had now been burdened with a level of awareness that made it impossible for me to enjoy what the growing masses were ushering into the mainstream. I was now becoming what many Hip Hop heads would call “a Backpacker”, a person who chooses to associate themselves with the more “conscious” or politically astute artists of the Hip Hop community. What we termed as “conscious” Hip Hop became our preference for dance and booming systems. Groups like X-Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Arrested Development, Gangstarr and others became the prevailing music of our circle. We also enjoyed the more playful Hip Hop of De La Soul, Heiroglyphics, Das FX, Organized Konfusion. Digable Planets, The Fugees, and more. We had more than enough positivity to fixate on. Hip Hop was diverse. I had not yet begun writing poetry. Most of my friends hardly knew that I had been an emcee in high school. I no longer cared to identify myself as an emcee and my love of oratory seemed misplaced at Morehouse where most orators were actually preachers in training, speaking with the Southern drawl of Dr. King although they were 19 and from the North. I spent my time doing countless plays and school performances. I was in line to become what I thought would be the next Robeson, Sidney, Ossie, Denzel, Snipes… It wasn’t until I was in graduate school for acting at NYU that I was invited to a poetry reading in Manhattan where I heard Asha Bandele, Sapphire, Carl Hancock Rux, Reggie Gaines, Jessica Care Moore, and many others read poems that sometimes felt like monologues that my newly acquired journal started taking the form of a young poets’. Yet, I still noticed that I was a bit different from these poets who listed names like: Audrey Lourde, June Jordan, Sekou Sundiata etc, when asked why they began to write poetry. I knew that I had been inspired to write because of emcees like Rakim, Chuck D, LL, Run DMC… Hip Hop had informed my love of poetry as much or even more than my theater background which had exposed me to Shakespeare, Baraka, Fugard, Genet, Hansberry and countless others. In those days, just a mere decade ago, I started writing to fill the void between what I was hearing and what I wished I was hearing. It was not enough for me to critique the voices I heard blasting through the walls of my Brooklyn brownstone. I needed to create examples of where Hip Hop, particularly its lyricism, could go. I ventured to poetry readings with my friends and neighbors, Dante Smith (now Mos Def), Talib Kwele, Erycka Badu, Jessica Care Moore, Mums the Schemer, Beau Sia, Suheir Hammad…all poets that frequented the open mics and poetry slams that we commonly saw as “the other direction” when Hip hop reached that fork in the road as you discussed on your show this past week. On your show you asked the question, “Are all rappers poets?” Nice. I wanted to take the opportunity to answer this question for you. The genius, as far as the marketability, of Hip Hop is in its competitiveness. Its roots are as much in the dignified aspects of our oral tradition as it is in the tradition of ”the dozens” or “signifying”. In Hip Hop, every emcee is automatically pitted against every other emcee, sort of like characters with super powers in comic books. No one wants to listen to a rapper unless they claim to be the best or the greatest. This sort of braggadocio leads to all sorts of tirades, showdowns, battles, and sometimes even deaths. In all cases, confidence is the ruling card. Because of the competitive stance that all emcees are prone to take, they, like soldiers begin to believe that they can show no sign of vulnerability. Thus, the most popular emcees of our age are often those that claim to be heartless or show no feelings or signs of emotion. The poet, on the other hand, is the one who realizes that their vulnerability is their power. Like you, unafraid to shed tears on countless shows, the poet finds strength in exposing their humanity, their vulnerability, thus making it possible for us to find connection and strength through their work. Many emcees have been poets. But, no, Ms. Winfrey, not all emcees are poets. Many choose gangsterism and business over the emotional terrain through which true artistry will lead. But they are not to blame. I would now like to address your question of leadership. You may recall that in immediate response to the attacks of September 11th, our president took the national stage to say to the American public and the world that we would “…show no sign of vulnerability”. Here is the same word that distinguishes poets from rappers, but in its history, more accurately, women from men. To make such a statement is to align oneself with the ideology that instills in us a sense of vulnerability meaning “weakness”. And these meanings all take their place under the heading of what we consciously or subconsciously characterize as traits of the feminine. The weapon of mass destruction is the one that asserts that a holy trinity would be a father, a male child, and a ghost when common sense tells us that the holiest of trinities would be a mother, a father, and a child: Family. The vulnerability that we see as weakness is the saving grace of the drunken driver who because of their drunken/vulnerable state survives the fatal accident that kills the passengers in the approaching vehicle who tighten their grip and show no physical vulnerability in the face of their fear. Vulnerability is also the saving grace of the skate boarder who attempts a trick and remembers to stay loose and not tense during their fall. Likewise, vulnerability has been the saving grace of the African American struggle as we have been whipped, jailed, spat upon, called names, and killed, yet continue to strive forward mostly non- violently towards our highest goals. But today we are at a crossroads, because the institutions that have sold us the crosses we wear around our necks are the most overt in the denigration of women and thus humanity. That is why I write you today, Ms. Winfrey. We cannot address the root of what plagues Hip Hop without addressing the root of what plagues today’s society and the world. You see, Ms. Winfrey, at it’s worse; Hip Hop is simply a reflection of the society that birthed it. Our love affair with gangsterism and the denigration of women is not rooted in Hip Hop; rather it is rooted in the very core of our personal faith and religions. The gangsters that rule Hip Hop are the same gangsters that rule our nation. 50 Cent and George Bush have the same birthday (July 6th). For a Hip Hop artist to say “I do what I wanna do/Don’t care if I get caught/The DA could play this mothaf@kin tape in court/I’ll kill you/ I ain’t playin’” epitomizes the confidence and braggadocio we expect an admire from a rapper who claims to represent the lowest denominator. When a world leader with the spirit of a cowboy (the true original gangster of the West: raping, stealing land, and pillaging, as we clapped and cheered.) takes the position of doing what he wants to do, regardless of whether the UN or American public would take him to court, then we have witnessed true gangsterism and violent negligence. Yet, there is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch by censoring the leaves. Name calling, racist generalizations, sexist perceptions, are all rooted in something much deeper than an uncensored music. Like the rest of the world, I watched footage on AOL of you dancing mindlessly to 50 Cent on your fiftieth birthday as he proclaimed, “I got the ex/if you’re into taking drugs/ I’m into having sex/ I ain’t into making love” and you looked like you were having a great time. No judgment. I like that song too. Just as I do, James Brown’s Sex Machine or Grand Master Flashes “White Lines”. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is how the story goes. Censorship will never solve our problems. It will only foster the sub-cultures of the underground, which inevitably inhabit the mainstream. There is nothing more mainstream than the denigration of women as projected through religious doctrine. Please understand, I am by no means opposing the teachings of Jesus, by example (he wasn’t Christian), but rather the men that have used his teachings to control and manipulate the masses. Hip Hop, like Rock and Roll, like the media, and the government, all reflect an idea of power that labels vulnerability as weakness. I can only imagine the non-emotive hardness that you have had to show in order to secure your empire from the grips of those that once stood in your way: the old guard. You reflect our changing times. As time progresses we sometimes outgrow what may have served us along the way. This time, what we have outgrown, is not hip hop, rather it is the festering remnants of a God depicted as an angry and jealous male, by men who were angry and jealous over the minute role that they played in the everyday story of creation. I am sure that you have covered ideas such as these on your show, but we must make a connection before our disconnect proves fatal. We are a nation at war. What we fail to see is that we are fighting ourselves. There is no true hatred of women in Hip Hop. At the root of our nature we inherently worship the feminine. Our overall attention to the nurturing guidance of our mothers and grandmothers as well as our ideas of what is sexy and beautiful all support this. But when the idea of the feminine is taken out of the idea of what is divine or sacred then that worship becomes objectification. When our governed morality asserts that a woman is either a virgin or a whore, then our understanding of sexuality becomes warped. Note the dangling platinum crosses over the bare asses being smacked in the videos. The emcees of my generation are the ministers of my father’s generation. They too had a warped perspective of the feminine. Censoring songs, sermons, or the tirades of radio personalities will change nothing except the format of our discussion. If we are to sincerely address the change we are praying for then we must first address to whom we are praying. Thank you, Ms. Winfrey, for your forum, your heart, and your vision. May you find the strength and support to bring about the changes you wish to see in ways that do more than perpetuate the myth of enmity. Thank You Dave Soul For Bringing This to Our Attention! Courtesy of http://www.daveyd.com/ In loving kindness, Saul Williams |
Music in Decline By Dan Sabbagh, Media Editor Worldwide music sales have tumbled to their lowest level since 1985, the year that Jennifer Rush topped the singles charts in Britain with The Power of Love and Dire Straits released Money for Nothing. The equivalent of 1.86 billion albums were sold last year, counting ten sales of individual songs as the equivalent of one album, according to figures published yesterday by the IFPI, which represents music companies worldwide. Album sales were down 11 per cent, from 2.09 billion, in figures that include paid-for downloads. In 1985, unit sales were 1.8 billion, as the CD began to increase in popularity, a run of growth that peaked in 1996 with sales of 3.4 billion. The main cause of the decline continues to be collapsing CD sales, hurt by illegal copying, that are not being offset by growth in download sales. Record company revenues tumbled 8 per cent last year to $19.4 billion, after CD sales fell 13 per cent – more than offsetting the 34 per cent growth in the smaller digital business. In Britain alone, revenues tumbled 13 per cent to £1.02 billion, with Amy Winehouse's Back to Black as the top-selling album. Industry revenues from CD sales plunged 16 per cent to £871 million, while digital sales in the world's third-biggest music market increased 28 per cent to £132.2 million. Presenting the statistics, the IFPI called for internet providers to work with the music business to stop illegal copying. John Kennedy, its chief executive, said that between 50 per cent and 80 per cent of internet service provider traffic was accounted for by illegally swapped content. The IFPI wants internet providers to reveal details of their customers who illegally share music and possibly cut off any subscriber who breaches copyright three times. Mr Kennedy said that providers should engage constructively, before the tools of legislation or litigation were invoked to require them to act. Governments are beginning to look hard at copyright enforcement. Ministers have considered legislating for a "three-strikes" policy that could punish internet users with disconnection, but they want music companies to try to reach voluntary agreements with internet suppliers first. Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, said that while regulation was not the first preference, he did not feel that he could stand by and ignore wholesale breaches of copyright. "British music is one of our biggest success stories. I don't want to see it wasted away," Mr Burnham told the Broadcasting Press Guild yesterday. Music companies and lobbyists are trying to reach agreement with internet providers. This month Virgin Media agreed that it would write to consumers who were engaged in large amount of music copying, based on information supplied to it by the BPI, Britain's record company trade body. However, industry executives said that the gloomy data was nothing new. A spokesman for Vivendi's Universal Music, the market leader, said: "This must be the tenth consecutive year we've read the obituary for the music business, but we are still here." We hummed Top five songs in 1985 We Are The World — USA for Africa Take On Me — Aha I Want to Know What Love Is — Foreigner Shout — Tears for Fears Into The Groove — Madonna (based on worldwide chart positions) Bestselling UK single: The Power of Love — Jennifer Rush (it did not chart in the US) For the record: Top ten global bestselling albums of 2007 1 High School Musical 2 — High School Musical 2 (Walt Disney Records/Universal/EMI) 2 Back to Black — Amy Winehouse (Universal) 3 Noel — Josh Groban (Warner) 4 The Best Damn Thing — Avril Lavigne (Sony BMG) 5 Long Road Out of Eden — Eagles (Eagles Recording Co/Universal) 6 Minutes to Midnight — Linkin Park (Warner) 7 As I Am — Alicia Keys (Sony BMG) 8 Call me Irresponsible — Michael Bublé (Warner) 9 Life in Cartoon Motion — Mika (Universal) 10 Not Too Late — Nora Jones (EMI) |
Bionik Brown a staple in the New Orleans poetry and hip hop community as well as a former educator died in a tragic car accident. He was hit by another vehicle and was said to have died on impact. He will be truly missed. |
