GLEN Hansard will perform a solo show at Belltable on Thursday December 19. This will be the first Limerick date since 2017 for the The Frames/The Swell Season frontman.This intimate solo show is a pre-Christmas fundraiser for Ukrainian Action in Ireland.
Read MoreAngélique Kidjo’s influence on the African music scene is immeasurable. Her exceptional artistry and astute showmanship have resulted in a career that stands alongside the greats of this century — and yet, Kidjo isn’t stopping. Forty years in, album after album, the multiple Grammy winner has transformed a dazzling kaleidoscope of influences, keeping in touch with modern sensibilities while reflecting her own long-held standards. OkayAfrica recently met the Beninese French icon at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where we had a conversation that ranged across her glittering career.
Read MoreIn a year marked by global challenges, the United Nations Foundation’s 2024 We the Peoples Global Leadership Awards Gala in New York City illuminated the transformative power of leadership and collaboration. Held in the heart of Manhattan on November 21, the event celebrated extraordinary individuals and organizations addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues—from climate change to gender equality. This year’s honorees included National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, Grammy-winning singer Angélique Kidjo and former New Zealand Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Jacinda Ardern.
Read MoreWednesday night’s Glide Annual Holiday Jam featured a surprise appearance by folk legend Joan Baez at the fundraiser for Glide’s holiday meals and service programs, and she stunned with a three-song set that featured John Lennon’s “Imagine.” For many in the Bay Area, the holiday season really begins with the Glide Annual Holiday Jam, generally held a week or two before Thanksgiving, and often raising more than $2 million in a single evening for Glide’s charitable efforts.
Read MoreThe Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has published a new book, In-Law Country: How Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash and Their Circle Fashioned a New Kind of Country Music, 1968-1985, by Geoffrey Himes. The book shines a light on a musical movement of outsiders who became influential insiders in the genre. Blending biography and musical analysis, Himes explores how a group of artists, musicians and producers helped change the sounds and stories of country, melding traditional stylings with fresh innovations and perspectives. It attempts to define the previously unnamed movement by delving into the lives and seminal works of Harris, Cash, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Gram Parsons, Ricky Skaggs, Clarence White, Townes Van Zandt and others.
Read MoreIt’s 30 years since a troupe of Irish dancers took to the stage during the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at Dublin’s Point Theatre, in what was a watershed moment in the cultural history of Ireland.Eversince, Riverdance’s fusion of Irish and international dance and music has captured the hearts of millions worldwide. To celebrate it’s 30 year milestone, Riverdance will embark on a special anniversary world tour, which will include dates at Belfast’s SSE Arena from December17 – 20 2025, with an additional matinee on Saturday December 20. This spectacular production rejuvenates the much-loved original show with new innovative choreography and costumes and state of the art lighting, projection, motion graphics and a cast of dancers who were not even born when the show began.
Read MoreSmith, often referred to as the "Godmother of Punk," is not only a musical icon but a literary powerhouse. She's a unicorn artist who blends music, poetry, and visual art seamlessly, with her works spanning decades of cultural relevance. Best known for her 1975 debut album Horses, lauded as one of the greatest rock albums, Smith's rebellious spirit and intellectual lyricism have made her a key figure in the punk movement.The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee is set to return to the Miami Book Fair this year to discuss her 2022 book, A Book of Days. It's an event she has been participating in as an author for more than a decade. Her most recent book is an intimate window into her daily life, featuring 366 photographs — one for each day of the year, including a bonus for leap year. [...] Each image is paired with a short reflection, combining the mundane with the profound, offering readers a glimpse into the mind of an artist who, in her own words, has "a permanent ticket down the rabbit hole," triggering the reader's curiosity and imagination.
Read MoreLong-suffering U2 fans may be waiting for another album as interesting or relevant to the times as How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. You can wait a little longer. How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, the so-called shadow album to the studio release from twenty years ago is on the horizon. With the context of those additional songs, it feels almost necessary to head back into How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, to reflect on the rock makings and staggering cultural message it had at a time of wavering peace in places we expected calm from. But no, the world has always been a warzone and the rise of tech to showcase this for us has been a miserable experience – not least because it continues but also due to how frequently we see it. This was not the point U2 made with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb but it has morphed into something new, something pertinent once again.
Read MoreFor 40 years, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? has been praised by some as a triumph of charitable fundraising and festive songwriting – and condemned by others as the most high-profile example of white saviourhood in pop. Now, to mark its latest anniversary, the song is coming back around for a fourth time, in the form of an all-star splicing of the three previous official versions. Announcing the new version, Bob Geldof, who masterminded the 1984 original, says Do They Know It’s Christmas? “tells the story not just of unbelievably great generational British talent, but still stands as a rebuke to that period in which it was first heard. The 80s proclaimed that ‘greed is good’. This song says it isn’t. It says it’s stupid.” Proceeds will benefit the Band Aid Charitable Trust, which supports health and anti-poverty initiatives across Africa.
Read MoreWarren Haynes is emerging from one of the most prolific times of his life—and he is making the most of that reality. On Nov. 1, Fantasy Records is releasing the Allman Brothers Band alum’s fourth solo album Million Voices Whisper, a project that features guest performances by Derek Trucks, Lukas Nelson and Jamey Johnson. Though the album is Haynes’ first solo project since 2015’s Ashes & Dust, its arrival comes on the heels of two recent albums he released with Gov’t Mule—2021’s Heavy Load Blues and 2023’s Peace… Like a River—which he and his bandmates recorded simultaneously during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
Read MoreAngelique Kidjo has embraced the moniker “Africa’s premier diva,” bestowed up on her a few years ago by a journalist.But she defines the term diva a little differently than some people would. “I was doing something at a museum in Paris, and this journalist saw me interacting with all these people, hugging and talking to them, taking pictures with them, and he said to me, ‘You really are Africa’s premier diva,’ ” Kidjo said in a phone interview. “But I’m somebody who grew up knowing the value of hard work, who was taught that kindness is bulletproof. To me, being a diva means being available to people all over Africa and all over the world.”
She also fits one of the dictionary descriptions of a diva, which is simply “a famous female singer.” After 40 years of performing and recording all over the world and winning five Grammy awards, she’s certainly that. On Nov. 13, she’ll be accessible to people in Maine when she performs at the State Theatre in Portland. The show is presented by Portland Ovations.
Read MoreNo stranger to charitable causes in his native Asheville, North Carolina, with his annual Christmas Jam concert, Warren Haynes will once again lend a musical hand to help out his hometown following the devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene last month. Haynes will host a Nov. 24 benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City to raise funds for disaster relief in both North Carolina and Florida. “I’ve been talking to everybody and it’s just crazy. It’s heartbreaking. Who could ever imagine that Western North Carolina could be affected like this?” Haynes tells Rolling Stone.
Read MoreFive-time Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist Esperanza Spalding lived up to every meaning of the word ‘artist’. From ‘12 Little Spells’ from the album of the same name to ‘I Know You Know’, Spalding cruised through her songs with the personality and character that only the writer of the songs could deliver.
Read MorePatti Smith continues to make waves in myriad pop culture and musical landscapes. Known for her iconic contributions as a singer, lyricist, artist and poet, Smith has collaborated with many creatives. Long after her explosion into the rock industry, she has continued to inspire forthcoming generations, leading her to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her memoir, Just Kids, documents the triumphs and difficulties of moving to New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s on her own. She carved out a substantial path for herself but that is not without suffering in its many relentless forms. It was there that she met Robert Mapplethorpe. The two of them together, experienced a connection that could be described as nothing less than a soul-tie. From difficult beginnings, the creative destined her own path – one that began with paper and pen.
Read MoreSome bands may be comfortable with putting out music that is less than perfect, but those bands aren’t U2. The Irish superstars have built a reputation for second-guessing their own work and spending months—or even years—tweaking their compositions. Perfectionism hasn’t always translated into perfect songs, but in the case of their 2004 hit “Vertigo,” it resulted in one of their biggest chart successes. One could plausibly argue that “Vertigo” was U2’s last truly big hit.
Read MoreAngélique Kidjo is a Beninese French singer-songwriter, actress, and activist with such a long and influential career that she is now considered “The Queen of African Music.” Kidjo is a true force of nature. Angélique Kidjo, with the Color of Noize Orchestra conducted by Derrick Hodge, celebrates 40 years of music and JOY; on the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall in Midtown, Manhattan; on Saturday, November 2, 2024 at 8pm. Kidjo is a multi-Grammy winning, Beninese singer, UNICEF and OXFAM goodwill Ambassador who launched her music career in France. She is an African woman of the world who speaks fluent Fon, Yoruba, Gen, French, and English.
Read MoreIt has somehow been 20 years since U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb— the one with “Vertigo” — and the band is rolling out a “shadow album” of ten outtakes from it, dubbed How to Reassemble an Atomic Bomb, on Nov. 22. The band already dropped one of the songs, the chiming mid-tempo anthem “Country Mile” and now they’ve released a second track, “Happiness,” which is a bigger sonic surprise. In the wake of mixed reactions to their underrated 1997 album Pop, which incorporated some electronic dance beats into their sound, U2 shied away from their funkier instincts for a while. But “For this anniversary edition I went into my personal archive to see if there were any unreleased gems and I hit the jackpot,” the Edge recently wrote. “We chose ten that really spoke to us."
Read MoreAt the Baryshnikov Arts Center, an adaptation of Smith’s poem-memoir “Woolgathering” features Smith reciting, others dancing and a surprise guest. “Woolgathering” is a slim collection of prose poems that Patti Smith, the singer-songwriter and punk pioneer, published in 1992. It’s mostly a memoir of childhood — of a poet’s childhood, or of the way that all children have a poet’s imagination. “The mind of a child,” she writes, “is like a kiss on the forehead — open and disinterested.” It is “mystified by the commonplace” and “moves effortlessly into the strange,” glimpsing and gleaning, “piecing together a crazy quilt of truths.”
Read MoreKris Kristofferson passed away late last month, and fans are still mourning the loss of the beloved musician and actor. [..] Several of Kristofferson’s titles, including albums and songs, find their way to various Billboard charts this week. The singer-songwriter appears on at least three different tallies, and he rises higher than ever on one of them. Kristofferson’s single “Why Me” returns to the Christian Digital Song Sales chart this frame. The tune blasts in at No. 1, reaching the summit for the first time.
Read MoreAmerican country musician Kris Kristofferson was a military veteran and anti-war activist. He continued his advocacy against the Gulf Wars and benefit concerts for Palestinian children despite the negative impacts that both had on his career. Kristofferson died on September 28 at his home in Hawaii, aged 88.
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