Louis Armstrong (Biography)

Louis Armstrong was the first important soloist to emerge in jazz, and he became the most influential musician in the music's history. As a trumpet virtuoso, his playing, beginning with the 1920s studio recordings made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, charted a future for jazz in highly imaginative, emotionally charged improvisation. For this, he is revered by jazz fans. But Armstrong also became an enduring figure in popular music, due to his distinctively phrased bass singing and engaging personality, which were on display in a series of vocal recordings and film roles.

Armstrong had a difficult childhood. William Armstrong, his father, was a factory worker who abandoned the family soon after the boy's birth. Armstrong was brought up by his mother, Mary (Albert) Armstrong, and his maternal grandmother. He showed an early interest in music, and a junk dealer for whom he worked as a grade-school student helped him buy a cornet, which he taught himself to play. He dropped out of school at 11 to join an informal group, but on December 31, 1912, he fired a gun during a New Year's Eve celebration, for which he was sent to reform school. He studied music there and played cornet and bugle in the school band, eventually becoming its leader. He was released on June 16, 1914, and did manual labor while trying to establish himself as a musician. He was taken under the wing of cornetist Joe "King" Oliver, and when Oliver moved to Chicago in June 1918, he replaced him in the Kid Ory Band. He moved to the Fate Marable band in the spring of 1919, staying with Marable until the fall of 1921.

Armstrong moved to Chicago to join Oliver's band in August 1922 and made his first recordings as a member of the group in the spring of 1923. He married Lillian Harden, the pianist in the Oliver band, on February 5, 1924. (She was the second of his four wives.) On her encouragement, he left Oliver and joined Fletcher Henderson's band in New York, staying for a year and then going back to Chicago in November 1925 to join the Dreamland Syncopators, his wife's group. During this period, he switched from cornet to trumpet.

Armstrong had gained sufficient individual notice to make his recording debut as a leader on November 12, 1925. Contracted to OKeh Records, he began to make a series of recordings with studio-only groups called the Hot Fives or the Hot Sevens. For live dates, he appeared with the orchestras led by Erskine Tate and Carroll Dickerson. The Hot Fives' recording of "Muskrat Ramble" gave Armstrong a Top Ten hit in July 1926, the band for the track featuring Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lillian Harden Armstrong on piano, and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo.

By February 1927, Armstrong was well-enough known to front his own group, Louis Armstrong & His Stompers, at the Sunset Café in Chicago. (Armstrong did not function as a bandleader in the usual sense, but instead typically lent his name to established groups.) In April, he reached the charts with his first vocal recording, "Big Butter and Egg Man," a duet with May Alix. He took a position as star soloist in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago in March 1928, later taking over as the band's frontman. "Hotter than That" was in the Top Ten in May 1928, followed in September by "West End Blues," which later became one of the first recordings named to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Armstrong returned to New York with his band for an engagement at Connie's Inn in Harlem in May 1929. He also began appearing in the orchestra of Hot Chocolates, a Broadway revue, given a featured spot singing "Ain't Misbehavin'." In September, his recording of the song entered the charts, becoming a Top Ten hit.

Armstrong fronted the Luis Russell Orchestra for a tour of the South in February 1930, then in May went to Los Angeles, where he led a band at Sebastian's Cotton Club for the next ten months. He made his film debut in Ex-Flame, released at the end of 1931. By the start of 1932, he had switched from the "race"-oriented OKeh label to its pop-oriented big sister Columbia Records, for which he recorded two Top Five hits, "Chinatown, My Chinatown" and "You Can Depend on Me" before scoring a number one hit with "All of Me" in March 1932; another Top Five hit, "Love, You Funny Thing," hit the charts the same month. He returned to Chicago in the spring of 1932 to front a band led by Zilner Randolph; the group toured around the country. In July, Armstrong sailed to England for a tour. He spent the next several years in Europe, his American career maintained by a series of archival recordings, including the Top Ten hits "Sweethearts on Parade" (August 1932; recorded December 1930) and "Body and Soul" (October 1932; recorded October 1930). His Top Ten version of "Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train," in the charts in early 1933, was on Victor Records; when he returned to the U.S. in 1935, he signed to recently formed Decca Records and quickly scored a double-sided Top Ten hit, "I'm in the Mood for Love"/"You Are My Lucky Star."

Armstrong's new manager, Joe Glaser, organized a big band for him that had its premiere in Indianapolis on July 1, 1935; for the next several years, he toured regularly. He also took a series of small parts in motion pictures, beginning with Pennies From Heaven in December 1936, and he continued to record for Decca, resulting in the Top Ten hits "Public Melody Number One" (August 1937), "When the Saints Go Marching in" (April 1939), and "You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart)" (April 1946), the last a duet with Ella Fitzgerald. He returned to Broadway in the short-lived musical Swingin' the Dream in November 1939.

With the decline of swing music in the post-World War II years, Armstrong broke up his big band and put together a small group dubbed the All Stars, which made its debut in Los Angeles on August 13, 1947. He embarked on his first European tour since 1935 in February 1948, and thereafter toured regularly around the world. In June 1951 he reached the Top Ten of the LP charts with Satchmo at Symphony Hall ("Satchmo" being his nickname), and he scored his first Top Ten single in five years with "(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas" later in the year. The single's B-side, and also a chart entry, was "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," sung by Armstrong in the film The Strip. In 1993, it gained renewed popularity when it was used in the film Sleepless in Seattle.

Armstrong completed his contract with Decca in 1954, after which his manager made the unusual decision not to sign him to another exclusive contract but instead to have him freelance for different labels. Satch Plays Fats, a tribute to Fats Waller, became a Top Ten LP for Columbia in October 1955, and Verve Records contracted Armstrong for a series of recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, beginning with the chart LP Ella and Louis in 1956.

Armstrong continued to tour extensively, despite a heart attack in June 1959. In 1964, he scored a surprise hit with his recording of the title song from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!, which reached number one in May, followed by a gold-selling album of the same name. It won him a Grammy for best vocal performance. This pop success was repeated internationally four years later with "What a Wonderful World," which hit number one in the U.K. in April 1968. It did not gain as much notice in the U.S. until 1987 when it was used in the film Good Morning, Vietnam, after which it became a Top 40 hit. Armstrong was featured in the 1969 film of Hello, Dolly!, performing the title song as a duet with Barbra Streisand. He performed less frequently in the late '60s and early '70s, and died of a heart ailment at 69.

Louis Armstrong was embraced by two distinctly different audiences: jazz fans who revered him for his early innovations as an instrumentalist, but were occasionally embarrassed by his lack of interest in later developments in jazz and, especially, by his willingness to serve as a light entertainer; and pop fans, who delighted in his joyous performances, particularly as a vocalist, but were largely unaware of his significance as a jazz musician. Given his popularity, his long career, and the extensive label-jumping he did in his later years, as well as the differing jazz and pop sides of his work, his recordings are extensive and diverse, with parts of his catalog owned by many different companies. But many of his recorded performances are masterpieces, and none are less than entertaining.

by William Ruhlmann

Billie Holiday (Biography)

The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. More than a half-century after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band. She made clear her debts to Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (in her autobiography she admitted, "I always wanted Bessie's big sound and Pops' feeling"), but in truth her style was virtually her own, quite a shock in an age of interchangeable crooners and band singers.

With her spirit shining through on every recording, Holiday's technical expertise also excelled in comparison to the great majority of her contemporaries. Often bored by the tired old Tin Pan Alley songs she was forced to record early in her career, Holiday fooled around with the beat and the melody, phrasing behind the beat and often rejuvenating the standard melody with harmonies borrowed from her favorite horn players, Armstrong and Lester Young. (She often said she tried to sing like a horn.) Her notorious private life -- a series of abusive relationships, substance addictions, and periods of depression -- undoubtedly assisted her legendary status, but Holiday's best performances ("Lover Man," "Don't Explain," "Strange Fruit," her own composition "God Bless the Child") remain among the most sensitive and accomplished vocal performances ever recorded. More than technical ability, more than purity of voice, what made Billie Holiday one of the best vocalists of the century -- easily the equal of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra -- was her relentlessly individualist temperament, a quality that colored every one of her endlessly nuanced performances.

Billie Holiday's chaotic life reportedly began in Baltimore on April 7, 1915 (a few reports say 1912) when she was born Eleanora Fagan Gough. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a teenaged jazz guitarist and banjo player later to play in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. He never married her mother, Sadie Fagan, and left while his daughter was still a baby. (She would later run into him in New York, and though she contracted many guitarists for her sessions before his death in 1937, she always avoided using him.) Holiday's mother was also a young teenager at the time, and whether because of inexperience or neglect, often left her daughter with uncaring relatives. Holiday was sentenced to Catholic reform school at the age of ten, reportedly after she admitted being raped. Though sentenced to stay until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after just two years. With her mother, she moved in 1927, first to New Jersey and soon after to Brooklyn.

In New York, Holiday helped her mother with domestic work, but soon began moonlighting as a prostitute for the additional income. According to the weighty Billie Holiday legend (which gained additional credence after her notoriously apocryphal autobiography Lady Sings the Blues), her big singing break came in 1933 when a laughable dancing audition at a speakeasy prompted her accompanist to ask her if she could sing. In fact, Holiday was most likely singing at clubs all over New York City as early as 1930-31. Whatever the true story, she first gained some publicity in early 1933, when record producer John Hammond -- only three years older than Holiday herself, and just at the beginning of a legendary career -- wrote her up in a column for Melody Maker and brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances. After recording a demo at Columbia Studios, Holiday joined a small group led by Goodman to make her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with "Your Mother's Son-In-Law."

Though she didn't return to the studio for over a year, Billie Holiday spent 1934 moving up the rungs of the competitive New York bar scene. By early 1935, she made her debut at the Apollo Theater and appeared in a one-reeler film with Duke Ellington. During the last half of 1935, Holiday finally entered the studio again and recorded a total of four sessions. With a pick-up band supervised by pianist Teddy Wilson, she recorded a series of obscure, forgettable songs straight from the gutters of Tin Pan Alley -- in other words, the only songs available to an obscure black band during the mid-'30s. (During the swing era, music publishers kept the best songs strictly in the hands of society orchestras and popular white singers.) Despite the poor song quality, Holiday and various groups (including trumpeter Roy Eldridge, alto Johnny Hodges, and tenors Ben Webster and Chu Berry) energized flat songs like "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" and "If You Were Mine" (to say nothing of "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" and "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town"). The great combo playing and Holiday's increasingly assured vocals made them quite popular on Columbia, Brunswick and Vocalion.

During 1936, Holiday toured with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson, then returned to New York for several more sessions. In late January 1937, she recorded several numbers with a small group culled from one of Hammond's new discoveries, Count Basie's Orchestra. Tenor Lester Young, who'd briefly known Billie several years earlier, and trumpeter Buck Clayton were to become especially attached to Holiday. The three did much of their best recorded work together during the late '30s, and Holiday herself bestowed the nickname Pres on Young, while he dubbed her Lady Day for her elegance. By the spring of 1937, she began touring with Basie as the female complement to his male singer, Jimmy Rushing. The association lasted less than a year, however. Though officially she was fired from the band for being temperamental and unreliable, shadowy influences higher up in the publishing world reportedly commanded the action after she refused to begin singing '20s female blues standards.

At least temporarily, the move actually benefited Holiday -- less than a month after leaving Basie, she was hired by Artie Shaw's popular band. She began singing with the group in 1938, one of the first instances of a black female appearing with a white group. Despite the continuing support of the entire band, however, show promoters and radio sponsors soon began objecting to Holiday -- based on her unorthodox singing style almost as much as her race. After a series of escalating indignities, Holiday quit the band in disgust. Yet again, her judgment proved valuable; the added freedom allowed her to take a gig at a hip new club named Café Society, the first popular nightspot with an inter-racial audience. There, Billie Holiday learned the song that would catapult her career to a new level: "Strange Fruit."

The standard, written by Café Society regular Lewis Allen and forever tied to Holiday, is an anguished reprisal of the intense racism still persistent in the South. Though Holiday initially expressed doubts about adding such a bald, uncompromising song to her repertoire, she pulled it off thanks largely to her powers of nuance and subtlety. "Strange Fruit" soon became the highlight of her performances. Though John Hammond refused to record it (not for its politics but for its overly pungent imagery), he allowed Holiday a bit of leverage to record for Commodore, the label owned by jazz record-store owner Milt Gabler. Once released, "Strange Fruit" was banned by many radio outlets, though the growing jukebox industry (and the inclusion of the excellent "Fine and Mellow" on the flip) made it a rather large, though controversial, hit. She continued recording for Columbia labels until 1942, and hit big again with her most famous composition, 1941's "God Bless the Child." Gabler, who also worked A&R for Decca, signed her to the label in 1944 to record "Lover Man," a song written especially for her and her third big hit. Neatly side-stepping the musician's union ban that afflicted her former label, Holiday soon became a priority at Decca, earning the right to top-quality material and lavish string sections for her sessions. She continued recording scattered sessions for Decca during the rest of the '40s, and recorded several of her best-loved songs including Bessie Smith's "'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do," "Them There Eyes," and "Crazy He Calls Me."

Though her artistry was at its peak, Billie Holiday's emotional life began a turbulent period during the mid-'40s. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, she began smoking opium early in the decade with her first husband, Johnnie Monroe. The marriage didn't last, but hot on its heels came a second marriage to trumpeter Joe Guy and a move to heroin. Despite her triumphant concert at New York's Town Hall and a small film role -- as a maid (!) -- with Louis Armstrong in 1947's New Orleans, she lost a good deal of money running her own orchestra with Joe Guy. Her mother's death soon after affected her deeply, and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to eight months in prison.

Unfortunately, Holiday's troubles only continued after her release. The drug charge made it impossible for her to get a cabaret card, so nightclub performances were out of the question. Plagued by various celebrity hawks from all portions of the underworld (jazz, drugs, song publishing, etc.), she soldiered on for Decca until 1950. Two years later, she began recording for jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz, owner of the excellent labels Clef, Norgran, and by 1956, Verve. The recordings returned her to the small-group intimacy of her Columbia work, and reunited her with Ben Webster as well as other top-flight musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Charlie Shavers. Though the ravages of a hard life were beginning to take their toll on her voice, many of Holiday's mid-'50s recordings are just as intense and beautiful as her classic work.

During 1954, Holiday toured Europe to great acclaim, and her 1956 autobiography brought her even more fame (or notoriety). She made her last great appearance in 1957, on the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz with Webster, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins providing a close backing. One year later, the Lady in Satin LP clothed her naked, increasingly hoarse voice with the overwrought strings of Ray Ellis. During her final year, she made two more appearances in Europe before collapsing in May 1959 of heart and liver disease. Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time. Her cult of influence spread quickly after her death and gave her more fame than she'd enjoyed in life. The 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues featured Diana Ross struggling to overcome the conflicting myths of Holiday's life, but the film also illuminated her tragic life and introduced many future fans. By the digital age, virtually all of Holiday's recorded material had been reissued: by Columbia (nine volumes of The Quintessential Billie Holiday), Decca (The Complete Decca Recordings), and Verve (The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959).

by John Bush

Jazz in Turkey (Essay)

The music of Turkey has so impressed past visiting jazzmen that many wrote music incorporating the local rhythms and colors. A few examples are Brubecks "Blue Rondo A La Turk," "Turkish Bath" by Don Ellis, and John Surman's "Galata Bridge." Closer to an "exotic" vogue is Pete LaRoca's album Turkish Women at the Bath, while Lennie Tristano's "Turkish Mambo" (definitely not a mambo) may have some Turkish connection as a dedication to the Ertegun brothers, two Turks that definitely played a major role in black music and jazz in the USA. Let's not forget Atlantic's Arif Mardin or Ilhan Mimaroglu, a pioneer of electronic music, producer of some Atlantic Mingus sessions, and author of some disturbing works featuring jazz soloists like Freddie Hubbard and Janis Siegel. Don Cherry included traditional Turkish tunes in his Live at Ankara, and the almost-forgotten multi-instrumentalist and educator Donald Rafael Garrett studied Turkish music intensively: some of his pioneering work is available on the live Ankara recording Memoirs of a Dream reissued by Kali Fasteau's label Flying Note.
Turkish music's variety of time signatures is inherently close to the polyrhythmic feeling typical of jazz. The harmonic system, close to what we call modal -- in fact all modes are called with names derived by Anatolian regions -- the microtonal "bending" of notes (similar to techniques used in jazz & blues idioms), are all elements appealing to jazz musicians.

For centuries in Istanbul, the most cosmopolitan of towns, musicians of Mediterranean origins -- Greeks, Jews, Italians, Armenians, Gypsies -- met virtuosos and theorists coming from the nations of Islamic civilizations. The modernist Turkey of the Twenties, with its eye on the West as the ideology of the new Republic, was especially open to Western dance music quickly popularized by radio and records. Incidentally, there's a wealth of Turkish tangos available on CD.

In the 30's there were professional jazz orchestras, and from the 40's on the radio began to broadcast jazz. In the 50's, trumpet player Maffy Falay was "discovered" by Dizzy Gillespie in Ankara, and went on -- with the American's encouragement -- to a major career. His group Sevda was among the first experiments, at the beginning of the 70's, in "fusion" of jazz and traditional Turkish idioms. In it a prominent role was played by percussionist Okay Temiz, whose own Oriental Wind was another step in the same direction. Temiz and Falay moved to Northern Europe, but their prestige and influence in the native country continued to grow, inspiring younger players like Burhan Oçal and Tuna Otenel. Oçal, a master darbuka player and multi-instrumentalist, can be heard in the Groove Alla Turca project co-led with Jamaladeen Tacuma: meeting of a jazz group with an oriental-style ensemble, it has exhilarating moments. Otenel, pianist and saxophonist, is a key sideman in many Turkish jazz records, and leads his own European trio in France where he recorded L'Ecume De Vian with Pierre Michelot on bass.

Turkish jazz musicians can be divided today into those more interested in developing a "proper" Jazz idiom, and those more oriented toward experiments that fuse jazz with different strains of Turkish music. Among the former, pianist Aydin Esen recorded for CBS in New York, and keeps a loose connection with top European players like Czech bassist George Mraz and French drummer Daniel Humair; guitarist Onder Focan is a major interpreter of the standard repertoire, but he plays in a wide variety on contexts. For the latter, very representative is Asia Minor, led by electric bass player Kamil Erdem and including saxophonist Yahya Dai, with a very attractive mixture of electric jazz and Turkish motifs. Erkan Ogur, extraordinary player of all plucked strings, traditional or otherwise, produces extended meditations influenced by Coltrane and Hendrix in his Telvin trio, and is a major force in all Turkish music.

Luckily there are no strict boundaries between groups and genres, so an internationally famous classical pianist like Fazil Say and the last exponent of the foremost lineage of Sufi ney players, Kudsi Erguner, naturally found their meeting ground in jazz. Their live collaboration has not yet been issued, but check out Erguner's excellent CDs Ottomania or Islam Blues on the German ACT label. Ihsan Ozgen, learned conservatory professor, leads his Anatolia group in extended improvisations, and brushed with European jazz in a one-time collaboration with Dutch pianist Guus Janssen. Songwriter Ozdemir Erdogan led a series of '70s jazz groups, where pop star Fatih Erkoç showed his "second identity" as a jazz trombone player, while in the current CDs of the queen of Turkish pop, Sezen Aksu, there are many jazz influences, with Marc Johnson playing bass and percussionist Arto Tunçboyaciyan arranging. The Armenian Navy band led by Tunçboyaciyan, now based in the USA, is a major example of traditionally-based, but jazz influenced, music.

Tenor saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin commutes with New York with his mixture of electronic rhythms, throaty jazz improvisation and poetry. Rapper Sultana, Saadet Turkoz, Sibel Kose and Feyza represent a growing group of vocalists, and established "art" singer Esin Afsar gave a charming jazz reading of Asik Veysel's hugely popular airs. Ayse Tutuncu created a unique sound with her Piano-Percussion group, its repertoire ranging from Debussy to Carla Bley, from Turkish tangos to the Yellowjackets, but the base of active jazz musicians is rapidly growing, and Butch Morris's Istanbul conductions featured many of them.

Keyboardist Ali Perret, drummers Can Kozlu and Cengiz Baysal are now teaching in the first major Jazz education program -- at Bilgi University in Istanbul where Mingus alumnus Ricky Ford leads the band -- but many Universities boast their own jazz society and well-attended festivals. The "alternative" Acik Radyo in Istanbul makes Jazz a substantial part of its offerings, and a specialized quarterly is widely available in bookstores and newsstands.

For the music-interested tourist, Istanbul is full of surprises: in the Beyoglu area many clubs feature live music, and one should check at least Babylon and Roxy, at the opposite ends of the pedestrian thoroughfare Istiklal Caddesi, where several excellent record shops are located, including Lale Plak, specialized in jazz, it's friendly and well-stocked, and is where labels featuring the best of Turkish production, like Doublemoon and Kalan, can be found.

by Francesco Martinelli

Jazz in Germany (Essay)

" If we cannot conquer the communist world with weapons, we will do it with the jazz trumpet."

--British Field Marshall Montgomery


What was the most important event in German history between 1980 and 2000? That's easy: the destruction of the Berlin wall. What was the worst thing that happened to German jazz musicians in the same era? Same answer. Tearing down the Berlin wall. Many Germans want to put the wall back up, and not just jazz musicians.

The wall itself was just a symbol for the divided Germany, whereas it was reunification that put the German government so far in the hole that arts funding had to be sliced into like a Bavarian ham thigh. The jazz scene on either side of the wall had much in common with the train system in Germany, and America for that matter. Neither jazz nor choo choo can pay its own way.

Musicians would earn less than dishwashers if it was left up to the public. In the old East German system a guaranteed wage was provided for those players who had been approved by an official panel of appointed music experts, a process that sounds threatening but is really is not much worse than getting a big name booker to touch a demo tape. Similar panels existed to green light new jazz clubs or performance spaces, some of which were like social meeting halls. In West Germany, a similar process had helped create a network of youth clubs, performing art centers and other venues, in villages as well as big cities

The post-war era was when the German "trad" jazz scene ruled whichever local gasthaus could put up with it, but from the 60's onward free jazz became a popular mode of expression. In the west it was seen as a music of rebellion and freedom. The fever took hold on both sides of the wall, and ironically, free jazz was something communists and capitalists seemed to agree about. Some eastern bloc governments regarded free jazz as a musical attack on the western capitalist system, and decided to encourage it. This included the ultra-repressive Caecescu government in Romania.

Among European nations, Germany was the king of free jazz. Not everyone was thrilled with this in an era when animosity between the old and new was at a height. Guitarist Attila Zoller, up til then one of the few German jazz musicians to make a name for himself in the United States, took strong exception to the music of young Peter Brotzmann. Despite Zoller's his own barbaric first name, he actually comparied Brotzmann to a Hun gone berserking.

Others looked for positive rather than negative connections between free jazz and the country's history, finding free jazz to part of a tradition of self-criticism dating back to Goethe. Original players such as guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel, saxophonist Rudiger Carl, bassist Peter Kowald, and Brotzmann were furthermore part of a Ruhr Valley Style based on the idea that inhabitants of this overly populated, extremely busy industrial region had a special kind of energy sucked in from the surroundings, industrial pollution included.

Another explanation that has been offered for the popularity of free jazz in Germany is other styles of jazz required a feeling for playing the blues, something East Germans in particular were said to lack. "We really cannot play the blues. It is really quite impossible," was a stock explanation for this cultural drawback offered to musicians visiting East Germany. The sounds of an East German blues club might back up such an opinion, but it still runs contrary to the notion of blues being played best by people who have actually suffered. And suffering was how most jazz musicians on the German scene in the 70's and 80's would have described their lot, east or west. Little did they know they were actually really thriving compared to the future.

East German jazz players wound up feeling like they had been dropped off the edge of a cliff. The entire government program supporting them literally vanished overnight. It was also like waking up to every jazz recording company out of business, since the state-operated recording monopoly Amiga had been flushed down the drain along with the rest of the eastern bloc.

In West Germany, foreign musicians were hurt by the cutbacks as well as German passport holders. West Germany's arts subsidies had stuffed the wallets of many jazz and avant garde players from the United States, Japan and other European nations. Prior to the reunification, some of these musicians estimated a third of their income was Deutsch marks in a given year. Smaller audiences in all parts of Germany for jazz or improvised music events was also part of the cash crash. In the former Eastern bloc countries this was interpreted as a depressing trend in which the newly liberated youth embrace mainstream culture and in the words of Czech organizer Borek Halacek, "are no longer the slightest bit interested in anything alternative."

Falling subsidies were the largest problem for organizations such as Free Music Productions, a Berlin-based record label and concert organization responsible for much politically important musical interaction between East and West German improvisers. Its festivals such as the Total Music Meeting had always been well attended, but were never able to rely on ticket sales to pay all expenses. By 2000, FMP was in such bad financial condition it almost aborted its annual events-in the end, the festivals took place with musicians donating their services for free, a situation that would have been unheard of in the fat funding days. The creation of new enterprises with as epic a scope as the FMP catalog seemed unlikely in the future, although new jazz labels did crop up in Germany. These ranged from wee enterprises such as Grob which burn limited editions to the ambitious Between the Lines, a label backed by a German bank and windmill manufacturer.

The large scale jazz festival scene did continue, although Germans complained the events had gotten more expensive and too commercial. Compared to the United States, on the other hand, Germany would still seem to have many darn good festivals, no wall or no wall. These include events in Berlin, Nurnburg and Munich and the summer Moers Jazz Festival in the Ruhr. Sadly, the latter event's important improvisation project was scaled back drastically.

Darmstadt also holds an annual Jazzforum in which professionals convene in panels to discuss topics such as the changes in the jazz scene since the old days. There was the time, for example, when East German jazz drumming legend Gunter 'Baby' Sommer was finally allowed to come to West Berlin for the Free Music Workshop. He sat in the dimly lit café of the Berlin Latin Quarter club and watched a waitress calmly mash down the remains of a candle with an entirely new one. "In the east, we have no candles at all, so we would keep every scrap. In the west, they just put another candle on top of the old one and waste it," Sommer observed. That was the late 70's. By the late 80's, musicians from the east such as the trombone blowing brothers Johannes and Connie Bauer were no longer comparing candles with their West German brethren, but the scarcity of gigs. Total Music Meeting had become almost Total Lack of Gigs.

This no doubt made the increase in interest in European jazz among the American audience in this period all the more exciting, especially since it is said that

the dream of every German boy is to travel to America. Players would have gladly hitched themselves to covered wagons if that was necessary. Some German musicians had toured the states in the 80's--most notably the crazed Bergisch-Brandenburgisches Quartet with Reichel, Carl, the fire-breathing East German alto saxophonist Ernst Ludwig Petrowsky and goofy drummer Sven-Ake Johansen-but activity of this nature increased tenfold in the 90's. The most ambitious of these treks was that of bassist Peter Kowald, who claims to have landed 20 gigs in one night simply by posting his intentions on the internet. He not only likes to drive a band, but also likes to drive, period. Amongst German jazz musicians, it is known as "pulling a Kowaldsky" if one decides to drive home at night after the last gig of a tour no matter how far away home happens to be. Kowald arranged to buy a station wagon upon his arrival in America in 1999 and was off touring coast to coast for the next two months. He estimated that he performed with some five dozen different American improvisers and got in one car wreck in the process, all in all a much more successful tour then it would have been had these figures been reversed.

The amazing synthesizer player Thomas Lehn also toured in the late 90's with American percussionist Gerry Hemingway under the cartoonish name of Tom and Gerry. Big sound and big man, tenor saxophonist Brotzmann proved himself to be just as big a draw in the USA as any American free jazzer. And in a slight bit of payback, he was one of the few German players to benefit from some form of American funding, namely the McArthur grant that Chicago musician Ken Vandermark decided to spend a wad of mounting a Brotzmann large band tour.

The most famous German jazz musician of them all, the virtuoso trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff who comfortable in both free and swing styles, easily held onto his international reputation while doing most of his playing in Germany. He consolidated his considerable power on the scene by taking over as musical director of Jazzfest Berlin in the early 90's. and finally got to make a recording with one of his big influences, saxophonist Lee Konitz. What is considered a relative lack of animosity between young and old generations of players in Germany is often credited to the senior statesman Mangelsdorff's calm and engaging personality, setting a good example -- which is a lot more than anyone can say for Brotzmann! ~ Eugene Chadbourne

by Eugene Chadbourne

Italian Jazz (Essay)

Italy and Jazz go a long way back together. Around 1895 Joe Alexander (Alessandra) was already playing syncopated music in New Orleans. The first jazz record included Nick La Rocca, leader of the ODJB, the first band to record "Tiger Rag," and Tony Sbarbaro; Louis Armstrong took inspiration from Caruso's records for the projection of his trumpet sound.

At the end of the First World War General Pershing's orchestra played in Italy ragtimes and foxtrots. With his musicians played another Italian, guitarist Vittorio Spina, who met a 5-year-old Django Reinhardt when around 1915 the gypsy caravan wandered until Rome.

The 20's in Italy saw the introduction of the trap set - called "jazz" - while dance bands switched from violins to trumpets and saxophones. In 1932 Elio Levi, a Jew, praised Ellington in print; in 1935 Armstrong played his first Italian concert. Futurist musicians praised Jazz, but by the end of the 30's Fascism began to cut down on the "foreign" rhythms and the "degraded" music. Racial laws prevented black and white musicians to play together; little did the Duce know that his own son would become a jazz pianist of sorts….

During the II world war both the German and the Allied Armies relied on big bands for their propaganda broadcast, providing precious experience to musicians. In 1948 Gilberto Cuppini's Bebop Sextet recorded Night In Tunisia/Salt Peanuts: Italian modern Jazz was born. In 1949 pianist Armando Trovajoli's trio played the Paris Festival, and in the same Salle Pleyel in 1952 trumpetist Nunzio Rotondo with his cool style à la Miles Davis had a great success.

In 1957 Giorgio Gaslini presented at the Sanremo Festival his Tempo and Relazione op. 12, possibly the first attempt to combine jazz and dodecaphonic music in Europe. Accomplished classical pianist and composer, Gaslini's presence is crucial to the Italian scene, he's the first to bring jazz to the Conservatory. Another pianist took the road from his small village in the Alps and wandered all over Europe: Guido Manusardi will form an extraordinary partnership with Red Mitchell, and his compositions inspired by Rumanian airs remain among the most successful experiments of this kind. Tenorman Gianni Basso took advantage of his family's immigration to Belgium to learn from Toots Thielemans and Jacques Peltzer, and back in Italy founded with Oscar Valdambrini on trumpet a popular sextet, inspired by the relaxed approach of Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. Chet Baker and Gato Barbieri lived in Italy, famously playing for movie soundtrack and bringing up the standard of musicianship.

In the mid-sixties Giorgio Gaslini is again at the forefront of Free Jazz in Italy together with Mario Schiano and the Gruppo Romano Free Jazz. Other pioneers of free music in Italy are Guido Mazzon, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Marcello Melis: Schiano's Controindicazioni festival in Rome is still a major forum for European free improvisation.

Meanwhile Enrico Rava brought Italian Jazz out of the country: his 1965 Sanremo concert with Lacy, Moholo and Dyani shocks the audience, but after a long stay in New York his groups with Massimo Urbani and his European quartet will charm the whole continent, establishing the first truly international Italian jazz star.

During the musical and social turmoils of the Sixties Jazz gathered popularity, with festivals and schools blooming all over the country. Jazz-rock group were born: Area featured the multiphonics vocals of Demetrio Stratos, Perigeo launched the careers of major jazzmen Claudio Fasoli and Franco D'Andrea. In the 70's and 80's a new crop of talents appeared: pianists Enrico Pierannunzi, Rita Marcotulli and Piero Bassini, bassists Bruno Tommaso and Paolo Damiani, saxmen Eugenio Colombo, Gianluigi Trovesi, Pietro Tonolo, Carlo Actis Dato all gave their personal contribution to the creation of a recognizably Italian sound. Tiziana Ghiglioni pioneered a freewheeling style of vocal jazz inspired by Jeanne Lee and Betty Carter, opening the way for a number of other singers, notably Maria Pia De Vito. Another trumpeter, Paolo Fresu, followed Rava establishing an European career: he partly lives in France but keeps a strong relationship with his home town, Berchidda in Sardinia, where he created an internationally renowned Jazz festival. After Fresu, a number of younger, talented players has found its way on the French scene: among them, Riccardo Dal Fra (Fresu's bass partner), trumpeters Fabrizio Bosso and Fabio Boltro, saxmen Emanuele Cisi and Stefano Di Battista. Pianist Salvatore Bonafede and saxist Rosario Giuliani play a hard bop with a new twist.

Founded by Apulian trumpeter Pino Minafra in 1990 the Instabile Orchestra became the most durable and arguably the most renowned internationally of all Italian Jazz bands. From opera arias to brass bands, from contemporary composition to Mediterranean suggestions, the Italian musical traditions creating a fascinating sound through Jazz's improvisational practice. The Instabile also promotes yearly in Pisa its own festival.

A whole new generation came in the 80's from Apulia and Sicily: Roberto Ottaviano, Stefano Maltese, Gianni Gebbia, Sebi Tramontana, Giorgio Occhipinti. From Milan, Nexus' Daniele Cavallanti and Tiziano Tononi keep working at their swinging brand of free jazz, Tononi's monumental three-Cd tribute to Roland Kirk receiving world-wide recognition; Rome's answers are pianist Danilo Rea and his Doctor Three with Enzo Pietropaoli and Roberto Gatto. Riccardo Fassi's Tankio Band and Roberto Spadoni's Urkestra are fresh takes on the big band traditions. Dazzling pianist Stefano Battaglia played the modern jazz book with trio partners Paolino Della Porta and Fabrizio Sferra, lead Theatrum, an improvisation workshop band, and produced a series of brilliant piano solos. At Siena's Summer Jazz Seminars since 1978 young musicians meet the established Italian jazz stars, while from all over Italy new talents keep appearing: the Parma Jazz Frontiere orchestra led by bassist Roberto Bonati, the Apulian Dolmen Orchestra led by saxist Daniele Pisani, from Umbria clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi's groups. Alongside Umbria and Rome Jazz Festivals, mammoth Italian versions of Montreux and North Sea, smaller festivals are promoted in many towns - among them Clusone, Parma, Bergamo, Vicenza, S. Anna Arresi, Tivoli, Barga, Roccella, Reggio Emilia - letting visitors discover less-known places and a wealth of exciting music. ~ Francesco Martinelli

by Francesco Martinelli

Gangsta Rap (Essay)

Ever since some gang-related violence occurred at a Run-D.M.C. concert in Long Beach, CA in 1986, rap music has been controversial; hip-hop had its detractors in the '80s and still has plenty of them in the 21st century. And no form of rap has been more controversial than gangsta rap, which has been attacked by everyone from Tipper Gore to conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly. Why have so many people been critical of gangsta rap, including some of hip-hop's non-gangsta MCs? It all comes down to the first-person format; instead of rhyming in the third person about the problems of the inner city, gangsta rappers rhyme in the first person about the lives of thugs, felons, gang members, pimps and crack dealers. Gangsta rappers portray the thugs they're rapping about, which is a lot different from what Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (one of rap's earliest groups) did on their 1982 classic "The Message." That gem found Flash and his New York colleagues rapping in the third person about the oppressive conditions of the inner-city ghetto, but they didn't actually portray criminals -- gangsta rappers, however, give listeners the perspective of a gangbanger, a drug dealer or someone who is serving hard time for armed robbery. And for that reason, gangsta rap has often been accused of glorifying -- or even promoting -- crime and violence. But many gangsta rappers have countered that portrayal should not be confused with advocacy; in other words, the fact that Ice-T, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre have portrayed thugs on record doesn't mean that they're encouraging listeners to live the thug life. Ice-T would argue that when he gave first-person accounts of thug life on "6'N the Mornin'" and "Colors," it was comparable to Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro portraying hoodlums in Casino and Goodfellas -- that he wasn't promoting thuggery any more than director Martin Scorsese's modern film-noir.

Like any style of music that has generated gold and platinum sales, gangsta rap has been saturated with clone artists -- people who reasoned that the easiest way to sell a lot of CDs was to emulate N.W.A or the late 2Pac Shakur instead of developing something original. And in the hands of the clones, gangsta rap can seem like cheap exploitation and an endless stream of sexist, violent clichés. But the most compelling gangsta rappers -- including Ice-T, N.W.A, Shakur, Schoolly D, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and the Geto Boys -- weren't about shock value for the sake of shock value. The best gangsta rap has served as an audio-documentary on the problems of the inner city; at its best, gangsta rap is film-noir with a beat.

Gangsta rap got started around 1986, when the seminal Ice-T wrote a disturbing tune called "6'N the Mornin'". Rapping in the first person, Ice-T took his audience on a guided tour through the world of a Los Angeles criminal. It wasn't the first time that a rapper examined the darker side of urban life; when Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five recorded "The Message" in 1982 and "New York, New York" in 1983, they painted a very troubling and depressing picture of the inner city. And there were many other East Coast MCs who, in the early to mid-'80s, rapped about social problems, including Run-D.M.C. and Kurtis Blow. But they never rapped about thug life in the first person -- if anything, they were complaining about the criminals who were making New York a dangerous place to live. "6'N the Mornin'," however, found the L.A.-based Ice-T portraying the sort of felon Flash and Run-D.M.C. were trying to avoid in their songs. And the first-person approach was effective on subsequent Ice-T offerings like "Drama," "Pain," "Colors" and "The Hunted Child," all of which were vehemently criticized by those who thought that he was glorifying crime and violence. But Ice-T often countered that his lyrics were being taken out of context -- that if you listened closely, his lyrics were actually anti-crime. In fact, there were no happy endings for the pimps, players and gangbangers in Ice-T's songs; they usually ended up dead or incarcerated, much like the thugs that James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson often portrayed in the '30s and '40s. In a subliminal way, Ice-T was telling his fans that crime doesn't pay; "The Hunted Child" and "Drama" paint as unattractive a picture of crime as Cagney's characters did in White Heat and Public Enemy (1931).

Although gangsta rap was dominated by the West Coast in the '80s, one of the early gangsta rappers was Philadelphia's Schoolly D. Lyrically, Schoolly wasn't as violent or as graphic as his West Coast counterparts; however, some of the first-person rhymes that he came out with around 1985-87 were more thuggish than anything else that the East Coast had to offer at the time. "PSK What Does It Mean?," "Saturday Night" and other singles that Schoolly provided during that period weren't as bloody as N.W.A or the Geto Boys, but they were still ahead of their time and deserve to be recognized as gangsta rap classics.

If gangsta rap's detractors found Ice-T and Schoolly D troubling, they were even more shocked when they heard N.W.A's influential Straight Outta Compton. Released in late 1988, that album turned out to be even more violent than Ice-T's work. N.W.A's members (Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella and the late Eazy-E) covered a lot of the same ground as Ice-T -- gang violence, drive-by shootings, drug dealing, etc. -- and the L.A.-based rappers didn't think twice about being as inflammatory as possible. One of the songs on Straight Outta Compton, "Fuck tha Police", inspired the FBI to write an angry letter to Priority Records. But Straight Outta Compton, for all its graphic violence, was far from an example of cheap exploitation -- it was really a cry for help, and the album told people all over the world just how dangerous life in Compton, CA and South-Central L.A. could be.

Other noteworthy gangsta rappers from the late '80s and early '90s ranged from the Houston-based Geto Boys to L.A.'s Cypress Hill, who brought some of the Chicano/Mexican-American influence to gangsta rap. Cypress Hill wasn't the first rap group with a Latino influence, but they were the first major group that brought a Latino perspective to West Coast gangsta rap. Meanwhile, the L.A.-based Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. has demonstrated that Samoan-Americans can be a part of gangsta rap.

As influential as N.W.A turned out to be, the group only lasted about four years. In 1991, N.W.A broke up, and Dr. Dre launched his solo career with 1992's The Chronic (which was among the best selling gangsta rap albums of all time and put the distinctive Snoop Dogg on the map). Ice Cube, meanwhile, had been recording solo albums since 1990, when he left N.W.A and had a falling out with Dr. Dre and Eazy-E (who died of AIDS-related causes in 1995). Cube's solo output has always been extremely sociopolitical; if anyone has bridged the gap between the militant black nationalism of Public Enemy and the thuggery of gangsta rap, it's Ice Cube.

Most gangsta rappers have distanced themselves from the thug life that they rhyme about; a tragic exception was the late 2Pac Shakur, who was all too familiar with the urban horrors that he describes on albums like 1995's compelling Me Against the World. There was plenty of violence on Shakur's recordings, but there was also plenty of remorse -- Shakur, at times, expressed regret over having lived the thug life, and yet, he seemed addicted to it. The rapper had numerous run-ins with the law in the early to mid-'90s, and he made his share of enemies in the hip-hop world. Shakur was only 25 when, in September 1996, an unknown gunman shot him four times in Las Vegas; on September 13, 1996 (six days after the attack), Shakur's bullet wounds ended his life. And only six months later, Shakur's East Coast rival the Notorious B.I.G. was also murdered by gunfire. There was speculation that whoever murdered the Notorious B.I.G. did so to avenge Shakur's death, but nothing has ever been proven.

If gangsta rap hadn't received enough negative publicity in the late '80s and early '90s, it received even more when Shakur was killed in 1996. Nonetheless, gangsta rap continued to be incredibly popular and was still going strong when the 21st Century arrived. In 2001 and 2002, gangsta rap's critics weren't any less vocal than they had been 13 and 14 years earlier -- if anything, they had become even more vocal. And even some of gangsta rap's defenders had grown tired of all the predictable artists who kept jumping on the gangsta bandwagon. But despite all those things, the best gangsta albums -- gems like Shakur's Me Against the World, Ice-T's Power and N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton -- continue to hold up well and offer riveting descriptions of the tragic side of urban life.

by Alex Henderson

Female Rap (Essay)

Historically, rap has been a very male-dominated idiom -- much more so than R&B, country or dance-pop. That is true in the United States; it is true in Europe and Latin America, where women don't play nearly as prominent a role in rap as they do in Latin pop (a field that has given us countless female superstars). Nonetheless, female rappers have made some important and valuable contributions to hip-hop, which would have been a lot poorer without Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte or, more recently, Eve. From rap's old school era (roughly 1976-1982, give or take a year) to the early 2000s, the same pattern has prevailed when it comes to gender: male rappers outnumber female rappers, but talented female rappers will inevitably break through commercially. Every hip-hop era has been male-dominated but has also had some important female rap stars -- and they range from Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and Salt-N-Pepa in the '80s to Foxy Brown, Nonchalant, Da Brat and Lil' Kim in the '90s and Eve in the early 2000s.

From the beginning, hip-hop had a lot of testosterone; it has often functioned as a form of musical sportsmanship. The old school rappers who were active in Harlem or the South Bronx in the late '70s could be an extremely competitive bunch; microphone battles were quite common back then, and rappers spent a lot of time articulating why they thought they were the best and why "sucker MCs" (rival rappers) were inferior. Machismo was always a big part of hip-hop; talk show host Bill Maher (who had everyone from Chuck D to Snoop Doggy Dogg to Lil' Kim on his Politically Incorrect show when it was on ABC in the late '90s and early 2000s) has often said he loves the fact that rap is the one form of American music in which a male point of view is celebrated instead of marginalized. That said, hip-hop hasn't necessarily excluded a feminist perspective either -- the female rappers who have succeeded in their field have had a reputation for being assertive, take-charge women. No one could ever accuse MC Lyte, Roxanne Shanté, Queen Latifah or Foxy Brown of projecting a wimpy image or coming across as shrinking violets; if anything, the fact that hip-hop (hardcore rap more than pop-rap) tends to be so competition-minded forces female participants to have more of a feminist outlook.

The first example of a female rapper recording as a solo artist came in 1980, when the Philadelphia-based Lady B recorded her single "To the Beat, Y'all" for Sugar Hill Records. After that, Lady B didn't make rapping her main focus; she ultimately made her mark as a radio DJ in Philly. Nonetheless, she is a historically important figure, as are the members of the Sequence -- an early female rap group that also recorded for Sugar Hill Records in the early '80s and was quite popular during hip-hop's old school era. Another noteworthy female MC from that period was Sha Rock, who was part of a mostly male group called the Funky Four Plus One.

Unfortunately, the female rappers who were popular during rap's old school era were unable to maintain their commercial success when hip-hop's second wave (Run-D.M.C. , LL Cool J, Whodini, the Fat Boys, among others) took over around 1983-84. In rap, the turnover can be mind-blowing -- hip-hop has always had an "out with the old, in with the new" attitude, and MCs who stay on top as long as L.L. Cool J are the exception instead of the rule. By the mid-'80s, Sha Rock and the Sequence were considered old school, and there were plenty of younger hip-hop women to take their place (if you want to look at it that way). Roxanne Shanté, the Real Roxanne (a Puerto Rican MC), MC Lyte, Salt-N-Pepa (who were originally known as Super Nature), Queen Latifah, Antoinette, Sparky-D, Ice Cream Tee, Monie Love, Sweet Cookie and Pebblee-Poo are among the female rappers who emerged in the mid- to late '80s. And that list of artists underscores the fact that female rappers are as diverse a bunch as male rappers. While Shanté and MC Lyte are essentially hardcore rappers and are famous for their battle rhymes, Salt-N-Pepa have had more of a pop-rap focus -- the group has had no problem appealing to urban contemporary and dance-pop audiences.

When it came to female rappers, the term pop-rap could mean different things in the '80s. Salt-N-Pepa and Oaktown's 3.5.7 (who were MC Hammer protégées from Oakland, CA) had crossover appeal, but they weren't bubblegum -- certainly not the way that J.J. Fad and L'Trimm (two female pop-rap groups of the late '80s/early '90s) could be bubblegum. The Miami-based L'Trimm (best known for their 1988 hit "Cars with the Boom") never received any respect from rap purists, who disliked their cutesy, girlish image and their frivolous lyrics. But L'Trimm's work should be enjoyed for what it is: goofy, silly, frivolous, escapist fun. Comparing L'Trimm to MC Lyte or the Real Roxanne would be like comparing Poison to Slayer -- L'Trimm didn't pretend to be hardcore rap any more than Poison pretended to be death metal.

The early '90s saw the rise of a variety of female rappers, who ranged from Ice Cube associate Yo-Yo to the militantly sociopolitical (and downright controversial) Sista Souljah to some very sexually explicit groups: Chicago's HWA (Hoes with Attitude) and L.A.'s Bytches With Problems (BWP). Both of those groups came out with their first albums in 1990, which was six years before the release of Lil' Kim's debut solo album, Hard Core. Like HWA and BWP before her, Kim has never been the least bit shy about having X-rated lyrics. Kim commands a large following, but she also has her detractors; some feminists have argued that her willingness to exploit sex promotes the objectification of women. But if anyone is being objectified on Kim's albums, it's men. Kim has always projected a take-charge image on her albums -- if anything, Kim's releases have portrayed her as the dominatrix and men as the submissives who do her bidding. On the song "Not Tonight," for example, Kim bluntly states that she expects any man she is intimate with to perform oral sex on her -- and that men who cannot pleasure her in that way shouldn't even bother wasting her time.

The list of other female rappers who started recording in the '90s is a long one. It's a list that includes, among many others, Nonchalant, Da Brat, Mia X, Foxy Brown, Bahamadia, LeShaun, the Conscious Daughters, Shorty No Mas, Heather B, Overweight Pooch, Tam Tam and Queen Mother Rage. Gangsta rap was very male-dominated in the '90s -- like rap in general -- but it did give us Sh'killa, a Bay Area rapper who set out to be the female equivalent of Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg or Warren G. Sh'killa's Gangstrez from da Bay (released by Priority in 1995) was right out of the Dre/Snoop/Death Row Records school of West Coast G-funk.

The majority of female rappers have been black -- at least in the United States. But some white female rappers have recorded albums over the years, and they have ranged from L.A.'s aggressive, in-your-face Tairrie B (who was very much a hardcore rapper) to pop-rapper Icy Blu (who Irving Azoff's Giant Records envisioned as a female version of Vanilla Ice). In 1990, Tairrie went after the hip-hop world with her debut album, The Power of a Woman, which didn't sell. And subsequently, she shifted her focus from hardcore rap to rap-metal and alternative rock as a vocalist for the band Manhole (more recently known as Tura Satana).

When the 21st Century arrived, rap wasn't showing any signs of becoming less male-dominated -- the high level of testosterone that rap had in the late '70s and early '80s wasn't any weaker in 2000, 2001 or 2002. But if women were still a minority in rap, they were a commercially viable minority; Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown (just to give two examples) continued to command sizable followings, and the early 2000s were a great time for the Philadelphia-based Eve (whose first album came out in 1999). Again, every hip-hop era has had some major female stars, and there is no reason to believe that the future will be any different.

by Alex Henderson