Have you ever heard about “rare northern soul” in a bar or dance club and wondered what it was? Soul music has been known for some time as an African-American genre in the United States. It is a mixture of blues, gospel and funk which is well-known for its catchy rhythms and funky beats. These are emphasized by singers and musicians who use handclaps and rapid body movements to express the sentiments of the songs. To know about the true origin of this genre, you have to look far across the ocean to England.

When the British mod scene was nearing its end in the 1960s, young music lovers were looking for a new sound to call their own. Many were in love with the early artists that had come out of the American Motown scene, with their upbeat rhythms and light-hearted attitudes. The music was easy to love and even easier to dance to.

But when American Motown began moving toward the funk and soul of the 1970s, many of the artists emerging with the original style later on the scene were quickly brushed aside. Not so in England, however, where a small contingency of Motown aficionados were requesting more rare northern soul than ever before.

The reason the term “rare northern soul” is so often used to refer to this style of music is because even from the time that it began growing in popularity, it was a dying genre. With the American Motown scene moving further and further away from the sounds that kids in Northern England loved to hear, they set out on a mission to find rare and even unreleased artists that had the music they were looking for.

Slowly by surely, record store owners started to notice that there was an entire group of music lovers that were more interested in the rare northern soul than the more popular music coming up the charts. To respond to this demand, they started looking for the most obscure artists, one-hit-wonders, and records to ever come out of the soul music movement. That’s why the hunt for northern soul records is almost as exciting as dancing to the music: because there are only a finite amount of artists that fit into this category. If you’re looking to start your collection, there are plenty of websites completely dedicated to this type of music.

Usher Raymond IV who performs under the mononym Usher, is an American recording artist, dancer, and actor. He rose to fame in the late 1990s with the release of his second album My Way, which spawned his first Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit, “Nice and Slow”.

His followup album 8701 (2001) produced the Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits “U Remind Me” and “U Got It Bad”. Both albums sold over 8 million copies worldwide, establishing Usher as one of the biggest selling R&B artists of the 1990s.

On March 30, 2010, Usher released his sixth studio album Raymond v. Raymond, which became his third consecutive album to debut at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart. It has been certified platinum by the RIAA and spawned another Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit “OMG”.

The song became his ninth number one in the United States, making him the first 2010s artist to collect number one singles in three consecutive decades, and only the fourth artist of all-time to achieve the feat. He later released an extended play and deluxe edition of “Raymond v. Raymond”, entitled Versus, which debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart. Its lead single “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love”, achieved international success and has reached number-five on the Billboard Hot 100.

Usher announced on July 8, 2010, a follow-up extended play to his sixth studio album Raymond v. Raymond called Versus, and a deluxe edition of Raymond v. Raymond, both to be released on August 24, 2010. Usher described Versus as “the last chapter of Raymond v. Raymond”, and that it would explore the subjects of being newly single and a father.

The album included 9 tracks, including 7 new tracks, Raymond v. Raymond single “There Goes My Baby”, and Justin Bieber single “Somebody to Love (Remix)”. The tracks would be included on a deluxe edition of Raymond v. Raymond. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart and is preceded by the singles “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love” featuring Pitbull, for mainstream audiences, and “Hot Tottie” featuring Jay-Z, for urban circuits.

The first single off the album, “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love”, was released to iTunes on July 13, 2010 and sent to radio on July 20, 2010. Due to strong digital sales the song debuted at number nineteen on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song became the fourth highest debut on the Billboard Hot 100 of his career, behind 1997′s “Nice & Slow” at number nine, 1998′s “My Way” at eight, and 2010′s “OMG” at number fourteen. Since its release, it has gained international success, peaking in the top 5 in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

It reached the top 10 in Canada, and Europe. It reached number-nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in its third week of release, and became the first time Usher has had two top-ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time since his album Confessions.

It also became Ushers sixteenth Billboard Hot 100 top-ten hit of his career. The second single, Hot Tottie has reached number thirteen on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and number twenty-five on the Billboard Hot 100.

Usher appeared at the 2010 MTV VMAs on September 12, 2010.He then performed at the 2010 American Music Awards on November 21, 2010 and also won the awards for Male Soul/R&B artist and Favorite Soul/R&B album for his album, Raymond v. Raymond.

According to Rap-Up.com, Usher has started working on his next studio album, and that he is again teaming up with long-time collaborator Rico Love. During an interview with stylelist, Usher explained that he is working on a new genre of music depicted as ‘revolutionary pop’, to which several different genres are combined to create a new sound, this new music is to be included on his upcoming album.

Usher also made a surprise appearance at Super Bowl XLV to sing his song, ” OMG” with the Black Eyed Peas’ musician will.i.am.He appeared on a rope from above, in a similar style to the Black Eyed Peas.

Hair :The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement.

The musical’s profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. The musical broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of “rock musical”, using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a “Be-In” finale.

Hair tells the story of the “tribe”, a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the “Age of Aquarius” living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society.

Ultimately, Claude must decide whether to resist the draft as his friends have done, or to compromise his pacifistic principles and risk his life by serving in Vietnam.

After an off-Broadway debut in October 1967 at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and a subsequent run in a midtown discotheque space, the show opened on Broadway in April 1968 and ran for 1,750 performances. Simultaneous productions in cities across the United States and Europe followed shortly thereafter, including a successful London production, which ran for 1,997 performances. Since then, numerous productions have been staged around the world, spawning dozens of recordings of the musical.

Some of the songs from its score became Top 10 hits, and a feature film adaptation was released in 1979. A Broadway revival opened on March 31, 2009, earning strong reviews and winning the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for best revival of a musical. In 2008, Time magazine wrote, “Today Hair seems, if anything, more daring than ever.”

The job of leading the foreign language productions of Hair was given to Bertrand Castelli, Butler’s partner and executive producer of the Broadway show.Castelli was a writer/producer who traveled in Paris art circles and rubbed elbows with Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Butler described him as a “crazy showman… the guy with the business suit and beads”.

Castelli made the decision to do the show in the local language of each country at a time when Broadway shows were always done in English. The translations followed the original script closely, and the Broadway stagings were used. Each script contained various local references, such as street names and the names or depictions of local politicians and celebrities. Castelli produced companies in France, Germany, Mexico and other countries, sometimes also directing the productions.

A German production, directed by Castelli,opened in 1968 in Munich;the tribe included Donna Summer and Liz Mitchell (of Boney M). A successful Parisian production of Hair opened on June 1, 1969. The original Australian production premiered in Sydney on June 6, 1969. It was produced by Harry M. Miller and directed by Jim Sharman, who also designed the production. The tribe included Keith Glass and then Reg Livermore as Berger, John Waters as Claude and Sharon Redd as The Magician.

Redd was one of six African-Americans brought to Australia to provide a racially-integrated tribe. The production broke local box-office records and ran for two years, but because of some of the language in the show, the cast album was banned in Queensland and New Zealand. It transferred to Melbourne in 1971 and then had a national tour. The production also marked the stage debut of Boston-born Australian vocalist Marcia Hines.

Another notable production was in the former Yugoslavia (Belgrade), the first Hair to be produced in a communist country.Directed by local female producer-director Mira Trailovic and attended by president Tito, the Belgrade production was a favorite of authors Rado and Ragni, with Ragni declaring “there’s no middle class prejudices here”. Local references added to the script included barbs aimed at Mao Zedong as well as Albania, Yugoslavia’s traditional rival.

Apple gave consumers the power to personalize the functionality of their phones like they do their PCs.

Apple’s iPhone was not the first cell phone with an integrated music player (the Samsung Uproar, 2000), nor the first with a touchscreen interface (LG Prada, 2007). And phones with touchscreens had been available for nearly a decade. The iphone wasn’t even the first on which a user could download and install mini applications (the Palm OS-powered Handspring Treo 180, 2002). So what was so special about it?

Quite simply, the iPhone leapfrogged its competitiors, integrating advanced and disparate hardware attributes into a smooth, simple, friendly, clever, and almost magical multitouch intuitive user interface needing no drop-down menus, all dressed in arguably the sleekest and sexiest cell phone case ever designed.

The iPhone appeared like a Ferrari driving alongside its Model T-like competitors.

The iPhone’s great breakthrough came not through fashion, feel, or functionality but in its operating system. Before its introduction, cell phone carriers controlled the design and implementation of the manufaturers’ handsets they sold, particularly cell phone applications. Carriers directed how owners used their phones, which meant in ways from which the carriers could profit.

The iPhone destroyed this carrier-dominated dynamic.

Apple gave consumers the power to personalize the functionality of their phones the way they do their PCs, enabling nearly anyone to write and sell applications. At its height, the Palm offered the most “open” cell phone operating system at the time, with some 30000 largely business and industry-specific applications available. By the end of this year, there will be 300000 iPhone apps, which include Urban Spoon – shake the iPhone and a ist of potential restaurants in your neighborhood spin into position like a slot machine; GottaGo- generate a timed fake phone call to escape an awkward meeting; Shazam-hold the iPhone up to a loudspeaker to identify the name of the song blaring from it; Bump – trade address, phone, and email contact info by fist-bumping another iPhone user with your iPhone; and thousands of games, reference tools, shopping engines, and utilities.

Once Apple pioneered the way, an army of app-centric cell phones running Google’s Android operating system, Palm’s webOS, BlackBerry, Nokia Ovi, and, most recently, Samsung Bada, soon followed, along with Apple’s own WiFi-enabled i’Touch multimedia player.

Hard to be Easy

Not long after the iPod went on sale in October 2001, Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs was thinking about an iPod cell phone. Inexperienced in the cloistered cell phone world, he initially partnered with Motorola on the iPod-enable ROKR in late 2005. But ROKR, the technological equivalent of a built-by-committee platypus, proved an ugly failure. Jobs understood that only Apple could produce an Apple cell phone.

Even before the ROKR, Jobs had approached Cingular, which would become AT&T Wireless in December 2006. Apparently Apple had been working for nearly a year on revolutionary multigesture touchscreen technology that could be adopted for a cell phone. Cingular, attracted to the potentially huge volume of data minutes consumers would consume downloading music and video files and the cachet of selling an exclusive Apple device, was willing to discard its design monopoly and cede complete creative control.

While the deal with Cingular was still being negotiated, several hundred Apple engineers and programmers got to work transforming the company’s Mac OS X into a brand new mobile-specific interface and building the hardware, while chief Apple industrial designer Jonathan Ive worked on the now iconic shell.

But in the fall of 2006, only three months away from its scheduled January 2007 debut, the iPhone failed to work. Apple engineers and coders shifted into all-nighter overdrive for the next 90 days. In mid-December, Hobs was able to demonstrate the iPhone to slack-jawed AT&T executives. iPhone development had cost Apple an estimated $ 150 million, but the investment has paid off handsomely.

New Phone, New Paradigm

Other than the mass of fun, informative, and functional apps available, Apple has innovated a number of now standard touchscreen hardware and operational features:

- visual voice mail, which enabled users to listen to selected messages rather than running through them in sequences;

- multigesture control, in which a user can “pinch” an on-screen object, text, or image, in order to increase or decrease its size;

- an accelerometer and proximity sensor, which automatically reoriented the screen into either landscape or portrait viewing mode according to the attitude in which the device was being held; and

- a sensor that turned the phone’s touchscreen off when a user placed it up to the face for conversation, then snapped back on when pulled away after the end of a call.

No manufacturer of later touchscreen phone dares skimp on these four now basic conveniences.

When the iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007, lines at Apple and AT&T stores snaked for blocks. By the end of 2007, Apple had sold 3.7 million, making it the fastest-selling smartphone ever. More important, iPhone and iTouch subscribers have downloaded more than 2 billion apps, making the complete destruction of the carrier-centric paradigm.

(Source: American Heritage’s Invention and Technology (The Magazine of Innovation)

CHEVROLET GLOBAL INDIAN MUSIC AWARDS ANNOUNCE NOMINEES FOR FIRST MULTI-GENRE MUSIC AWARDS

Chevrolet GIMA powered by Micromax says No to Piracy of music

Mumbai, Oct 26th, 2010: With the inaugural edition of the Chevrolet Global Indian Music Awards (GIMA) powered by Micromax on the anvil, nominees were announced today in the Film Music and Non-Film Music categories. Adding to that an unconventional award for the Best Anti-Piracy Initiative, fighting music piracy in India was also announced. An initiative of Wizcraft International Entertainment, Chevrolet GIMA has been instituted with the support of IMI, T-Series, MCAI and other key constituents of the music industry. The inaugural edition of the Awards will be presented at an exclusive ceremony on November 10th, 2010 in Mumbai.
Mr. Karl Slym, President & Managing Director, General Motors India, said, At the forefront of technology, innovation and design, Chevrolet believes in bringing together the finest elements in its creations for its valued customers. As an extension of this belief, Chevrolet is proud to have collaborated with GIMA, setting a benchmark for musical excellence in the country. The year 2011 is Chevrolet’s 100th Anniversary and with over 90 years of presence of Chevrolet Cars in India, as part of our 100 years heritage celebrations it gives us immense pleasure to be associated with the first-ever Global Indian Music Awards to celebrate the equally rich time-immemorial heritage of indigenous musical talent and lend global recognition to some of the best Indian music and musicians across genres.
GIMA received an outpour of entries with a record 223 albums, compromising a total of 940 entries. Touted to be the highest number of entries to be obtained for a music celebration, film music album entries tallied to 42 and non-film music entries to over 180 albums.
Among the hundreds of films that released during the eligibility period of the Awards, trumping the film-based nominations is the music of 6 films – 3 Idiots, Karthik Calling Karthik, Kaminey, Ishqiya, Love Aaj Kal and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani.
In the non-film music nominations, legends and new talent came to the fore, including Ustad Rashid Khan, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pt. Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Dr. L. Subramaniam, Shubha Mudgal, Lata Mangeshkar, Kailash Kher, Mohit Chauhan, Purnima Chaudhuri, among others.. The Best Non-Film Song has seen some familiar titles with Aman Ki Asha, Bas Ek Baat Ka Humko Gila, Chaandan Mein, Fitoor, Lets Go To Mumbai City and Marhabba Jaanam, vying for the coveted Chevrolet GIMA trophy.
The nominees in the various categories have been determined by a panel of illustrious members from the music and film industry. Cutting across music and films, the Chevrolet GIMA Advisory Board and Jury include Vijay Lazarus, Bhushan Kumar, Dr. L. Subramanium, Pt. Shiv Kumar Sharma, Shankar Mahadevan, Hariharan, Prasoon Joshi, Pritam, Karan Johar, Mukesh Bhatt, Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra, Shekhar Ravjiani, Lesle Lewis, Talat Aziz, Usha Uthup, Resul Pookutty, Sulaiman Merchant, Kumar Taurani, Apurv Nagpal and Atul Churamani, amongst others. The jury is further divided into a film music, technical and non-film music jury.
The brainchild of the Chevrolet GIMA Advisory Board and keeping with the vision of the Awards of fighting music piracy, the Board has initiated a special Award The Best Anti-Piracy Initiative of the Year. The Advisory Board will be reviewing the entries and will select the most impactful initiative, to be announced at the Awards night.
Indian Music Industry, President, Vijay Lazarus, said, Our industry is struck by piracy and initiatives to combat that need to be taken and hence recognized. There are opportunities to recognize this and the people who are aiding the campaigns both on the physical (CDs, etc..) and digital space (creating software programs, running online crusades, etc..) and I applaud GIMA for taking a step in that direction. We hope to reach out to Government bodies and influencers in our country, allowing us to work together to further curb piracy.
Chevrolet GIMA, powered by Micromax, marks the coming together of the Indian music fraternity on a unified platform to honour talent in Indian music. Talking about his association with the Chevrolet Global Indian Music Awards, music mogul and T-Series Chairman, Bhushan Kumar said, Through GIMA, we hope to integrate the Indian music fraternity onto one stage, commending them for their role in bringing the music to us. Being on the GIMA Advisory panel, in the company of Indian music greats, we have before us the avenue to do just this. We truly believe that the awards is the start to a great chapter in Indian music history.
Sabbas Joseph, Director Wizcraft said, Over the last 11 year, we have successfully taken Indian Cinema to the world with the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA). With GIMA, our dream is akin. It is our endeavour through the Global Indian Music Awards to achieve a similar contribution as that of IIFA, by providing the music industry with a unified platform to celebrate the laurels of their fraternity.
The winners will be chosen by the GIMA Academy which comprises over 200 members of the music industry through online voting. Ernst and Young, the process validators will tabulate all Academy Votes and the winners will be declared at the Awards Ceremony. The Chevrolet Global Indian Music Awards powered by Micromax are conceptualized and promoted by entertainment and communications major Wizcraft International Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. Global Indian Music Awards, please visit www.gima.co.in

For further information, please contact:
Atul Malikram
9827092823
pr@atulmalikram.in