From: owner-god-shiva-digest@smoe.org (god-shiva-digest) To: god-shiva-digest@smoe.org Subject: god-shiva-digest V2 #60 Reply-To: god-shiva@smoe.org Sender: owner-god-shiva-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-god-shiva-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk god-shiva-digest Saturday, August 28 1999 Volume 02 : Number 060 Today's Subjects: ----------------- BOUNCE: RE: god-shiva-digest V2 #59 [mwyarbro@zzapp.org] me'shell article at www.africana.com [Patrick Saunders Subject: RE: god-shiva-digest V2 #59 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 14:30:25 -0500 I have read the review from wallofsound and several e-mail post from others who describe the CD, Bitter, as depressing, somber, etc. But am not feeling any of that. I think the music masterfully captures the attributes, including limitations of human love. Above all the music is real and truth (if there is a difference). Any thoughts? Marlon - ----- Sent using MailStart.com ( http://MailStart.Com/welcome.html ) The FREE way to access your mailbox via any web browser, anywhere! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 12:41:14 -0400 From: Patrick Saunders Subject: me'shell article at www.africana.com I was checking my e-mail at the www.africana.com site and was suprised to find our girl on the very front page of the site!..see why web based e-mail at africana.com is so phat! Ya get all this great converage of black culture..I highly recommend checking it out Black Friday Feature Ndegeocello’s Testament to "Bitter" Days by Rebecca Carroll On her new album "Bitter", celebrated songstress Me'Shell Ndegeocello (pictured) follows up her last two hard, bass-driven CDs--"Plantation Lullabies" (1993) and the Grammy-nominated "Peace Beyond Passion" (1996)--with the softer, more classical sound of straight acoustics. The quiet and confessional album is dedicated entirely to the emotional turmoil of relationships both fruitful and failed, and is being hailed as Ndegeocello's best work to date, an introspective departure from the amplified funk featured on her earlier albums. Ndegeocello (a name she says is Swahili for "free like a bird") describes the album as being about "duality and contradictions, love and hate...about how we are all perfect beings struggling to find peace in the world." Best known to mainstream pop audiences for her 1994 duet with John Mellencamp singing Van Morrison's "Wild Night," Ndegeocello decided to go acoustic two years ago while touring with the Lilith Fair--the diverse all-girl gang of notable musicians who tour the country, festival-style, each summer--as a way of getting back to the raw joy of making music. "Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls would always be playing her acoustic guitar, and I thought that was so great, to just sit there and make music like that," Ndegeocello said in a recent interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Playing acoustic demands a fundamental focus, and the experience allowed Ndegeocello to reconnect with a soulful and vulnerable sound within her that at one point she felt she might have lost. "With 'Peace Beyond Passion,' I hit a wall and crushed my soul and mental space," she said. "I lost my mind." Ndegeocello says the hyped success of "Peace" went to her head, causing her to lose sight of what it really meant to make music. After "Peace Beyond Passion" was nominated R&B album of the year in 1996, but did not win the Grammy although widely expected to, Ndegeocello realized she wasn't happy with the direction in which her life and music were headed. "I left [the Grammy award ceremony] and went and sat in my room, and thought, this is utter bull---what am I doing with my life?" she said. Moving from Los Angeles to a rural suburb of San Francisco helped Ndegeocello to reclaim her creative sanity, and to look more closely at the choices she'd been making, particularly in relationships. Ndegeocello, who lives with her son, Solomon, and her girlfriend of four years, writer Rebecca Leventhal Walker, hopes that with the release of "Bitter" and her new calm surroundings, she will continue to foster an increasingly healthy and spiritual perspective on who she is today and has been in the past. "Ideally, I'd like to create a space...with really good music, where people can come to get their thoughts together, and where there's therapeutic counseling and spiritual guidance for all denominations," she says. "Bitter" offers an elegant cover of Jimi Hendrix's "May This Be Love," as well as several original songs such as "Beautiful" and "Grace." The latter is perhaps the most hopeful and resolute track on the CD, promising that despite all the tears and heartbreak that can come with relationships, real love is attainable, and worth the pain. The song reflects Ndegeocello's new take on life. "I no longer spend my days in worry of tomorrow," she says. "Instead I keep the thought of God ever present in the hope that my days are filled with love for myself and others." "Bitter," already named Album of the Year by Vibe magazine, is in stores this week, and can also be ordered through the Media Center at Africana.com. Sources: San Francisco Chronicle/DivaStation/Business Wire/Billboard Magazine ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 22:27:16 -0400 (EDT) From: The_SCOOBSTER@webtv.net Subject: Re: god-shiva-digest V2 #59 the chat was cancelled, the server crashed. they are going to reschedule the chat. ------------------------------ End of god-shiva-digest V2 #60 ******************************