http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1603215432/u-s...

Kickstarter - U*Space: The Little Gallery That Dared To Dream

Shared via AddThis

USpace is totally inspiring...Check it Out!!!

Forced by hurricane Katrina to flee her adopted home in New Orleans, an angry and enlightened Jhelisa Anderson touched down in Atlanta, Georgia, to
finish her third album, 'Freedom's Land'. It's an uplifting, eclectic, passion-fuelled journey back to her southern roots and it's set for imminent release alongside a DVD that vividly documents her experiences in the Big Easy.

"The sun was shining in New Orleans when I left." reflects the former resident of the Crescent City. "It's amazing what becomes irrelevant... insignificant... when you've got 24 hours to decide what to take. It was real focussed. I just took my keyboard and a couple of bags of essential stuff, threw them in the car, and set off with Katrina on my tail. We all thought we'd be back in a couple days, nobody thought it would become a metaphor for survival. Nature does not let you forget that things can be very temporary. The dinosaurs found that out!"
Jhelisa Anderson is in London, fresh from performing in Berlin, and it's a bright winter's day. She is in limbo and pondering where to temporarily sink some roots and finish her long-awaited third album, 'Freedom's Land'.
"I'd like to be part of the rebuilding, but I don't think I'll be going back there for a while," maintains Jhelisa. Angry at the Bush administration and the neglect and corruption that had left her adopted home under water
she declares, "I'm hoping, with the rebuilding, that the city will get better. There's a lot of people who won't return but the people of New Orleans are passionate about their city. It's generational... I met one woman who is 18th generation and it's very rare that any black family in America can be traced back that far. They will return to the city and that will be a beautiful thing to watch... passion and hope. With the sound of every hammer you will hear the music begin."
Along with neglecting the levees, built to protect those areas of New Orleans below sea level, the Bush administration have potentially contributed to a rise in water temperature in the gulf – which results in the increased ferocity of the hurricanes – by opting out of the Kyoto Agreement. For Jhelisa it has been a politicising process. She feels that people are starved of real information and if they want to make their voices heard they should look for inspiration, for example, to those people in the Ukraine who stood in the freezing cold for two weeks to overturn a corrupt election result.
In Jhelisa's view it's all about being able to maintain a balance, to interact and represent hope in its truest form.
"When I started 'Freedom's Land', using New Orleans musicians as a focus, it began a process of rediscovering America – especially the south where my grandparents and parents are from – after being in London for over 13 years. When people would ask, 'Where are you from?' I'd tend to hesitate 'cause I've never felt patriotic about where I'm from. I was born in Jackson, Mississippi at a time when there were many crazy things going on. We lived round the corner from Medger Evers who was killed around that time. In fact, we left Jackson when I was six months old because my father was attacked by this racist man that worked at the radio station with him. My father was a radio announcer for over 40 years... this man... 'cause he was jealous, jumped him, beat him... brutally.... hospitalised him. The station encouraged him to stay but the experience had been too brutal. We moved to Louisville, Kentucky where I grew up. The negativity of those times left a deep impression on me. I always felt claustrophobic there and five days after I graduated from high school I left for Los Angeles."

Read the full article in the February 2006 issue of Straight No Chaser
Words: Paul Bradshaw
Pictures: Markus Bader

THE LONDON TIMES REVIEW
by John Bungey

"A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE"

When you put on an album by a honey-toned singer from the American South who has grown up with gospel you have a pretty good idea how it will turn out - as with the hotly touted Lizz Wright.
but the Mississippi-born Jhelisa Anderson is more of a maverick, perhaps because she spent time in London singing with Bjork and the Shamen, as well as Greg Osby and Courtney Pine.
Lately she has been touring a set of Nina Simone songs, but this showcase of her own tunes covers a lot of bases. The full-tilt gospel of Freedom's Land is gradually enveloped in a rainbow of vocal harmonies, while Journey of Life in Nine Minutes slowly builds its intensity, propelled by hypnotic tablas. More straightforwardly, Far I Have Come has the feel-good warmth of South African jazz and Love is a State of Mind is classic soul balladeering.
You have a vocal album of real charm and surprise.

ECHOES INTERVIEW w/JHELISA
by Kevin Legendre

There are several reasons why some artists release albums infrequently. Anything from record company wrangles to testing personal circumstances to downright laziness can be cited and, in some cases, it is a combination of all of the above that comes into play. The music industry can be a Bermuda Triangle to even the most wily of navigators.
Jhelisa Anderson, the woman who has proved to be one of the most esoteric and experimental singer-songwriters to have emerged from America in the lasat decade, has been off the radar for much longer than her fervent admirers would have hoped and even casual onlookers would have perhaps expected.
Her last album Language Electric goes back to 1997 when she was still living in London and signed to Dorado Records, one of the small crop of indies that sprung up in the wake of Talkin' Loud and the buzz that once was Acid Jazz.
Since then she has gigged around the world, written songs for cinema and made music available on her website, but it is only now nearly a decade down the line that she releases her third album proper, the outstanding A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE.
"I will always wonder why i could not orchestrate the release of all this music that I have piled up on hard drives, and lyric books," she comments on the lengthy hiatus between this set and her previous album.
"I left Dorado in good shape, and started my compnay Rentavibe Records, released Starfishing on Avex in Japan, and got a couple of licences for films, including THE PROTAGONISTS (starring Britich Actress Tilda Swinton). I also was featured in the film. This was a great start but i soon learned my limitations with running a new business.
"I was doing this primarily on my own with a lawyer, and the help of a few friends. I was in the dark, about what was really required to make a label really work. This is still my ultimate goal, but independent labels have inpsired me, and supported me."
And that's why she's happy to have signed with INFRACOM!, the German imprint headed by Jan Hagenkoetter that was astute enough to license Cleveland Watkiss' Victory's Happy Songbook.
This is the entirely logical place for an artist like Anderson, whose melodies, lyrics and whole aesthetic are far too unconventional to really strike a chord with the majority of major label A & Rs. She's never made disposable music. She's never aimed at dumbed down mass appeal.
Friendly Pressure, Anderson's signature tune is highly instructive in this regard. Built on a subtle but penetrating harmonic framework, the piece artfully dissects a troubled relationship without slicing up any stock love song cliches.
Galactica Rush, the 1994 debut album whence the aforesaid anthem came, announced an artist whose muscularly tender and tenderly muscular tone and love of "hybrid sounds", a brew of jazz, soul, gospel, African Music, hip-hop and electronica, made for a maverick with the same otherworldly countenance as a Jeanne Lee, Meshell Ndegeocello of Bjork.
As with the latter, expatriation has been a key factor in Anderson's evolution as an artist. The capital of our green and pleasant land became her home between the early '90s and early noughties after she touched down from her native Atlanta.
"I miss London very much; it always will be a part of me," she gushes. "And after being in the Sttes for two years, I realize that Jhelisa the artist as you know of today would not have existed had i stayed in the States, and had never come to London, period.
Yet as much as she hails her beloved London, a refuge for many artists all over the world who otherwise would not have been heard on a global scale," Anderson's affection is tempered by a typically thought-provoking observation. "On the other side, living in the bosom of the most successful colonizers, and the implications of that, is a double-edged sword."
Quite. From the denuciation of child slavery in SELL ME AWAY to the evocation of clergyman-perpetrated sexual abuse in HOLD MY PEACE, there has always been a candor and defiance in Anderson's spirit but it has surfaced more emphatically than ever on A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE and this is partially due to the circumstances in which the album was borne.
After briefly returning to Atlanta at the end of the '90s, the singer, who at one point was slated to produce material for one of her idols, Chaka Khan, settled in New Orleans to complete recording. Then last year Katrina came. Anderson's studio was flooded. A huge chunk of material was lost. The natural disaster that was turned into a tragedy by the incompetence and outright racism of the Bush Aministration, came to epitomise the inequities of an America whose reprehensible foreign policies are unfortunately mirrored by dehumanizing domestic ones.
Songs like CULTURE OF SILENCE, JOURNEY OF LIFE and SURVIVIN IN THE KEY OF EFLAT caprute the singer's alienation as a result. But as the Coup's Boots Riley recently pointed out when talking about 9/11 and censorship, its important to realise that a watershed moment does not mean all was rosy "back in the day."
"Inhumanity is cyclical, Bush is only a metaphor, atrocities did not begin with his administration and it will not end there," Anderson states. "Expressing my frustrations and confusions, with this system is my life's work and it's not limited to the contradictions of politics. It parallels the contradictions of personal politics, and even biological politics, the war on the inside of our bodies..
"It was difficult before Katrina: I found life in general consistently challenging. But after Katrina, it became even more surreal. I wasn't just reading about it, or hearing about it, I was actually a part of it, directly affected by the violence of Mother Nature.
"There was no looking outside on a bad storm that passed on by as we slept peacefully. The hurricane, and the aftermath now lives in my heart, and my material things were sacrificed for it, but more importantly, many lives were sacrificed, and so much innocence was lost.
"No birds were singing when Katrina came. Nor did I want to sing; I was silent. But my head was thinking a thousand thoughts per minute. I could not think of finishing the album, although I knew that somehow I had to.
"I think SURVIVIN IN THE KEY OF EFLAT was the evidence of my experience in New Orleans. It also reflects the incomplete feeling you feel when your life is suddenly changed with no word of warning. There is nothing you can do but change with the weather. This transient condition has been a part of my music since time, this determined nomadic traveller that I have become, as it has somehow become a part of my purpose, to go and see for myself, smell for myself, taste for myself, hear it for myself. Katrina was certainly a "catalyst for change" for me."
Anderson's recent gig at the JAZZ CAFE', a venue in her beloved London" that has attracted consistently good crowds anytime she's booked, certainly reflected this upbeat state of mind. It was the most confident and energised performance of hers that I've seen in years and explained why she was able to pick herself up post-Katrina and complete A PRIMITVE GUIDE with real resolve.
On stage is where Anderson perhaps makes the most sense. its where her puckish, slightly unsettling persona comes through, where she can enact the all-important gestures that clarify THE STORY OF A MUSICIAN'S MADNESS, where she can lock horns with her fellow musicians and enjoy the ensuing creative conflict. The Jazz Cafe band was perfect for her. Keyboardist Robert Mitchell, drummer Mark Mondesir and alto saxophonist Tony Kofi provided the opposite amount of improvisatory nouse to inspire the mast daring use of Anderson's voice, prompting her to unveil a raft of rich textures and cyclonic wordless vocal throughout the set.
All of which made the point that although Anderson is not "officially mentioned in jazz reference books, she has both an understanding of the mechanics and ethos of the music to enable her to keep company with its most demanding exponents.
Tellingly some of her finest moments on record have been with two iconic British jazz saxophonists. In 1995 she appeared on Steve Williamson's mesmerizing version of Celestial Blues and then in 1997 she graced Courtney Pine's reprise of Tryin' Times. Neither track would have worked without her.
Pine told me that the specific reason he wanted to work with her was becasue of the impression she had made when "battling" Williamson, one of his favorite musicians, at a gig.
The sense of creative mutual sparring also pervaded the Jazz Cafe concert and speaking to Tony Kofi afterwards it's clear that improvising musicians see the likes of Anderson as one of them, even though her aesthetic may not be as clearly defined by Ellingtonian or Pakeresque signposts as theirs are.
Anderson stands on the cusp of jazz and myriad forms. She blurs the line between the genres. She has a voice that is flexible enough to accomodate many musical traditions and forms of harmonic language. With that in mind Nina Simone might be her most appropraite predecessor.
The connection has been made more explicit in recent times by a superb Simone songbook album that Anderson has recorded for her own label RENTAVIBE. SUNDAY IN ALGIERS finds the singer bringing an impressive degree of creativity to arrangements of songs that still present a challenge for the most accomplished of musicians.
Although there are many fine moments on the set the highlight is a volcanic reprise of See-Line Woman in which Anderson manages to capture that quite unique cocktail of insurrection, straight-talking and sugar-in-my-bowl sexulaity that made Simone
such a law unto herself.
"I would like to think that there is a parallel between her and I," Anderson concedes. "For many reasons, but mostly her radicalism, when her peers were only singing about' my baby done left me" Nina was also singing about "Mississippi Goddam. She was not as accpeted in America on the mainstream as her music progressed. "She was unafraid to express it, and she paid the financial price of that, and the ridicule, and the degradation from mainstream press, when she went out of favor for some.
"I am honored to pay tribute to here on this SUNDAY IN ALGIERS record that I recorded in New Orleans a few months before Katrina. I hope to find a worldwide release for it soon."

TIME OUT REVIEW
BY Kerstan Mackness

JHELISA
"A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE"

Jhelisa Anderson released two fine soul-jazz albums in the '90s and has since worked with the likes of Bjork and Chaka Khan. This LP, recorded in New orleans as Katrina hit, is a sublime distillation of Southern gospel, soul, M-Base-ish funk and jazz. At times it recalls a spiritual Tricky, at others a twenty-first century Nina Simone. I's underpinned by Jhelisa's distinctive harmonies, low-slung grooves and beguiling voice. Unique and totally essential.

THE WORD REVIEW
by Howard Male

JHELISA
Returning to the Wilderness with
"A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE"

Mississippi-born but widely traveled Jhelisa is a rule unto herself. I can't thinnk of another female African-American artist with such an excitingly schizophrenic approach to music. Take for example the light-speed rockabilly gospel of this album's opener Freedom's Land or the warped Broadway-musical pizazz of Walking on Air. Every track here is its own self-contained musical adventure with jhelisa's quiet, richly emotive voice being the only thing holding the whole thing together. She says these songs are about "the nervous breakdown of America" which, considering recording was completed in New Orleans just days before Katrina, show a keen sense of foresight too. it's been nearly ten years since Language Electric, her last powerful manifesto fro musical freedom, and this collection is just as grippingly atmospheric. Strongly recommended to all adventurous jazz, souil, rock, trip hop and (insert favorite genre here) fans.

We opened for Herbie Hancock at the New Orleans Jazz&Heritage Festival a couple of weeks ago, and I was so moved by the musical rituals that Herbie's band put down, with Marcus Miller on Bass,
voo doo energy just filled the place emanating from our master musicians,
witnessing this force,
hearing drummer Brian Blade, he just took me there!! To a place i will never forget, Airto & Flora, Black Uhuru years ago,
New Orleans' Henry Butler and James SIngelton's String Quartet brought me to tears last year.
i get so filled up, and passionate at these performances, these rituals, these musical ceremonies? Whatever you call it, majic happens, you get lifted, and soothed. Its amazing cause musicians have the ability to hipnotize you, perhaps there is some hidden code in the music that seduces you to go buy all of their records!!
The passion to go and find a record/concert, like its a drug or something, gotta have it, Is it too vunerable and needy to want music that urgently. it doesn't happen to me that often but when it does, there 's nothing that will stop me from getting my dosage of crystalized spirit music energy, and booty shake!
Anybody else, had passion nourish you deeply, through music, or anything else that you would like to share?

Got this vintage book from the 60's, HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE WOODS" , It's hilarious!!! I definitely have to get my city girl into the country and learn how to farm a while. My mates are going to Ecuador to work on an organic farm for one month, with the kids in tow. How cool is that! Cow Dung, Insects, and all the fresh air you can hold:)

I knew I was not alone with these personal experiences, seems the illnesses in this country of usa are escalating in a strange way, like alzheimers seemed to come on the scene all of a sudden round 15 years ago or so, some say it's dementia in disguise. WHATSINEVER, it's a mysterious disease that can be difficult to treat for some. I've been through it with my step father who recently passed away after 5 years of surfing on alzheimer's. It was so bizzare, at times it seemed like someone had dropped acid in his drink, and he could be quite fun. Other times it his behaviour reflected the wisest man in the world, with perfect clarity, and other times it was like a very bad trip with no return. Are Americans more prone to dementia/alzheimer's/schizophrenia? Apparently Japanese elderly are more durable physically and psychologically, generally speaking, What are we doing wrong here, other than the contaminated food, air and water, as well as our internal residue of plastic that we consume with almost every food item that we buy, amongst other plastic contained household items, Where the hell did we go so wrong? or is there even such a thing???.

Freedom's Land

opens with native son of New Orleans Kendrick Marshall Channeling a slice of classic New Orleans Piano rippin tradition, to help me get home on freedom's land, along with drummer Terence Higgins (Dirty Dozen Brass Band) and BassHeavy on bass, driving traditional foot stompin rhythm that I heard growing up in the African American church music culture. This is one of my efforts to remember what it was like growing up in that environment, a part of my quest in returning to America after 10 years of change. Honoring the traditional civil rights movement anthem "ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." You will find your body shaking from the first 8 bars.

Journey Of Life,

An experiment in form, a happy accident, actually playing music with my Russian descending guitarist, Sagat Guirey, who was willing to jump with me, as I was trying to arrange this ambitious monster. I think he thought I was a bit crazy at the time we recorded it, but I think he likes it now. On percussion Pandjit Danish's powerful percussion playing with a myriad of exotic percussion instruments set it off, and away we went. A crystallization of chaos and order at once, trying to represent some of the sudden changes and turns in my life, at moments of the extreme I fondly think of Frank Zappa.