Vocalists

Tuesday 9/24/2019 Show: ABIAH

Photo: ABIAH | @ Joyce Jones/Suga’ Bowl Photography. Used with permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday September 24, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will feature the vocalist ABIAH.

A consummate artist with an astounding vocal range and a wealth of songwriting credits, Jeremiah Abiah is not only a vocal practitioner of the highest order, but he is also a master of the craft of vocal performance.

His many recordings and live performances, under the name ABIAH, serve as seminars in technique, control, range, and sonority. These skills have made him one of the most renowned celebrity vocal coaches in the music and entertainment business and an esteemed Professor of Voice at Berklee College of Music.

Jeremiah Abiah’s mastery of his craft, his meticulous attention to detail, and his desire to help other artists led him to formulate The ABIAH Way, his successful Artist Development and Vocal Coaching Firm.

Also, he has been signed as a solo recording artist for Universal Republic Records and has released a number of projects on that label and independently. Abiah’s music has become synonymous with exquisite vocals, meticulous interpretation, and unique compositions.

(Bio adapted from Abiah’s website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

ABIAH Sings Madonna returns to Joe’s Pub on Monday, October 7, at 9:30 p.m. ABIAH presents exquisite arrangements of Madonna songs such as “Into The Groove” and “Secret.”

Web Extras:

Watch ABIAH sing Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” recorded live at New York’s Joe’s Pub

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 8/27/2019 Show: Dee Dee Bridgewater

Photo: Dee Dee Bridgewater | © Joyce Jones/SugaBowl Photography. Used with permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday August 27, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program is a rebroadcast of a program of an interview with Ms. Dee Dee Bridgewater. Ms. Bridgewater was a headliner during the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival this past weekend.

Ms. Bridgewater made her phenomenal New York debut in 1970 as the lead vocalist for the band led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, one of the premier jazz orchestras of the time. These New York years marked an early career in concerts and on recordings with such giants as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach and Roland Kirk, and rich experiences with Norman Connors, Stanley Clarke and the recently departed Frank Foster’s “Loud Minority.”

Ms. Bridgewater doesn’t care much for labels, and in 1974 she jumped at the chance to act and sing on Broadway where her voice, beauty and stage presence won her great success and a Tony Award for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz. This began a long line of awards and accolades as well as opportunities to work in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris and in London where she garnered the coveted “Laurence Olivier” Award nomination as Best Actress for her tour de force portrayal of jazz legend Billie Holiday in Stephen Stahl’s Lady Day.

Tune in to hear more about this extraordinary song stylist, actress and entertainer. When this program originally aired in August 2011, WBAI offered a sneak preview of Ms. Bridgewater’s release “Midnight Sun.” Ms. Bridgewater was also scheduled to be featured in a tribute to bassist Ray Brown at the Blue Note.

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch Ms. Bridgewater perform the Mongo Santamaria classic “Afro Blue” live in Brooklyn.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 4/2/2019 Show: Sonia Sanchez and Jessica Care Moore

Photo: Sonia Sanchez and jessica Care moore in 2012 | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday April 2, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features interviews with poets, activists and educators Sonia Sanchez and jessica Care moore. When this program originally aired, WBAI had moved Suga’ from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. in November 2009. Hank Williams joined me for this insightful exchange of ideas and history about these mighty artists.

Sonia Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama. After her mother died in childbirth a year later, Sanchez lived with her paternal grandmother and other relatives for several years. In 1943, she moved to Harlem with her sister to live with their father and his third wife.

She earned a BA in political science from Hunter College in 1955. She also did postgraduate work at New York University and studied poetry with Louise Bogan. Sanchez formed a writers’ workshop in Greenwich Village, attended by such poets as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), and Larry Neal. Along with Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight, she formed the “Broadside Quartet” of young poets, introduced and promoted by Dudley Randall.

Among the many honors she has received are the Robert Creeley Award, the Frost Medal, the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women International League for Peace and Freedom, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. In 2018, she received the Wallace Stevens Award, given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.

(Bio adapted from the Academy of American Poets’s  website)

Jessica Care Moore is the CEO of Moore Black Press, Executive Producer of Black WOMEN Rock!, and founder of the literacy-driven, Jess Care Moore Foundation. An internationally renowned poet, playwright, performance artist and producer, she is the 2013 Alain Locke Award Recipient from the Detroit Institute of Arts. moore is the author of The Words Don’t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses The Ghetto, God is Not an American, Sunlight Through Bullet Holes, and a memoir, Love is Not The Enemy. Her poetry has been heard on stages like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the London Institute of Contemporary Arts. She has performed on every continent. jessica Care moore believes poems belong everywhere and to everyone.

Born in Detroit, jessica Care moore first came to national prominence when she won on the legendary “It’s Showtime at the Apollo” competition a record breaking five times in a row. Her searing performance of the poem “Black Statue of Liberty” earned moore several meetings with high profile publishing companies, but in 1997, she paved her own path and launched a publishing company of her own, Moore Black Press. She released her first book, The Words Don’t Fit In My Mouth, and sold more than 20,000 copies. Along with her own work, she proudly published famed poets such Saul Williams, Shariff Simmons, Def Poetry Jam’s co-founder Danny Simmons, NBA player Etan Thomas, Ras Baraka and former Essence Magazine editor Asha Bandele.

Black Tea: The Legend of Jessi James is a highly personal and passionate piece of work. It is decades of jessica’s Care moore’s musicality shared with her audience in a way they have yet to see. There was already music in her poetry; she is now bringing it full circle. The album is produced by moore and pianist Jon Dixon. Features include Imani Uzuri, Roy Ayers, Talib Kweli, Jose James, One Belo and Ursula Rucker. It will be released fall 2014 by moore’s record company Words on Wax in partnership with Javotti Media.

(Bio adapted from the jessica Care moore’s  website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch Sanchez read her poem “Middle Passage” with a live band.

Watch moore read her poem “You May Not Know My Detroit.”

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 3/26/2019 Show: Charenee Wade

Photo: Charenee Wade | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday March 26, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features an interview with vocalist, arranger and educator Charenee Wade.

Charenee Wade is not one to hold back or let fear stand in her way. The first artist ever to enter two Thelonious Monk Vocal competitions, she walked away from the second one in 2010 with instant buzz and second place to her new friend Cecilé McLorin Salvant. Known for expert vocal improvisational ability and her seriously swinging groove, Wade evokes a classic jazz sound akin to Betty Carter and Sarah Vaughan, two of her musical touchstones. With her Motéma debut, Offering: The Music of Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, she pays tribute to another inspiration, the socially conscious poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron, and confirms that she too plans to use her artist platform thoughtfully.

Produced by Grammy-nominated music industry veteran and Sirius XM personality Mark Ruffin, the recording features notable guest stars and a stellar band comprised of Brandon McCune on piano; Dave Stryker on guitar; Lonnie Plaxico on bass; and Alvester Garnett on drums. Wade’s labelmate, saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, sits in on “Essex/Martin,” as does Marcus Miller on bass clarinet and actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner on spoken word. Another spoken word guest is bassist Christian McBride, who opens “Peace Go With You Brother.” The great vibes player Stefon Harris is featured on six selections.

A native of Brooklyn, she began singing at age 12 and fell under the spell of Sarah Vaughan. Wade attended LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts and earned her music degree from Manhattan School of Music. One of four artists selected for the Dianne Reeves Young Artist workshop at Carnegie Hall, she was first runner-up at the 2006 New York City Jazzmobile Vocal Competition, which also featured Gregory Porter, whom Motéma launched into global stardom. The entire jazz industry has passionately embraced Wade including Wynton Marsalis, who features her regularly at Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC); Christian McBride, who mentored her at his Jazz Aspen Academy; and labelmate Rufus Reid, who selected her for his Grammy-nominated album, Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project. Wade has performed with Bobby Sanabria, Aaron Diehl, Oran Etkin, Robert Glasper and MacArthur Fellow and choreographer Kyle Abraham among others and at venues and festivals worldwide including Montreux and Spoleto.

A singer, composer, arranger and educator, Wade is a professor at the Aaron Copland School at Queens College and was just recently appointed to Peabody Institute. Following the Monk competition in 2010, she self-released Love Walked In, which earned her the NPR Song Travels feature. With Offering, Wade continues walking in love and using her art to raise our consciousness.

[(Bio adapted from Wade’s  website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch the promo video for Wades’s Offering release.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 3/19/2019 Show: Melanie Charles

Photo: Melanie Charles | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday March 19, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features an interview with flutist and vocalist, who uses Roland SPs and loop pedals, Melanie Charles. We discuss a Charles’ development, inspiration and varying projects.

Melanie Charles is a Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter, actress, and flutist of Haitian descent, with a creative fluidity spanning jazz, soul, experimental, and Haitian roots music. Charles latest release “The Girl with the Green shoes” established Charles as a progressive voice in Jazz that has caught attention.

Charles’ latest venture, Make Jazz Trill Again, traces the journey of Black music from the Haitian folk songs to Negro spirituals, from the Blues to Nancy Wilson and Hugh Masekela. Charles creates a space where tradition meets present time, using Roland SPs, loop pedals, and the flute to blur the lines between and among social classes, cultures, genders, and theories to create a world where opposing elements can co-exist.

Charles graduated from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music with a BFA in vocal jazz performance and trained under the tutelage of jazz masters Reggie Workman, Charles Tolliver, Junior Mance, Janet Lawson, Carla Cook, and Billy Harper.

[(Bio adapted from Charles’s  website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch the video for Charles’s “Pat Yo’ Afro”

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 2/12/2019 Show: Camille Thurman

Photo: Camille Thurman | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

Program note: we’re in a new weekly Tuesday night slot from 10-12 midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday February 12, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features an interview with saxophonist, flute player, composer, clarinetist, bandleader and educator Camille Thurman.

Acclaimed by Downbeat Magazine as a “rising star” singer with “soulful inflection and remarkable, Fitzgerald-esque scat prowess” and hailed by All About Jazz as a “first class saxophonist that blows the proverbial roof of the place”, Camille Thurman has been amazing audiences throughout the world with her impeccable sound, remarkable vocal virtuosity and captivating artistry. Many have praised her vocal abilities to the likeness of Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter. Her lush, rich & warm sound on the tenor saxophone has led others to compare her to tenor greats Joe Henderson and Dexter Gordon.

An accomplished performer, educator and composer, Thurman has worked with notable Jazz and R&B icons such as George Coleman, Roy Haynes, Dianne Reeves, Wynton Marsalis & the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra, Buster Williams, Charles Tolliver, Jack DeJohnette, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Terri Lyne Carrington, Jon Hendricks, Harry Connick Jr., Audra MacDonald, Diana Krall, Pattie LaBelle, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, Louis Hayes, Russell Malone, Nicholas Payton, Jacky Terrasson, Janelle Monae, Alicia Keys, Lalah Hathaway, Jill Scott and Erykah Badu among others.

Thurman has performed at the Kennedy Center, Rose Theater, Alice Tully Hall, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, The Library of Congress, the Sydney International Women in Jazz Festival, the Tomsk International Jazz Festival, the International Fano Jazz Festival and many other prominent jazz venues and festivals around the world. She has performed and toured throughout China, Africa, South America, Europe and Central America with her band. A 2018 season highlight includes performing with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra for the world premier of the historic work “The Every Fonky Lowdown” as a featured vocalist.

Thurman is a recipient of the Martin E. Segal –Lincoln Center Award for Outstanding Young Artists and was a runner up in the 2013 Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Competition. SF Jazz named Camille as one of “10 Rising Female Instrumentalists You Should Know” and she was featured in a ground breaking New York Times article recognizing women jazz musicians. She was a two-time award winning recipient of the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award and a winner of the Fulbright Scholars Cultural Ambassador Grant to Nicaragua and Paraguay. In 2018 she along with the Darrell Green Trio was selected by the U.S. State Department to tour 5 countries in Africa as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador. Her compositions were featured and performed by her quartet in the ASCAP/ The Kennedy Center “Songwriters: The Next Generation” showcase. Camille has appeared on BET’s Black Girls Rock as the saxophonist & flutist in the All Star Band.

[(Bio adapted from Thurman’s website)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

ReadThurman’s commentary on her experiences with sexual harassment in music at the Musician’s Union Local 802 blog.

Watch Thurman perform “Change of Mind” in this live clip from 2012.

Watch the trailer for Thurman’s 2018 Waiting for the Sunrise album

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Tuesday 1/15/2019 Show: Nancy Wilson

Photo: Nancy Wilson | © John Mathew Smith – Date Unknown.

Program note: We’ve moved to a weekly slot on Tuesday nights from 10 PM-Midnight!

The next show will air on Tuesday January 15, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features an interview with song stylist Nancy Wilson. This was the third interview show host Joyce Jones ever conducted, and an abbreviated version originally aired on March 8, 2007, as part of WBAI Radio’s International Working Women’s Day programming.

Born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, Ohio, Wilson first attracted notice performing the club circuit in nearby Columbus; she quickly earned a growing reputation among jazz players and fans, and she was recording regularly by the late ’50s, eventually signing to Capitol and issuing LPs including 1959’s Like in Love and Nancy Wilson with Billy May’s Orchestra. Her dates with Shearing, including 1960’s The Swingin’s Mutual, solidified her standing as a talent on the rise, and her subsequent work with Adderley — arguably her finest recordings — further cemented her growing fame and reputation.

In the years to follow, however, Wilson often moved away from jazz, much to the chagrin of purists; she made numerous albums, many of them properly categorized as pop and R&B outings, and toured extensively, appearing with everyone from Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan to Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. She even hosted her own Emmy-winning variety series for NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show, and was a frequent guest performer on other programs; hits of the period included “Tell Me the Truth,” “How Glad I Am,” “Peace of Mind,” and “Now, I’m a Woman.” Regardless of how far afield she traveled, Wilson always maintained her connections to the jazz world, and in the ’80s, she returned to the music with a vengeance, working closely with performers including Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Ramsey Lewis, and Benny Golson. By the 1990s, she was a favorite among the “new adult contemporary” market, her style ideally suited to the format’s penchant for lush, romantic ballads; she also hosted the Jazz Profiles series on National Public Radio.

In the early 2000s, Wilson recorded two albums with Ramsey Lewis for Narada (2002’s Meant to Be and 2003’s Simple Pleasures). Her 2004 album R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) was a blend of straight-ahead jazz and ballads, similar to her next record, 2006’s Turned to Blue, which, like R.S.V.P., used a different instrumentalist for each track. In 2005, Capitol released a three-part series to pay tribute to Wilson’s contributions to music in the ’50s and ’60s: Guess Who I Saw Today: Nancy Wilson Sings Songs of Lost Love, Save Your Love for Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads, and The Great American Songbook.

Nancy Wilson died at her home on December 13, 2018 after a long illness.

(Bio adapted from Allmusic)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 8/5/2018 Show: Shemekia Copeland

Photo: Shemekia Copeland @ 2012 Sierre Blues Festival | (c) Christophe Losberger.

The next show will air on August 5, 2018 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features an interview with blues singer Shemekia Copeland.

The daughter of renowned Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, award-winning blues singer Shemekia Copeland began making a splash in her own right before she was even out of her teens. Projecting a maturity beyond her years, Copeland fashioned herself as a powerful, soul-inflected shouter in the tradition of Koko Taylor and Etta James, yet also proved capable of a subtler range of emotions. Her 1998 Alligator debut, Turn the Heat Up!, featured a career-elevating version of her father’s classic “Ghetto Child,” that has been part of her performance repertoire ever since. She released three more acclaimed rough-and-rowdy recordings that decade before revealing a more nuanced, slow-burning persona on Never Going Back in 2009. By the time she gave birth to her first child in 2017 and released America’s Child a year later, she had transformed herself into a mature artist of vision and depth who could inhabit virtually any genre of music without sacrificing the power and passion that initially established her reputation.

Copeland was born in Harlem in 1979 and her father encouraged her to sing right from the beginning, even bringing her up on-stage at the Cotton Club when she was just eight. She began to pursue a singing career in earnest at age 16, when her father’s health began to decline due to heart disease; he took Shemekia on tour with him as his opening act, which helped establish her name on the blues circuit. She landed a record deal with Alligator, which issued her debut album, Turn the Heat Up!, in 1998 when she was just 19 years old (sadly, her father didn’t live to see the occasion).

While the influences on Copeland’s style were crystal clear, the record was met with enthusiastic reviews praising its energy and passion. Marked as a hot young newcomer to watch, Copeland toured the blues festival circuit in America and Europe, and landed a fair amount of publicity. Her second album, Wicked, was released in 2000 and featured a duet with one of her heroes, early R&B diva Ruth Brown. Wicked earned Copeland a slew of W.C. Handy Blues Award nominations and she walked off with three: Song of the Year, Blues Album of the Year, and Contemporary Female Artist of the Year. The follow-up record, Talking to Strangers, was produced by legendary pianist Dr. John and featured songs that she proudly claimed were her best yet. The Soul Truth, produced by Steve Cropper, was released by Alligator Records in 2005. Never Going Back followed in 2009 from Telarc Blues and was produced by the Wood Brothers’ Oliver Wood. 33 1/3 appeared in 2012 and was again produced by Wood and issued by Telarc. Copeland returned to Alligator for the release of 2015’s Outskirts of Love, which featured guest appearances from Robert Randolph, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. The album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Blues album category. In 2017, Copeland gave birth to a son and the following year, deeply inspired by the experience, she shifted directions. She chose to record in Nashville and enlisted producer/guitarist Will Kimbrough — who in turn enlisted a guest list that included John Prine, Mary Gauthier, Emmylou Harris, Steve Cropper, and more. With guidance from Kimbrough, Copeland dug deep and completed a deeply resonant program of soul, Americana, blues, and country. America’s Child, the set was released on August 3, 2018.

(Bio adapted from Allmusic. Find out more at Copeland’s website.)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Shemekia Copeland will be at Iridium on August 18.

Web Extras:

Watch Copeland sing “Ghetto Child” in this live clip.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 7/22/2018 Show: Nana Camille Yarborough

Photo: Nana Camille Yarborough | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

The next show will air on Sunday, July 22, 2018 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast features an interview with writer, actress, composer and social commentator Nana Camille Yarbrough.

Camille Yarbrough is an award-winning performance artist, author, and cultural activist. With a career that spans over sixty years, several continents, countless awards and accolades, and a few generations, Nana Camille has earned legendary status.

Camille Yarbrough was enstooled in New York by Abladei, Inc. (Ghanaian) as Naa Kuokor Agyman 1, founder of the Stool House of Harriet Tubman and was given the honorary title of “Nana.”

She continues to inspire audiences today via her local, long-running television show of sixteen years (Ancestor House), via her popular musical CD (also entitled Ancestor House), and via performances and lectures focusing on poetry, music, Black art, spirituality, and culture.

Yarbrough’s vision was nourished and became a creative force in her life when she toured as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company of Dancers, Singers, and Musicians. There Nana Camille honed her performance and producing gifts and immersed herself in an independent study of African people throughout the Diaspora.

The world-traveling Chicago native currently resides in New York.

Nana Camille Yarbrough for twelve years was a faculty member at the City College of New York where she taught African dance and the Harlem community courses. As an accomplished theater actress, she co-starred in Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and did the national tour as a member of the company. Later she recorded the cast album and wrote a half-page article about the show published in the Drama Section of The New York Times. She also did a national tour of Ted Mann’s, Circle in the Square Theater Production of James Weldon Johnson’s play, God’s Trombones, was featured in writer Adrienne Kennedy’s Cities in Bezique at New York’s Public Theater and danced, sang and acted in the Broadway Musical, Kwamina.

For television and film, her credits include soap operas; Where the Heart Is, Search For Tomorrow, Television Special; Soul, CBS Special; Caught in the Middle and Gil Noble’s Like It Is. She also toured in her one-woman show; Tales and Tunes of an African American Griot. In contemporary pop cultural circles, Nana Camille is known as the singer whose song and vocals were sampled on the international mega-hit, “Praise You,” by techno-musician Fatboy Slim. Her first solo musical recording, The Iron Pot Cooker (1975) is where the hit song “Praise You” originated.

In 1979 Camille Yarbrough’s first book an award-winning, groundbreaking family book, Cornrows, (Putnam Publishers) was called “a gem” by Essence magazine was published and later three more books followed: The Shimmershine Queens, (Random House) The Little Tree Growing in the Shade (Putnam Publishers), and Tamika and the Wisdom Rings (Just Us Books). Camille Yarbrough wrote a three-part series “Black Dance In America” 1980-1981 was published by Black Collegian Magazine. “Female Style and Beauty in Ancient Africa: A Photo Essay” was published in The Journal of African Civilization’s Black Women in Antiquity edited by Ivan Van Sertima.

When asked about the relevance of her message for today, she explains: “In the tradition of the African jelimuso/griot, I am charged to do more than share stories, but I must preserve the meaning and beauty of culture. That work transcends time and space”

(Bio adapted from her website.)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Web Extras:

Watch Nana Camille perform “Tell It” in this live clip.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.

Sunday 1/21/2018 Show: Jazzmeia Horn

Photo: Jazzmeia Horn @ the 2018 Winter Jazz Fest | © Joyce Jones/ Suga Bowl Photography. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND. Used with Permission.

The next show will air on Sunday, January 21, 2018 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast recognizes the 2018 Grammys by featuring an interview with composer, vocalist and Best Jazz Vocal Grammy nominee for A Social Call, Jazzmeia Horn.

Winner of the 2015 Thelonius Monk International Vocal Jazz Competition and 2013 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, Jazzmeia Horn has a name that speaks for itself capturing her very essence. Hailing from the great Dallas, Texas Horn has already earned a reputation in New York as a rising star. With the ambition to pursue a solo career, Horn graced the New York scene in 2009 and earned her degree at The New School for Jazz and contemporary Music. It wasn’t much later when she began to perform as a sideman with musicians Winard Harper, Junior Mance, Billy Harper, Lincoln Center Alumni Vincent Gardner, Delfeayo Marsalis, Mike LeDonne, Peter Bernstein, Johnny O’Neal, Vincent Herring, Kirk Lightsey, Frank Wess, and Ellis Marsalis.

Horn then began to appear in world famous jazz festivals and legendary jazz clubs such as Lenox Lounge, Bill’s Place, The Apollo, The Blue Note, Dizzy’s Jazz Club Coca­Cola, Minton’s, The Jazz Standard, Smalls Jazz Club, Zinc, Jazz Gallery, Birdland, and The New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Her accolades include Downbeat Student Music Award Recipient 2008, 2009, and Best Vocal Jazz Soloist Winner 2010; The 2013 Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program at The Kennedy Center­ in Washington D.C.; The Rising Star Award for the 2012 Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition; Finalist for Mid­Atlantic Jazz Vocal Competition in 2014; and The 2015 ­16th Annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium’s Young Lioness Award.

Currently, Horn is a teaching artist in The NJPAC Well’s Fargo­ Jazz for Teens Program and Jazz In The Schools Program in Newark, New Jersey. She appears in various clubs on the jazz scene nationally and internationally leading her dynamic group “The Artistry of Jazz Horn” which includes­ a pianist, bassist, drummer, saxophonist, poet, dancer and herself­ as vocalist. Horn humbles her life and gift of music before God and says “I am thankful for the opportunity to play music professionally and have a deep desire to uplift the souls of others in need through my artistry in the spirit of music.”

(Bio adapted from Horn’s website.)

This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.

Jazzmeia Horn will be at the Mid Atlantic Jazz Festival on February 16. She also has a run at the Jazz Standard from March 1-4.

Web Extras:

Watch the trailer for Horn’s Grammy nominated A Social Call album.

Watch Horn perform her medley of “Lift Every Voice and Sing/Moanin” Live on the Tavis Smiley Show.

Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman College in the City University of New York system.