A strong Canadian current's caught me up.
It's going to take part of this entry with it, but last week somebody told me a Chicago-based singer was "right up your street."
She sounded engaging, that's for sure -- she sometimes sings in Tibetan, she's going to be in Moscow next spring, she writes poetry I can't understand since it's in Russian and she does jazz and "all kinds, pretty dark".
That was accurate enough.
 Oh yes, how could I forget? She's also "one of your hot short-haired blondes and you might enjoy what she wears as well as what she does". Okay, so Lena Potapova's a lass with looks to like and she knows it, does a see-through thing too in video at the Schizowave site, where it says:
"She expresses herself loud. She has traveled around Asia all by herself with very little money. She has managed Makye Ame Restaurant in Tibet. She has spent a month in an American jail as a suspected Russian spy. She has opened a gallery / performance space in Chicago to help other local artists. She has been called a hippie, a punk, an idealistic idiot and a cynical bitch. She believes in passion, and if you can't take the heat, don't listen to her music."
She's freaky, funny, serious and plays with three talented guys. They do seem to like masks. Anton, who told me of Schizowave and what some of Lena's poems in Russian are about, did so on reading here once of a penchant for boyish blondes and then my recent mention of Kurt Weill when I wrote about Fiona Apple.
Lena is into Weill, and a lot of others, from Nina Simone to Tom Waits.
Beyond saying they do play what they call "WFS" (Weird you-can-guess Stuff), I so far thank Anton for drawing my attention to an intriguing woman-fronted band, who don't always play loud and don't believe in borders, and pass on for now.
And I'm grateful too to whoever the adventurous people are behind the iTMS in France who give chances to people like Lena I've not always found anywhere else. If I say more, it'll be when one of the "artist alerts" now piling up there gets me an e-mail from the music store with a major discovery in it.
This has happened several times already and it's an enlightened policy to be strongly encouraged.
I said Canada, though, and you've had a few paragraphs about a Russian people also call a "trip hip-hop" chick.
I'll have to add CD Baby to the blogroll somewhere, along with Caimanzone. They're too useful to omit. The Amazon connections here are worth having, but CD Baby, pretty well known as "a little CD store with the best independent new music" isn't as small as all that! Short of buying from musicians themselves, when you won't find them at Virgin, the FNAC, or even some brave little stores in Paris -- a city particularly good for African music -- these online outlets do a essential job in making available the work of lesser-known musicians.
Why I'll be writing about Canadian women after a chance New York spell, I don't know, but until the Caimanzone people mailed it, among the first three of a bunch of albums ordered several weeks back (this calls for plenty of patience), I couldn't lay my hands on Chantal Kreviazuk's 'What If It All Means Something' without using the "sidebar" I recommend people who shop via Amazon shouldn't forget. In this instance I chose the Caiman store.
There's synchronicity again, as with the previous entry, between people I know and the music I listen to when my iPod finger stops scrolling. I synched the "small" one just yesterday with the latest, that finger went on down past the gorgeous Chantal and then back on an impulse.
I've written a little of 'Colour Moving and Still', a very good album on which Chantal the poet-pianist finds there's much more to "peace and love" than what people meant back in Woodstock days. She's a woman of considerable compassion.
 The recently delivered 'What if...' album from 2003 -- still billed on Chantal Kreviazuk's site as "the new one" -- had me stuck in an agreeable loop. I didn't get beyond the first five tracks because I liked them all so much, they each needed at least two more hearings ... and one spoke very directly to a friend with whom I'd just had a chat.
Tara MacLean is another Canadian I've just got to know. Her 'Silence' (c. 1997) is beyond golden, it's sometimes miraculous. Both presumably still are among the loves of yet another Canadian named Patrick Chan (I guess from the Url) who's got a thing about them and other women singers. A site of his has been defunct for seven years, but gets a mention for two reasons.
On Kreviazuk, he has a clear enough view: 'And God made her...'
Maybe so, I'm no God expert, but Patrick passes on something interesting:
"'Music was always a part of me; it was just so incredibly natural. I would make up songs to my mother when she was putting me to sleep.' Chantal is blessed with perfect pitch, enabling her to accurately discern the tone of any sound. Although she cannot reproduce the notes to such an accuracy with her voice, it has usually proven to be beneficial to any musician in terms of touch, rhthym, tonal quality, improvisation, etc... and a remarkable learning curve."
That's technique. From a first handful of songs released several years after he wrote that, it's already apparent Chantal's learning curve has been ... wow! And not just musically.
She'll be back, it's premature to take a look at Chantal the person and what she can do with both voice and keyboards.
A seasonal way with a whim
The other thing Patrick said I note was this:
"I don't avoid music because it's popular... I'll just avoid it because it's bad. I do however try to give all music a chance. I prefer to judge the music for what it is - entertainment. Because I don't pay much attention to media hype, I am left to buying music on whims and depend virtually entirely on chance. Fortunately, these days, with the Internet, I can ask around and find out what's decent" (his 'Maddening Music' page).
It's "entertainment" and infinitely more too, but his comment about paying little attention to hype and asking around, the Net connection, is important these days and especially to the musicians. Take a look at the list of artists on this music shop page at Womanrock or at Auralgasms.
Hmm, Lena's there, but with most of them chances are you'll be on new ground, I'd bet on it, just as I am. How do you find out these days what's new and "up your street"? In France, the role of the Internet in turning people on has come in just a very few years to take precedence over what they hear from their friends, whims in stores, and the "old" media, television especially, often even specialist and brave radio stations.
Word of mouth remains very important, but many people have told me they've found musicians they like via the Internet, so I started checking some figures and will give a few details in the book one day. In short, it turned out to be true, particularly regarding women.
There are people in statistics institutes who seem to look into almost anything! So here's just a thought for your Christmas gifts, from a guy with much still to learn of what he loves most. If somebody you know wants music and you've got the time to think about it a bit and the cash, take a risk. Maybe they've asked you for an album they'd like or you've an eye to their wish lists.
So you know their tastes. What if, instead of simply giving them exactly what you know they'd like, you were to give them something you're sure they will because of those tastes and you surprise them? Take them somewhere new.
If they don't thank you for it, you can always blame me and send me the offending item instead. But if you're smart, the odds are they will, and then who'll be happy? They will, you will ... and so will a musician.
And that, folks, is my 'Best of' list for the season: it's in the best of your own intuition.
As for Anton? I told him there's too much music around me nowadays to sustain a penchant just for boyish blonde women with soul and their figures. Life's far too short and what's really appealing is far too varied to be so narrow-minded.
12:51:05 AM link 
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