JFP Chick Ball — Hear These Song Birds

by Bryan Doyle
July 17, 2008

In June, the quintessential Jackson-area music festival Jubilee!JAM put on the best show in years, with top music acts like Three Six Mafia and ZZTop. Though generally the diversity was noteworthy, one key component was missing: female solo acts. In presenting our schedule for the upcoming Chick Ball, we’ve highlighted local female solo acts who have directed their passion for music to promote a good cause. Hopefully, our area concert promoters will take notice. I know we have.

Rhonda Richmond
The African proverb goes something like this: “If you want to know the end, look at the beginning.”

If you’re going to talk about the music lineup at the 4th Annual Jackson Free Press Chick Ball, you’re going to have to look at long-time blues artist and Jackson native Rhonda Richmond, who played the inaugural Chick Ball in 2004.

Steeped in the blues, peppered with jazz, and a healthy dose of R&B and even country, Richmond’s music reveals a powerful spiritual component that illuminates the strong cultural ties between the Mississippi region and the West African nation of the Yoruba people. Richmond’s debut album, “Oshogbo Town,” draws greatly from the West African and the Mississippi blues traditions.

Not at all a stranger to Chick Ball venue Hal and Mal’s, Richmond has taken her show of blues and jazz (or as Richmond likes to call it, “blazz”) to venues across the city, from Huntington’s Grille to the Birdland club on historical Farish Street.

Richmond has a personal awareness of the complex suffering endured by the victims of domestic violence. In that spirit, Richmond is joining Laurel Isbister in performing an original song written specifically for the cause.

“We’re trying to send a positive message to those who have experienced that kind of abuse,” Richmond says.

Visit myspace.com/rhondarichmond.

Laurel Isbister

When she was 9 years old, Laurel Isbister won her first tape recorder in a poetry contest. As Isbister likes to put it; “That red, hand-held Panasonic ignited a fire.” Isbister’s love of pushing the “record” and “play” buttons has continued to this day. In 2005, she released “Nona Mae’s Wishes,” a CD lauded for its interwoven themes of love and spirit, and for its excellent guitar work.

Isbister grew up in North Carolina, and she spent the next 10 years traveling and living in various places such as Florida, France, Bulgaria, Los Angeles and Oakland, California. Along the way, she studied music intensively, on her own and at three institutions: the New College of Sarasota, the Academy of Arts and Dance in Plovdiv, Bulgaria and the University of California Los Angeles.

In 2003, Isbister returned to the South, choosing to live in Mississippi, where her maternal lineage goes back nine generations.

Isbister’s eclectic style reflects her years of adventures and her study of music, spiritual philosophies and feminism. Some of her songs reveal a quiet, introspective grace along the lines of acoustic, inspirational music.

Among her influences, she names Ani Difranco, Neil Young and Aimee Man.

Visit myspace.com/laurelisbister for more info.

Infinite

As an artist, there are really two Infinites. First, she’s Infinite, the respected 25-year-old female solo artist, 2006 Hip-Hop Female Artist and 2008 nominee at the Jackson Music Awards for her work on her double mix-tap “Bi Mi Self/Gotta Be Me” with fellow Jackson hip-hop artist Slim Picket.

Second, she’s Infinite, one-third of the hip-hop trio, Dread Bread.

For the group, Infinite represents the “Street” of their mantra, “Street, Krunk and Lyrical.” The group, which also garnered three Jackson Music Award nods for Dread Bread, recently drew nominations for the Jackson Music Awards for “Hip-Hop Group of the Year” and “Rap Artist of the Year.”

The upcoming album, “Krunk R Die,” features two standout tracks, the Infinite-driven “He said, She said” and “Dread Bred Fresh.”

A Gulfport, Miss., native, Infinite began rapping in school yards and talent shows when she turned 13. She attended the University of Kentucky on a basketball scholarship for two years before transferring to Jackson State University.

Though still unsigned by a record label, Infinite has collaborated with Black Franchise Records and Klaccikal Records, and started her own independent label, Ndless Entertainment.

Visit myspace.com/dreadbred and myspace.com/infiniteKFC for more info.

Caroline Crawford

Loving and learning the piano as a young teen. Sneaking a radio into her bedroom at night to listen to rock music, which was forbidden in her house. The summers in Seattle, training with her grandfather, who was a music teacher. Those first public performances at the Kaffeeklatsch in Huntsville, Ala., as a nervous 16-year-old.

Caroline Crawford is a product of her experience. She has come a long way since the days when her piano-playing was an experience so personal that she shied away from ever performing for others.

Tone deaf until her music skills began to come out, her ailment led her parents to initially discourage her from pursuing music professionally.

Now Crawford’s haunting voice and piano evokes Tory Amos and Evanescence’s Amy Lee. Music is her passion and conduit of self-expression.

“I write about the things I can’t always talk about,” Crawford says.

“I take it to the piano and hope I can be open enough to let the lightning come and shock the truth and all the emotion right through my fingertips and my voice,” she says.

Visit myspace.com/carolinespiano for more info.

The JFP Chick Ball is Saturday, July 19, from 6 p.m. to midnight. See jfpchickball.com for an up-to-date schedule and to find out how you can help.

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