[Leica] Natalie Merchant is a poetress, songstress and writer of 'the' Hy mn for M-street photographers.

["Stewart, Alistair" <AStewart@gigaweb.com>]

Marc,

no, she isn't 'country and western' or 'pop', she's very different to that.
But indeed is 'popular'. Her roots are probably best described as folk, but
today she inhabits a broad milieu of popular (which is used as an adjective,
rather than as the full version of 'pop' the noun for a different genre)
female singer/songwriters that are deeper than any single genre. And IMHO,
Ms. Merchant is the best (as if 'best' means anything in this context  - but
don't get me going on that, or else we'll go down the HCB-is-best sidestreet
again) of the commercially successful artistes in said milieu.

The original examplar is probably Roberta Joan Anderson, who goes by the
name of Joni Mitchell, and emerged back in the 70's. In the 80's Annie
Lennox was a prominent diva in that genre, who also achieved commercial
success and popularity. Other less commercial artists who have been at it
for a while include the luminary and recently deceased Laura Nyro, Rickie
Lee Jones, Laurie Anderson, et al.

Today, there are waves of 20 and 30 something females redefining the
musicscape, from Lauryn Hill to Sarah  McLachlan. Their influences span
country, jazz, blues, folk, hiphop, and occasionally 'pop' (e.g. Ms Merchant
and Michael Stipe recently performed an a capella version of "to Sir With
Love".

Hope this helps. If you use a search engine, you'll easily find some
websites from hich you can download and listen to some clips. The video of
"carnival", which I often think of as the M-street photographer's hymn,
shows her in action with her M3.

BTW, today is co-incidentally the launch of her new live album.

Maybe we can get a thread going here on relationships between
street-shooting-as-art, and other art-forms?

best of light,

Alistair

- -----Original Message-----
From: Marc James Small [mailto:msmall@roanoke.infi.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 1:45 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: RE: [Leica] Who is Natalie Merchant?


At 02:21 PM 11/9/1999 -0500, Stewart, Alistair wrote:
>She's a very interesting singer/songwriter, who fronted a band called
>"10,000 Maniacs" until the mid 90's, when she left to pursue an independent
>career. Hir first solo album, "Tigerlily" had a track, which was also a
>single, called "Carnival",  with an associated video featuring the utterly
>delectable Ms. Merchant street shooting with her M3. And the use of the M3
>in that way fit perfectly with the song.

So, I presume we can conclude that MS Merchant is some sort of modern pop
singer?  Or is she Country-Western?  Or what?

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!