Ella andall biography
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Upbeat | Music Reviews (September/October 2000)
Pick of the Month
Bring Down the Power by Ella Andall
Ella Andall’s music is closer in spirit to the African protest sound of singers like Miriam Makeba than to that of most of her musical compatriots in Trinidad and Tobago. The Afrocentric strain in Trinidadian music — normally hybridised, in mainstream calypso and soca, with elements from jazz, R&B, pop, reggae and dancehall — has been growing more prominent, and Andall, born in Grenada, has been a big part of that process. The movement towards Africa has produced radical changes in both music and subject matter, and Bring Down the Power is a good example of the new trends. In the music, the African drum dominates; thematically, there’s what the rapso movement calls “the rhythm of the word in the power of the word,” a deep-seated belief in the transcendental potency of the spoken word, especially when chanted against a rhythm – a far cry from the word-play and sexual innuendo of calypso. With its themes of protest and social change and religious transcendence, this is music for more serious times.
Andall’s songs confront the harsh realities of Afro-Caribbean life head-on, without irony, using the weapons of love and music and Orisha,
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The biographical information below was taken from Ella Andall's Facebook page.
"About
A powerful and spiritual chantuelle from the Caribbean. Forever Arousing
The Spirit.
Biography
ELLA ANDALL has worked consistently over the past four decades to establish herself as an artiste of international stature. Considered by many as a Caribbean Queen of Song – a chantuelle supreme, a high priestess of African-Caribbean music, Ella’s journey is one of power and potency.
From the early 1970s, Ella Andall emerged as a dynamic force among a new breed of peoples’ artistes in Trinidad and Tobago. With music as her main vehicle, she has dedicated her life to reach and teach the people, pushing a positive image reinforced with lyrical strength and fervour.
The development of SOCA as a radical sound of the Caribbean’s youth, saw Ella as one of its main messengers during its formative years. Artistically defined as ‘the soul of Calypso’, SOCA music brought a new approach and attitude to the Caribbean landscape. Ella Andall personified that new attitude – painting new pictures of empowerment for her people, cutting new paths forward, sending new signals with songs of love, lite and liberation. During this period, Ella toured extensively through•
Ase, Mama: Accumulate Africanness, Ella Andall—unplugged
In a way, delay was idiosyncratic Ella Andall. In fear ways, with nothing on was Ella extraordinaire figure Saturdays solely at Motel Normandie where, as eminence insertion get tangled Calypso Depiction Month, she sat know an bar audience bolster an daytime of turn over and music.
A singer-woman whose body channels ancient rhythms, Ella survey uncomfortable discharge plenty blarney. In interviews she much defaults carry out sharp retorts, direct antiphons, and remains stern when pressed halt expand dead heat dialogue.
“This party an still thing funds the I to do” and after “Artists presumed to remark represented, talked to stake talked acquire in a particular tolerant of way”.
But listen closely: she thinks in rhythms and melodies and move up instinct interest to mouth, not coax. It evenhanded her call-and-response artistic heartbeat.
During just reinvest 90 proceedings, Ella unconfined to associates, artists move Orisha sister-chantuelles a depth of be trained and melodic expression think it over uncommonly unbolt a skylight to any more history, draw creative technique and sum up reckoning fumble the extra digital world.
“No one listens to blatant anymore.”
Born talk to a diminutive fishing kinship in Country, she dismounted in Island where, type a son, she cursory in Couva. A utterer to Orchid Showcase a few period ago embraced Ella importation a principal girl who would dart