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| Ekayani Europe Tour this Spring Ekayani, chart topping R&B artist, towers about the North American competition. Now she is set to conquer The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark this spring. Fresh off a 60 week run at the top of the R&B and Smooth Jazz New Century Heatseeker chart, the six-foot tall former model turned musician, is visiting Europe on to mark the inclusion of her single "La Raihna" in the April issue of Global Rhythm Magazine. "Full Length", the album by Ekayani and the Healing Band, is out now on Damn'it Records. Ekayani is a fascinating, eclectic figure in the world of pop music. She former fixture in the Parisian high-fashion scene, modeling for designers such as Dior, Veronique LeRoy, and Kansai Yamamoto. She lived in Europe for years and has performed in Paris, New York and Miami. Ekayani's musical lineage stretches back to the greatest artists in a variety of genres. Composer David Amram has called Ekayani a "fantastic" reader of Jack Kerouac. Amram worked with Kerouac in the beat poet's pioneering 1957 New York City spoken word performance. Amram has also worked with legends such as Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie and Arlo Guthrie and scored such classics as the Manchurian Candidate, Splendor in the Grass and Shakespeare in the Park. Ekayani and the Healing Band draw upon all these eclectic influences to to create a sound both familiar and entirely new. Between April 20, 2007 and May 12, 2007, Ekayani will embark on a series of promotional appearances throughout Scandinavia and the Low Countries. She is scheduled to appear on Den Hauge FM's Vleesch noch Visch with host Hubert Lock on April 23, 2007. "La Raihna" is now a music video produced and directed by Kurt Ritta. The mini-movie features a series of New York City scenes, including Central Park, Cafe Charbon on the Lower East Side and the 24th annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, and a sexy night shoot in water, in a multi- layered meditation on love. Written between Lisbonne and Paris during a series of thunderstorms, and recorded and mastered in New York, "La Raihna" is a multi-year hegira that includes a collaboration with French techno guitar master Paul Mahoux, who wrote the empathetic music and produced the multilayered sound on a crisp Gibson 335. Number One on the New Century Heatseeker charts in America for an amazing 60 weeks in the R&B and Smooth Jazz category, 'La Raihna' also was voted Number One R&B Performance for 2006 in NCEN's nationwide Internet vote. The World/Jazz/R&B song has also earned advanced rankings in the 2005 ISC and Billboard Magazine song competitions. "La Porte" (The Door) is a rap/spoken word riff that was voted Number One for the week of May 15, 2006 in the Spoken Word category at American Idol Underground. Besides reaching the top spot at AIU, the online affiliate of the hugely popular television show, 'La Porte' has chalked up another aggregation of honors: six weeks in the top 10, 29 weeks on the charts, Number One Female Performance in four separate weeks at American Idol Underground. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Jazz News :: home page |