IM: WHUSDJ
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Dark Side of the Highway
Esperanza Spalding took the honors for "Best New Artist" at the Grammy's last night; upsetting (in at least two senses of the word) countless Justin Bieber fans. If you search for realtime trends on Twitter, you see that the references divide neatly into a few categories: "Esperanza Who?", "Well-Deserved Win for *Real* Music", and many in Portugese (which I can't interpret).
Esperanza Spalding is a young and talented bassist, singer, and composer who graduated from the Berklee College of Music not too long ago. And yes... she's really pretty, too (let's not forget that this is still showbiz). She has three CDs as leader, but is also well-known as the bassist in Joe Lovano's "Us Five" quintet.
Many of us in the jazz department at WHUS are taking this as a small but significant triumph of substance over faddish trends. Don't hate us for that. We rarely get the opportunity to gloat.
If you need convincing that this was not sort of travesty of justice or something, please watch this video.