Friday Night YouTube Music #11
What I've been listening to and some new discoveries
The YouTube algorithm seems to serve me a steady diet of music that I’ve listen to before. These are songs that repeatedly show up in my YT’s Recommendations. This week I was greeted every morning by Cory Wong’s band providing funky backup for British vocalist Phoebe Katis on “Synchronicity”. If you need to start your day dancing, this is the ticket.
As I said a few posts ago, I will get more into Cory Wong and his music in more depth soon.
The first new surprise this week was finding these two delightful young instrumentalists, Lucia Sarmiento (saxophone) and Jemma Heigis (keyboards). I know little about them except that Lucia is a Peruvian who’s spent the last decade in the US. I’m guessing this video was originally posted on Instagram. With both Tik-Tok and Instagram becoming the go-to way for young musicians to gain a following by posting snippets, YouTube has entered the competition with “YouTube Shorts”. No matter the length, these two young ladies are about fun. This piece is the theme from the animated TV show, “Hey Arnold!”.
And a funked-up “Ghostbusters”:
This duo also has serious jazz chops. Here’s a snippet of a Snarky Puppy tune:
The most fascinating find of the week is 23-year vocalist/ instrumentalist, Laufey. Raised in Reykjavik, Iceland (her father is Icelandic, her mother, Chinese), she studied piano and cello as a child. As a teenager, her father’s record collection led her into a fascination with previous generations of jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Anita O’Day. Her voice, as you can hear in this cover without commercial production, recalls those classic stylists.
Even with lush production, this cover showcase Laufey’s unique voice .
She does write her own songs but I feel her songwriting has not yet matched her vocal abilitie. So my favorite this week is another cover, “These Foolish Things”, performed as a duet with Claudia Nketia.
It’s a hopeful sign to find young artists preserving older traditions.
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