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New York 1920 to Dublin 2020 – Celebrate ‘A Century of Ladies in the Blues’ at Liberty Hall Dublin. The show that’s getting standing ovations all over Ireland, both North and South, is landing in Dublin’s Liberty Hall, for one night only, February 14, 2020 - exactly one hundred years to the day when Mamie Smith made the first blues recording by a woman. As an epicentre for radical politics in 1920, Liberty Hall is a fitting venue to acknowledge and revere the pioneers who followed Smith’s footprints, the women who transformed the blues from local folk music into the art form it is today.
‘A Century of Ladies in the Blues’’ live music journey travels from the gospel roots of the 1920s, through vaudeville & jazz, to the blues rock of the 60s & 70s, bringing these women and their stories to life through music and evocative visual backdrops.
On Valentine’s day 1920, Mamie Smith stepped up to the microphone in The Okeh Company in New York and shouted out “That Thing Called Love”. This was the first recording of a black female vocalist and an iconic moment in blue’s history. Although ‘That Thing Called Love’ wasn’t a classic blues recording it opened the door to a generation of ‘classic female blues’ vocalists. Through that door came Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Sr. Rosetta Tharpe, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and many more. Most of these women struggled against poverty and fought their way to the front of this male-saturated genre, thus influencing the course of musical history.
The show, Ladies in the Blues’ began its journey in 2015 as a pub gig in the Hot Spot Music Club in Wicklow and has since performed to SOLD-OUT audiences in the Mermaid Arts Centre, and continues to receive standing ovations in national theatres and festivals across the country. This year the show performed on the acoustic stage at Glastonbury Festival, the largest greenfield festival in the world;
Fronted live on stage by four of Ireland’s great female exponents of the blues, each with their own interpretation of iconic songs; these singers are accompanied by a crackin’ band of blues sidemen. The all Irish cast includes singers - Clara Rose, Ireland’s songstress of rockin’ blues; Wicklow native, Emma Nicolai; Dun Laoghaire Queen of Vaudeville, Jhil Quin on washboard and vocals and introduces special guest, Anne Randolph. The show’s ‘house band’ are the cream of the Irish blues scene and comprise Ed Deane on guitar, James Delaney on keys, Eoghan O’Neill on bass and Kevin Malone on drums.
Once described by The Irish Times as 'the centre of social anarchy in Ireland …’ what better place to pay homage to these trailblazers; the women who brought black culture into the American main stream, through the revolutionising force of music.
Aiken Promotions Present – A Century of Ladies in the Blues
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