Friday, June 18, 2010

Happy Solstice with Phat Man Dee and Miguel's Latino Moods

Happy sunny Friday to you, my friends! I hope you get this message  just moments before you leave work early to enjoy this beautiful weather in Pittsburgh!


Tonight, about 8 pm, please join me for a beautiful evening of vocal  jazz and Caribbean music as I share a stage with my friend Mike Murray on piano and my friends Miguel Sague III and his father Miguel Sague  Jr.

We are singing at Istanbul Coffeeshop (formerly Your Inner Vagabond)  in Lawrenceville at 4130 Butler St,     Pittsburgh, PA. Doors open 8 pm,
showtime 8:30. It is an all ages show, and entry is $10.
The Turkish menu prepared by restaurateur Coskun Gokalb is amazing and  I really hope to see you out! Miguel's dad is a shaman who regularly  speaks on the 2012 prophecy from a Mayan perspective, in addition to  his seductive and beautiful voice, if we are lucky maybe he will
enlighten us to another way of viewing astronomical and spiritual  phenomenon while he sings us classically beautiful and moving Cuban
music while his son plays conga. Sorry for the late notice, but if we  are friends on Facebook, you should have heard about this before now,  if not, join me on one of most distressingly pervasive social  networking systems since Orwell's "1984".
http://www.facebook.com/phatmandee


The this coming Sunday come on out for our 3rd in a series of Sunday  brunches I am hosting also at Istanbul, same address as above, just on  Sunday morning, and if you are a musician, please bring your axe and  lets play something together! I have always wanted to play a Sunday morning jazz jam session somewhere in this beautiful city which is so full of incredible musicians, and it's going well so far, next month I
am out of town for festivals like X Day and Starwood, so I don't know  if I can continue it personally in July and August, but this June has been a blast and I am hoping to pass it on to someone to hold til I come back in fall. We play from 11 to 2 pm and there is no cover, and the brunch menu is lovely.




Why, you may ask, should I come out tonight AND Sunday? Well, maybe you can't, and if so, that's ok, but if you can, please understand, getting to hear Senor Sague sing with his son Cha (my conga player) is super special. They sing really lovely songs and it's just really romantic. I wish I could have them both every Sunday, but the life of a Taino Shaman is a busy one and getting to hear him tonight on the weekend of Summer Solstice is very special treat for us, he's out of town with ceremonies all weekend, so if you can, you should join us.


So, I hope to see you sometime this weekend! And next Friday I am singing at the Shadow Lounge's 10 year anniversary! It's amazing to think that a decade has come and gone and the Shadow Lounge in East Liberty has witnessed the rebirth of a beautiful neighborhood, and in my opinion, played quite a role in it's surrounding renaissance. The Shadow is more than just a coffeeshop and bar, and now, apparently home to some tasty Mexican food,  it has been an artistic home to many wonderful musicians, poets, rappers, and dancers. It's provided a place where you could experiment with something new or hold a benefit for some worthy cause, or listen to brilliant jazz kids work it out,
Food Bank Fiesta happens monthly, and it was a place for the hip hop movement to grow, and global world beats folks to come together and have safe haven. At the Shadow it never mattered what clique you thought you did or didn't belong to, so long as you threw down what you meant and you knew you would always be respected so long as you showed the same respect. And they make a mean cocktail. And their servers are super hot. Sometimes I think Justin should open a modeling agency to go with his venue...... So it is a weekend long extravaganza, and though I am singing on Friday June 25 from 8:25 pm to 8:45 pm, if you can't specifically time it just to hear me, I hope you can just hit the club and try to imagine what a culturally bleak landscape Pittsburgh would be if it were not for the Shadow Lounge and it's sister club Ava, located at 5972 Baum Blvd, Pgh, PA 15206 & AVA is around the corner at 126 S. Highland Ave., Pgh. Phone # for both is 412.363.8277. I congratulate Justin Strong for not only a job well done in keeping it open, I also congratulate him for his upcoming new role as Daddy.....


Some video for you:
Miguel singing with Guaracha (the band his dad started in the 80's)
and also with his father as a duo:

Mike Roselle speaks at "Go Tell it On the Mountain", a a benefit we
held at Shadow Lounge in May 2010 for Climate Ground Zero

Love and prophecy and sweet jazz,
Mandee