[atlantaprog] Re: Divinity

Divinity played the (sold out) Variety Playhouse as a member of the Victor Wooten band two weeks ago. I was there. A week after that, her band played the Hard Rock Cafe.

Divinity is a Decatur artist whose music is straight-up equal parts hip-hop and rock. She possesses the not-trivial ability to play slap funk bass and rap at the same time (think Sting in the rock context). She was also a member of one-time major-label band Edith's Wish, which was also from Atlanta.

Victor Wooten, in case you don't know, is arguably the greatest bass guitarist alive, in terms of sheer chops. Heck, he seems to be Tony Levin's favorite bassist. And he's not yet 40. He is best known as a member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

His band, including two older brothers, is a showcase for Victor's solo material but also features a cavalcade of jams on 70s and 80s funk classics from Rick James to Prince.

I was amazed that the Victor Wooten Band could sell out the Variety. 90 percent of the audience were kids in their 20s, with as many women as men, maybe 20% of them black. It seems that Bela Fleck and the Flecktones have a lot of cred in the jam-band scene as a result of big concerts like Bonaroo and the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and that seems to be where this audience came from. Although Victor's solo act is nothing like the Flecktones, the audience seemed to really enjoy it. I couldn't stop myself from dancing the whole 3-hour show, and as anybody who knows me can attest, I positively cannot dance and am normally extremely inhibited about it. Fortunately nobody I know was there to see me.

Victor runs an annual "Bass and Nature Camp" somewhere in Tennessee, with guest instructors including Chuck Rainey and Atlanta's Adam Nitti. Apparently Divinity attended the camp at some point and that's how she got the gig. A lot of young white men in the audience at the Variety Playhouse were wearing "I Survived Woot Camp" T-shirts.

--Wheat

On Wednesday, October 27, 2004, at 03:04 AM, Allen Welty-Green wrote:

Did you catch the second act, Divinity? from their name and their
"rock/rap" description, I wouldn't have expected much - but they kicked
ass! Real psychedlic and funky. And Divinity herself was a heck of a
bass player - knocking out some great fusion-y slap stuff from time to
time.

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