CNN: Student singers album protesting gun violence
A new album protesting gun violence includes students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school performing the original song, 'Shine.' WATCH VIDEO AT CNN
FORBES MAGAZINE: Jim Pugh On Building Empathy Through Diverse Music Of Little Village Foundation
As the major record label system continues to evolve, different sounds and different artists have become more marginalized than ever before, thanks to the never ending search for the quickest, easiest hit record possible. Songs get more and more formulaic and homogeneous sounding and artists are cast aside quickly, easily disposable in a world where [...]
SF CHRONICLE: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass offers politically charged musical weekend in the park
On the Bandwagon stage earlier in the day, students from all over the country came together to perform songs and poems featured on “Raise Your Voice,” an album released nationally on Friday, Oct. 5, by Jim Pugh‘s nonprofit Little Village Foundation, written in response to the recent spate of school shootings. Madison Yearsley of [...]
LIVING BLUES: Aki Kumar ‘Hindi Man Blues’ Review
In 2016, Aki Kumar turned heads with Aki Goes to Bollywood, an unprecedented project that fused blues with Bollywood- style Indian pop—two genres not known for breaking with tradition. The unlikely union led Jason Ricci to lovingly pronounce it a “marketing nightmare” in the album’s liner notes, but it went on to establish the Mumbai [...]
LIVING BLUES: Marcel Smith ‘Everybody Needs Love’ Review
Sacramento singer and multi-instrumentalist Marcel Smith was still in his 20s when he first recorded back in 1993 for the hometown Have Mercy imprint as a member of a group called the Soul Prophets. With Smith’s soul-searing vocals and Robert Nakajima’s fire-spitting guitar, that set, Coming From the Old School, ranks as a serious contender for the Best Album That Nobody Heard award, but [...]
BILLBOARD MAGAZINE: Marjory Stoneman Douglas Students Releasing ‘Raise Your Voice’ Album Before Midterm Elections
After a group of students from Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School crisscrossed the nation this summer on their "Road to Change" tour, they will now lift their voices before the November midterm elections on an inspiring collection of songs titled Raise Your Voice: The Sound of Student Protest. The 11-track album, due Oct. [...]
THE MERCURY NEWS: Groundbreaking SF Area Label Celebrates 7 New Albums In Berkeley Concert
Jim Pugh has built a small musical empire by reversing the music industry’s foundational rules. Rather than extracting value from recordings by hoarding rights to the music, Pugh’s nonprofit Little Village Foundation label serves as a musical freeway, with artists retaining their intellectual property and proceeds from CD sales. In just two years, Little Village [...]
BLUES JUNCTION: Artist Spotlight: Little Village Foundation and Founder Jim Pugh
Jim Pugh, who many of our readers know as the longtime keyboard player in the Robert Cray Band, has recently embarked on a very exciting and interesting endeavor called the Little Village Foundation. I sat down with Jim recently and we talked about this project, his life in music and his own road to the [...]