Before railroad development opened up the region, the area known as the Mississippi Delta was covered in virgin hardwood forests. The area between the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers, and between Memphis and Vicksburg is generally a flat alluvial flood plain interspersed with many meandering rivers and bayous. Even though there were some cotton plantations in the region, it wasn’t until the building of the railroads that region began to develop. The Illinois Central mainline between Jackson, Grenada and Memphis skirted well east of the delta region. The Louisville, New Orleans & Texas RR was built through the heart of the region in 1882-4, and acquired by IC subsidiary Yazoo & Mississippi Valley in 1892. Y&MV built a network of branch lines throughout the delta. As railroads were built in the region, timberland was bought by lumber companies and sawmills built in the region. Land was cleared and cotton planted in the rich soil in the region. Few people today realize the area once was home to many sawmills and logging railroads. 

             The Sardis and Delta Railroad was one such line that was built as a logging railroad. The owners came south to Mississippi as the great white pine and hemlock forests of the northeast were depleted. Even though the railroad lasted almost 30 years, far longer than most logging railroads in the region, it eventually met the same fate as the rest after the timber was cut. ​

​Starting January 2017, a talent show (similar to the X-Factor) starts at the Freedom Park, Lagos, Nigeria, culminating in June 2017 where final winners will be selected.
 
Participants will have the opportunity to showcase their African creativity:

• Music or stage performances are the 2017 themes.
• Participation is open to all ages.
• The audience, social media viewers and selected judges will choose winners. 
• Preference in judging will be based on originality, skills and creativity.
• Instrumentalists, dancers, acrobats, dramatists and oratory skills will be of greatest interest to the judges.
• Finalists will receive awards
• Winners will have the opportunity for an all expenses paid visit to California.
• Winners will have the opportunity to perform at the Africa Boku Talent showcase in Hollywood California.
• Individual or group performances are okay but individual skills are the focus.

 
Gate is N200 per person.
 
Sponsors and advertisers are welcome. For more info contact Mr. Bola Browne, producer. Raymond@brownehillradio.com.
 
The inaugural show will take place on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, from 5pm – 8pm.
 
ABOUT:
Africa Boku Talent (ABT) is an NGO founded in 2014 in Los Angeles, California USA with a mission to showcase and support African creativity in music/dance, film/stage, fashion/style and more.  www.abtinc.org
 
Freedom Park Lagos, born out of the ruins of Her Majesty’s Broad Street Prisons, was reconstructed to preserve the history and cultural heritage of the Nigerian People. Freedom Park Lagos is a National Memorial, a Historical landmark, a Cultural site & an Arts and Recreation center.  www.freedomparklagos.com
 
FREEDOM PARK LAGOS is located at Old Prison Ground Broad Street, Lagos Island. Nigeria Tel: +2348095006567.
 
Producer: Mr. Raymond Bola Brown  Raymond@brownehillradio.com
Associate Producers: Sadiq Ayuba and Seyi Obagun
Executive Producer: Dr. Peter Deji Osilaja Founder/CEO, Africa Boku Talent
Executive Producer: Mr. Theo Lawson, Founder/CEO, Freedom Park

 A brand new Home video from from the stables of High-waves Video Mart  Now Available in Video markets around you.... 

Talented saxophonist Daniel Chia is one of Singapore's fastest rising young talents in the contemporary jazz scene today.
Although classically trained in the music of Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Bartok, Chia's work is also deeply influenced by the work of jazz legends like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk, alongside the R&B and soul music of the 70s' and 80s'.
The burgeoning musician has been impressing in America recently where he was invited to session for famed guitarist Zoux, and also played live with smooth jazz luminary guitarist Peter White and Grammy-nominated vocal group DW3. 

But he's no stranger in his hometown either, having cut his teeth with hip-hop group SIXX, pop and R&B stars like Sezairi and Gareth Fernandez, and many others within the English and Mandarin adult contemporary music landscape. Furthermore, Chia is also Singapore's youngest saxophone artist signed to Yamaha, and a Silverstein's first pro artist signing from Singapore.

Now ready to go solo, Chia has just recently finished recording his debut album In The Moment in Los Angeles under the guidance of two-time Grammy award winning producer Paul Brown. Featuring his special brand of "disco jazz", the forthcoming record has already got insiders buzzing thanks to his smooth compositions and an all-star band of internationally recognized musicians.

Recently, Chia took to Kickstarter on 17 November to get his record off the ground, hoping to reach a stated S$10,000 goal. Now barely a week into his campaign, the smooth jazz prodigy has already amassed well over his aim, earning S$13,231 as of this publication. And with four days left to go, fans can still continue to pledge to help him out even further.
​
As you can see, support for Chia from the music scene is pretty healthy at the moment, and with very good reason. Check out a preview of In The Moment below to find out more.

​Sharon McConnell-Dickerson is an artist, lecturer, teacher, and speaker. Her work is featured in numerous exhibitions and included in museum, university, and private art collections. 

Originally from New England, she worked as a flight attendant and chef on corporate jets. In addition to heads of major corporations, she flew with such notables as George and Barbara Bush, Donald and Ivana Trump, Al Haig, Henry Kissinger, and others.

After working in the corporate world for seven years, a turn in her life took place at the age of twentyseven. She woke up in Chicago blind. She was eventually diagnosed with Uveitis, a degenerative eye disease. After several years of surgeries and treatments she became 
involved with sculpture. "Sculpture is the vehicle by which I access a lost sense," she says.

She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1996 to study all aspects of art. Taking a traditional approach, she learned from teachers and mentors including Arlene Siegel, Robert Refvem, Sam Scott, Dean Ericson, Ulrich Franzen, and Agnes Martin. She also went to Paris, France. There with the assistance of the curators and education directors of the museums and galleries did intense 
hands on sculpture and art studies in premier galleries and museums.

After only ten months of study, she had produced a body of work consisting of eight bronze sculptures. Her earliest influence was Native American Blind Sculptor Michael Naranjo who showed her what was possible and rewarded her with her first solo exhibition at the Moxley, Ross, Naranjo Gallery. 

Her first life-sized work is reminiscent of French figurative sculptor Maillol. Her life-cast work is 
in the same tradition and methods of master life caster George Segal.

It is for her life-masks of legendary blues musicians that McConnell-Dickerson is best known. "I wanted to discover the faces behind the music I love, so I went to Mississippi to map out the visages of the real Delta Blues men and women." Her project took root and found a strong direction of its own, leading her to create masks of fifty-two musicians.

This body of work has been exhibited in the New Mexico State Capitol Rotunda, the Albuquerque Museum, Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation in Chicago, Blind Faith Gallery in Clarksdale, Mississippi, The Blues Music Awards in Memphis; the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis; the Mississippi Arts Center in Jackson, Mississippi; the Tunica Museum in Tunica, Mississippi; Blues Passions Festival in Cognac, France, and at the Galerie le Clos d’Epicure in Cahors, France. It is currently touring with Exhibits USA-Mid-America Arts Alliance.

Another edition of 40 masks are also touring the U.S. She donated the original life-casts to the Delta State University Archives. 

Now almost totally blind, Sharon is seeking venues to exhibit her works, conducting lifecasting workshops, lectures, and demonstrations, and travelling. She is also painting large scale 
minimalist works in oil on linen.

​Sharon insists that all of her exhibits (with the exception of the 
originals) be fully accessible to people with disabilities, and are please touch exhibits.
Sharon moved to Mississippi in 2006, where she met her husband David. They, along 
with her guide-dog Avatar are residents of Como, Mississippi.

For more information aon her works go to ​http://mcconnelldickersonart.com/..

*Sadly we must report that death has claimed the life of another celebrity this this weekend. 80s soul singerColonel Abrams is no longer with us. According to reports, he died on November 25 at the age 67.

SoulTracks.com says that it was nearly a year ago that they reported that Abrams was suffering badly from diabetes and was financially strapped by the illness.

The Detroit-born, Manhattan raised singer began playing both piano and guitar while still quite young. By the mid 1970s he became part of the band Heavy Impact. But it was nearly a decade later that Abrams really made a name for himself with the big hit “Music Is the Answer.” It began a string of dance hits that capitalized on the electronic sounds that were popular in the mid 80s, and included “The Truth,” “Over and Over,” “I’m Not Gonna Let You,” and his biggest song, the dancelicious international hit, “Trapped.”

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Abrams:
From an early age, he began playing the guitar and piano. He was in several early bands. Among them was Heavy Impact in which he played both guitar and keyboards alongside Joe Webb (guitar), Lemar Washington (guitar), Marston “Buffy” Freeman (bass guitar), Ronald Simmons (drums), Harry Jones (trumpet) and Barbara Mills (saxophone). In 1976, he formed Conservative Manor, 94 East (the band featuring Prince on lead guitar).

He became popular on the New York underground scene via radio and club play, and had his first major hit in 1984 with “Music Is the Answer” on the independent label Streetwise. Other hits in the mid 1980s included “Leave the Message Behind the Door”, “Trapped” (a top ten hit in the UK, Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands),[2] “The Truth,” “Speculation,” “I’m Not Gonna Let You” and “Over and Over,” establishing Abrams as a solo artist, initially in Europe and later in the US.




His biggest hit, “Trapped” reached the top five in the UK Singles Chart and topped the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1985, followed by his self-titled album, which spent two weeks at number one the following year. It was estimated by the Phonographic Association that “Trapped” sold over five million copies worldwide by spring 1987.[citation needed] An electronic remix of “Trapped” was later released in 1995 by Boards of Canada, under the pseudonym Hell Interface. A new version of “Trapped” (“Trapped 2006”) was released in the UK.
“I’m Not Gonna Let You” also spent a week at number one in the dance chart in 1986. The album peaked at number 75 on the US Billboard Top 200 and Number 13 on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Although Abrams had no American pop hits through his career, he had a number of entries on the US Hot Dance Club Play chart in the 1980s and 1990s, including four entries that hit number one. In 1987, he had his fourth number-one US dance hit with “How Soon We Forget”, the same year that he released his second album, You and Me Equals Us.​

Soul Tracks Also writes that Abrams continued to chart on the Dance and R&B charts into the mid-90s, and performed around the world into the new century. He also formed his own Colonel Records and released music sporadically through the early part of this decade.
​
Unfortunately and tragically, by December of 2015, Abrams was quite ill and homeless, and his friends began a crowdfunding campaign to help him pay for his medical treatments.

​Thanksgiving began in the fall of 1621 when a group of Native Americans joined with newly arrived English settlers to create a harvest feast together and protect each other from violence.

This year, as Americans pick out their turkeys and count their blessings, members of the Sioux Nation in Standing Rock, North Dakota, reported being attacked with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons in subfreezing temperatures as they protested an oil pipeline that threatens to contaminate their water and disrupt their sacred sites. Approximately 300 Native American and non-native protesters were injured in one 10-hour clash with law enforcement on Sunday evening, according to the Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council, and 26 were taken to hospitals with severe head and limb wounds, eye trauma, internal bleeding and hypothermia from being doused with water in 22-degree weather.

“Basically, it’s an act of war,” said Frank Sanchez, a delegate from the Yankton Sioux Tribe, in an interview with The Huffington Post. 

The government says the $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline is the safest, most efficient way to carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. But the project has become a rallying point for Native Americans because the pipe would cut under the Missouri River within a mile of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, potentially contaminating the local tribes’ source of fresh water and encroaching on land that the U.S. government had agreed to set aside for them in an 1851 treaty. The clash between protesters, who call themselves “water protectors,” and North Dakota law enforcement reached a boiling point on Sunday, when force was used to keep protesters off a barricaded bridge about a mile south of the pipeline construction site. 

XThe Morton County Sheriff’s Department said the demonstrators were being violent. The Sioux ― who have long suffered economically ― say the blocked-off bridge is the main access point to their reservation, and they are trying to protect the land and water that have sustained them for centuries.

“I’m a prisoner of war in my own land,” said Sanchez. “That’s the only way I can see it. We have the right to hunt, fish and gather, as we always did, but all the barbed wire fences and posts to ‘Keep out’ have to come down so we can continue living the way we’ve always lived.”

Sanchez, 61, is in Washington, D.C., this week lobbying the federal government on behalf of the Sioux tribes. He is a direct descendant of the man who signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, in which the U.S. government ceded portions of five states to the Sioux and agreed to strict rules preventing outsiders from accessing Sioux territory. But Congress soon broke its end of the bargain by seizing the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1877, when gold was discovered there ― and the government’s land grabs have continued. 
​
“This issue could have been settled years ago, but we don’t have the money for attorneys to represent us,” he said. 
The government seems to have at least recognized the problem, temporarily suspending construction in Standing Rock. Last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it needed more time to decide whether to build on Sioux land. 

​Culled from Huffmanpost
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standing-rock-sioux-tear-gas-thanksgiving_us_583496a3e4b000af95ece35d