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Local Charlotte Music Scene Charlotte has been a fast growing city in the 2000s with the metro moving toward 2 million people. The city is well known in the financial industry as the home of Bank of America. The Downtown area was revitalized in the 1980s. The area known as "Uptown" has many nightclubs. Campuses include Johnson C. Smith University, Miami University and Northern Kentucky University. The history of the Charlotte music scene has included Firehouse, Jodeci and K-ci & Jo Jo. The local music scene is covered by The Charlotte Observer. Amanda Pollard * Anders Manga * Axon * Bum's Lie * Campbell the Band * Chris Cook * Contagious Blues Band * Dylan Gilbert * James Thomas Band * John Mark McMillan * Levelz * Lucinda Lucas * Mark Mathis * New Familiars * Nicci Canada * Paleface * Preacher Stone * Ra-Von * Rose Gipson * Sarah McMillan * Simplified * Sun-Dried Vibes * Swamp Da Wamp * Tarsha Fields * Trish Andrews * Whitney Hall * Wicked Jones * Zealous Endeavors * Charlotte Local Music Scene History The Charlotte Music Festival moved online June 15-27 in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The annual festival was launched in 2012 by Elizabeth Kowalski. Throughout 2019 she began to increase he involvement with local shows with the slogan "classical to contemporary to beyond." She works with artists from a wide span of genres such as alternative, rock, jazz and classical. Hozier returned to his hometown Charlotte for a performance at NC Music Factory's Uptown Amphitheatre on June 17, 2015. It was his second return home for the year, following a performance in March at the smaller Fillmore Charlotte. His career has blossomed the past year with the national hit "Take Me to Church," which has inspired the crowd to sing along at his local shows. Earlier in the year the song was nominated for a Grammy. Superchunk began in the Chapel Hill area in the early 1990s and since that time has been on the music industry's radar as a future national sensation. Yet they have never signed with a major label but the band's vocalist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance did form an indie label called Merge. Several successful acts have grown from this indie label, including Arcade Fire, Spoon, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields and many others. Their latest album is called I Hate Music, which was written about in this Dan Kois article 7/29/2013 in Slate. A 1974 song on a 45rpm called "Politicians In My Eyes" by Death has entered the history books as the first release by a black punk band. The band consisted of brothers David and Bobby Hackney, who turned down a deal by music industry executive Clive Davis because they didn't want to change the name. Now a documentary about the Hackneys has been made by Jeff Howlett and Mark Christopher Covino. The film called "A Band Called Death" was screened August 17 at Actor's Theatre during the Charlotte Film Society's Film Lab. The documentary is about how the Hackneys refused to compromise their vision about punk music, which they crafted the same year the Ramones began to get attention as an early punk band. The documentary was written about in this Courtney Devores article 8/9/2013 in the Charlotte Observer. Steav Bates-Congdon's music career has been extended by the iPad. He's the organist and choirmaster at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fort Mill, South Carolina. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1997, so the iPad helps him provides digital page turning for him, which had been difficult due to the disease impairing his motor skills. Prior to the iPad's release in 2010, Steav had been using a similar digital tablet since 2004. His story was written about in this Leah Harrison article 8/15/2013 in the Charlotte Observer. |
