Concert and mural for Mpozi

We’ve got more details on the memorial concert for Mpozi Mshale Tolbert to be held July 4 at Radio Radio, and first mentioned in TJ’s Hip Hop Beat. The show gets underway after the downtown fireworks, with doors at 10 p.m. and the music beginning at 11 p.m. Confirmed performers as of Monday afternoon are Jiridon, Big Skits, Twilight Sentinels, I.R.B., DJ Indiana Jones, El Floundero Dub Club and Roots Iric. Only $7 gets you in and proceeds from the event go to the Mpozi Memorial Fund. The fund, based in Philadelphia, will benefit young photographers. Tolbert sold his first photograph at age 16 and was a staff photographer at The Indianapolis Star until his death in July 2006 at age 34.

Beginning around noon on July 5, local artists will paint a Mpozi-inspired mural on the north wall of Broad Ripple’s Spin Nightclub. Mpozi’s mother, Maisha Jackson, will be in attendance for the art project. The event is free and open to the public.

Event organizer Shannon Wilson says the idea for the weekend’s events began to take shape shortly after a 2006 memorial service for Tolbert in Philadelphia. “It just took a while to get it all together and go forward with the project. We chose Spin as the location for the mural because of the visibility of the wall as well as the fact that Mpozi DJed in Broad Ripple, at the Casba on Sunday nights, for years. We chose Radio Radio as the spot for the concert because Mpozi lived in Fountain Square and had a studio in the Murphy Art Center. It felt right to represent both Fountain Square and Broad Ripple in all of this.”

Welcome back, Nancy

Heap on the nostalgia July 4 at the Melody Inn, when two bands reunite: America Owns the Moon, who have played a few reunion shows this year already, and the Nancy School, who haven’t said more than peep since they broke up in 2006. The Nancy School sound sort of like Incubus if they had a sense of humor or adventure, or, to put it another way, they sound a little bit like Primus if they were a little less goofy.

Show kicks off at 9:30 p.m., costs $6 and also features The Funky Circus Fleas and Phoenix on the Faultline (a band in which a couple former students at the Nancy School found a home).

Owl and Jazz Meridian

It’s a pretty good time to be a local jazz artist, that is, if you’re looking for a label to release your work. Pianist Monika Herzig signed a licensing and recording agreement with Indy-based jazz label Owl Studios this month. She’ll be joining a bunch of other fine Indy jazz musicians on the label, including Rob Dixon and Melvin Rhyne, who collaborated with drummer Kenny Phelps and Chicago guitarist Fareed Haque on the Melvin/Rhyne Project’s debut CD, Reinvention, released last month.

In an e-mail, Herzig joked that she nearly signed the contract “on the back of owner Al Hall’s cute German sports car à la Bruce Springsteen, but then decided to sit down at a table at Easley Winery.” Her albums In Your Own Sweet Voice — A Tribute to Women Composers and What Have You Gone and Done? will soon be available through Owl Studios, and can be purchased in the meantime on her self-published label Acme Records (operated with her husband, guitarist Peter Kienle).  

Meanwhile, local digital-only label Audio Reconnaissance has launched Jazz Meridian, a jazz, blues and world music imprint releasing a slew of classic, mostly local albums, most of them seeing their first light in the digital form. In the first wave of releases: Bam Miller’s 2004 spoken word/jazz album Jazz, Blues & Other Hues; Marvin Chandler and the Jack Gilfoy Quartet’s 2002 Christmas jazz release When a Child Is Born; and Prince Julius Akanbi Adeniyi’s 2005 album Yoruba Rhythms.