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Multi-talented musician, Raul Midon talks race, culture and how he uses his disability to generate a different perspective of the world.
Raul Midón was a one-man band, simultaneously strumming while drumming on the bongos and mimicking a trumpet with his voice. "All right, be careful when you try this at home," he told the audience right before launching into his signature move.
A former session musician for superstars such as Shakira and Julio Iglesias, Midón has an uncanny ability to defy categorisation, grabbing, magpie-like, from a variety of musical genres and cooking them together in an almighty smooth, groove-pop stew.
Bad Ass And Blind continues his streak of records that cross boundaries with ease and head-turning musicality. And, since Midón brought along so much great music that we didn't have time to cover it all in the show, you can read on for an extended playlist that includes all of his picks.
Singer/Songwriter/Multi-instrumentalist Raul Midón has been creatively shattering boundaries in the Jazz and Pop worlds for the last decade. His soulful and funky artistry goes way beyond any notion of genre.
Downtown had the pleasure of speaking with Raul Midon about his history with our city — he is originally from New Mexico — and what he has coming up in his career. He also talked about his surprising passion for ham radio.
Singer-songwriter and guitarist Raul Midón is one of music's most distinctive and searching voices. He is "a one-man band who turns a guitar into an orchestra and his voice into a chorus," according to The New York Times.
Title track “Badass and Blind” kicks off the album energetically, chocked full of funky vibes. By far the most risqué moment of the album, Raul Midón showcases his flawless set of singing pipes, as well as dropping some bars—rap bars.
After Midón finished the album and came up with the title Badass and Blind, he realized he didn't have a title track. He decided to write one, and the result is an amusing run-down of his many talents delivered over a slick guitar groove.
The greatest musicians are superlative because they are authentic. They do their own thing. They take the elements of music, art and culture that move them and spin it all into something new, along the way developing an artistic vision that is unique and unwavering.
Midón is blind, which would lead many to draw comparisons with Stevie Wonder, Jose Feliciano and Ray Charles. His jazz stylings and unique use of his voice as an instrument will also resonate with fans of Bobby McFerrin.
Raul Midón is so respected in guitar circles that he was the subject of a recent Guitar World lesson by Dale Turner, "The Unorthodox, Percussive-Slapping Style of Singing Guitarist Raul Midón."
Not every singer knows how to connect with a full orchestra and, certainly, not every orchestra is equipped to accompany a non-classical vocalist. But Raul Midón and the 50-pluspiece Dutch Metropole Orkest have it down. The orchestra, founded in 1945 and conducted on this latest collaborative effort by Vince Mendoza, has been working with vocalists for years.
"I'm always trying to grow. I'm always trying to do things better. And when I go to do something, I go to do it really, really well. Whether it's writing, whether it's producing, playing. I don't want to just be good enough to have a guitar player just to play my songs." Raul Midón