Digest: Amazing April

(Nurse) Karen (Digest): Amazing April!

Happy Easter! Wishing you and yours all the blessings of this exciting time of year, pluse all the great food that goes along with it!

Random Newness: This month Florida’s DJ Crown Prince makes his debut as a Soca Artist. His first song “The Anthem” featuring Skinny Fabulous was recorded on “The Nurse Karen Riddim”, produced by Afterdark. Get it Free & all your fave hits from Trini Carnival on Supa Soca Vol 12: http://mustardseedmedia.blogspot.com/2009/04/free-download-crown-prince-supa-soca.html


Journalism: Nurse Karen is psyched about finally meeting a few industry peeps she’s been watching for a while now. This month, she’ll be interviewing Montreal electro DJ Ghislain Poirier whose revolutionary mixes are bringing soca music to the mainstream dance scene. She’s also looking forward to sitting down with Grenada’s Brother B about his plans for Spice Mas 2009. If you follow her on twitter, you’ll be notified as soon as the articles are posted! http://twitter.com/nursekaren

Travel: As we mentioned last month, Karen’s taking care of business at home for a little while. However, she’s coordinating arrangements to cover Atlanta Carnival in May. If you’re looking for an affordable cultural getaway, why not come along? http://www.atlantacarnival.net

Poetry: Good news and bad news. Good news first! Karen will be performing a spoken word set at the album launch of “Pleasure in Pain by Devon “The Split” Jones, on April 27th in Toronto. Wanna reach?

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?sid=d3badc5a64b1972cb50446f6d0e91597&eid=68915791729&ref=search

Bad news... After performing poetry locally and internationally for half of her life, Karen finally applied for a government grant to record her own spoken word album, featuring original music by some of the Caribbean’s top soca producers. Sad to say, she didn’t get the money! There will be an album though. Stay tuned! Learn more about Karen’s work as a writer in this clip from her interview on Island Style TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrZW0nsB2UQ

Community: Thanks to Corey Graham 2.0 in Barbados, there’s an easier way to tell MySpace why you think they need a soca category. All you have to do is visit the link below, fill out the form and click send. Do it now! http://www.coreykgraham.com/socanow

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Digest: Maniacal March!

(Nurse) Karen (Digest): Maniacal March

We’re Marching forward into Spring, here’s what’s new with Nurse Karen...

Random Newness: This month Nurse Karen is thrilled to conduct a series of artist interviews to assist artiste, Skinny Fabulous in completing his Honours Thesis on the development of the soca genre. Now that the International Soca Monarch competition is out of the way, Skinny has resumed his studies at UWI Mona in Jamaica.

Journalism: Nurse Karen is pleased to contribute to YO! Magazine in St. Lucia for the very first time. Her piece on Zoelah will appear in a special issue available in print and online on Saturday, March 14th. Look for it at http://www.yomagazine.net

Travel: After a hectic schedule in Trinidad, Karen is happy to spend the month of March at home in Toronto. If you missed the action in T&T, Karen put together some YouTube clips, to show you a little bit of what you missed.

See them here: http://mustardseedmedia.blogspot.com/search?q=Eye+Unit
Links are also posted to the group.

Poetry: The February classroom schedule was insanely hectic, but very rewarding. Nurse Karen performed for hundreds of students at Brookview Middle School and Westview Secondary school. This month, she’s focusing on big people. Why don’t you see her perform live at one of these two stimulating events?:

March 13th, Vice Entertainment presents OUTSPOKEN
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138251000300

March 14th, Torontopoets.com presents SATURDAY NIGHT LOVE
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=60221301889

Community: The Soca Now Movement is alive and well. Now, there’s an actual myspace page, which makes it easier for people to interact. Add Soca Now as a friend! www.myspace.com/socanow1, and keep sending myspace those letters ca-help@support.myspace.com

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Nurse's Lounge: Fabulous February Digest

(Nurse) Karen (Digest): Fabulous February

It’s February, and boy is it busy!

Here’s what’s new with Nurse Karen...

Random Newness: Nurse Karen just joined twitter, always be the first to know who and what she’s writing about, where’s she’s performing...or the latest with Soca Now. Follow her tweets at http://www.twitter.com/nursekaren

Journalism: At the end of the month, Nurse Karen will be travelling to beautiful Trinidad and Tobago for carnival! This year, she joins the team at Toronto-Lime.com as the resident writer, responsible for writing all of the official news releases that will appear on the popular website from February 18th to 26th. Make sure you check it out!

Travel: Well duh! Didn’t I just say she’s going to Trinidad? If you’re going too, or you just wanna share your knowledge on what to do and what to avoid in T&T, we want you to join the discussion right here: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=7564&uid=44452122605#/topic.php?uid=44452122605&topic=7564

As usual, you can read all about Nurse’s experiences at Carnival and what the artists are up to at the (Nurse) Karen (Etc) blog. http://mustardseedmedia.blogspot.com

Last month, Nurse K was in Washington D.C. for the inauguration and Obama Soca Rama. Take a look at her video from "the moment" ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8S9lQGPd_c



Poetry: During Canada’s Black History Month/African Heritage Month, Nurse Karen will be making 10 visits to Toronto area middle schools and high schools to share her knowledge on African oral traditions. The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples at York University invited her to perform pieces from her book, T-Dot Griots and teach youth about using spoken word to express their views on social issues and identity. One visit down, nine to go!

Community: Nurse Karen continues to urge soca fans to make a difference in 2009 by joining the Soca Now Campaign to get MySpace to create a soca music category. Want to get involved? Email a support support letter to myspace at ca-help@support.myspace.co

m. Use this really weird subject, to make sure they know what it’s about: ref:00D78NrS.50077iea4:ref . Then for good measure, join http://groups.myspace.com/socanow to show MySpace how many of us really want this to happen!

Oh! Last thing. If you say nothing, we can’t tell if you’re out there. Post a comment and say wassup!!!!

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