Soul

The people in my films are exactly like myself - creatures of instinct, of rather poor intellectual capacity, who at best only think while they're talking. Mostly they're body, with a little hollow for the soul." - INGMAR BERGMAN, legendary Swedish director, who died yesterday at 89

Never mind that the sun is usually merciless and there's hardly any shade in Camden Yards, the site for the African American Heritage Festival every summer since 2002. The event, which starts tomorrow and ends Sunday evening, is all about having a funky good time with family and friends. Vendors sell ornate African masks and unique jewelry. Flavorful foods abound: barbecue, fried catfish, grilled chicken kebabs. And you can wash it all down with lemonade extra-sweetened with pineapple chunks and maraschino cherries.

I know my homegirl Kayce is on the other end of the phone, rolling her eyes. Somehow in our conversation, the designation of June as Black Music Month comes up. "What's that?" Kayce wants to know. "Isn't every month Black Music Month? Do we need a month to listen to black music now?" I remind her of a column I wrote three years ago, exploring such questions. In that time, contemporary, even retro soul and hip-hop sounds have dominated the chart-topping pop hits of Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, Robin Thicke and Amy Winehouse.

The "holistic" health industry is booming -- best-seller lists are crammed with personal growth and spirituality how-to books, and the movement's major faces are familiar guests on leading talk shows. But this week, many of those big names will be in Baltimore.The Whole Life Expo returns to the convention center Friday, offering 250 exhibits, 100 speakers, dancing and food (natural, of course) for the interested, whether they are practitioners of holistic medicine or looking for direction on the road to Wellville.

Paula Cole, in interviews following the success of 1996 album "This Fire," has made no secret of her love for soul music. No surprise, then, that her third album, "Amen" (Imago/Warner Bros. 47490, arriving in stores today), opens with a song lush and funky enough to pass for an old Marvin Gaye number.With a rich swirl of strings and woodwinds pushed along by percolating percussion and wah-wah guitar, "I Believe In Love" is a breathtaking production, evoking the best of retro-soul while still seeming contemporary.

New York City, 304 square miles of pulsing chaos and home to more than 7 million geniuses, lost souls, derelicts and regular folk, draws curious travelers by the millions into its boundaries each year to experience its unique diversity. From Chinese dragons to Middle Eastern dancers, from Irish pubs to Harlem's clubs, the concentrated cultural mecca has grown from its Dutch origins in 1609 to represent the best and worst of urban America.The physical shape of the port city, first christened the Big Apple in 1909, remains unchanged over the last century, still housing the same five boroughs, each with its own identifying characteristic.

HAVANA -- Today, one of the longest waits in a country of waiting finally ends -- American professional baseball returns in the form of the Baltimore Orioles."

ARTIST MARK Hatfield and his wife, Hilary, are expecting their first child and, like many soon-to-be parents, they're picking names (Ethan Blake, if it's a boy, and Emma Blake, if it's a girl) and trying to make use of minimal space in their town home.He's painting the sky on the nursery ceiling, and she is making a quilt before the baby arrives in early October.It should be of little surprise that the child of an artist and the former executive director of the Carroll County Arts Council is also the inspiration of a series of abstract paintings by Mark at the cafP pangea in Baltimore.

Tim Maia, 55, an unconventional musician who was acclaimed the king of Brazilian soul music, died Sunday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from a generalized infection. He was known for an energetic style of vocal soul samba, using his raspy trademark voice.Marvin A. Davis, 87, who helped plan Disney theme parks and won an Emmy for art direction, died Sunday in Santa Monica, Calif.Pub Date: 3/17/98

Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul," who was to be the headline performer at a celebration of the Ravens stadium opener Saturday, has canceled, citing health problems.The team is scrambling to find a replacement and is in talks with "comparable" performers, said David Modell, son of team owner Art Modell."We're currently scouring the free agent list to come up with a suitable replacement for her royal highness of soul," Modell said.Franklin, along with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, was to perform a free concert on the plaza and parking lots north of the new stadium at Camden Yards beginning at 8 p.m. The BSO is still booked, as is a laser light show.

The following are excerpts from Ronald J. Daniels speech Sunday marking his formal installation as president of the Johns Hopkins University. The full text of Mr. Daniels' speech is available at baltimoresun.com/opinion. Thank you for the trust and confidence that you have invested in me by inviting me to serve as the president of this magnificent university. I can think of no greater honor or privilege than to lead Johns Hopkins. On this day, I commit to you, without reservation, that I will work tirelessly to champion our great cause.

James Morrison's tastes for soul - the frayed, sweaty kind - sets him apart from all the others. He's one of several British artists (Amy Winehouse, Adele, Duffy, James Blunt) to recently invade the U.S. pop charts. But with his new album - Songs for You, Truths for Me, the follow-up to his acclaimed 2007 debut, Undiscovered - Morrison wanted to redefine what "soul" means to him. "I wanted the songs to be the soul of the music," says the singer-songwriter, who headlines a sold-out show at Washington's 9:30 Club Thursday.

tuesday Plum Spooky : by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin's, $27.95) According to legend, the Jersey Devil prowls the Pine Barrens and soars above the treetops in the dark of night. As eerie as this might seem, there are things in the Barrens that are even more frightening and dangerous, as bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is about to learn. Eclipse : by Richard North Patterson (Holt, $26). Damon Pierce, a 40-year-old partner in a huge San Francisco law firm, who specializes in international litigation, agrees to defend the husband of a former lover from bogus murder charges.

Lately, an affected retro soul sound has garnered platinum sales and Grammy Awards for British acts such as Duffy and Amy Winehouse. But Marc Broussard, a boyish-faced Louisiana native, manages to add an emotional depth to his approach, giving his throwback soul an inviting immediacy and a lived-in feel. His voice is warm and rugged, slightly frayed around the edges. It's a sound that belies his 26 years. It's also a sound that has garnered critical kudos, if not big sales. Broussard imbues his soul-pop hybrid with a blues-suffused richness seldom heard in modern pop. Keep Coming Back, his new album and debut for Atlantic Records, sounds as if it could have been recorded in Muscle Shoals, Ala., circa 1972.

Just when it seemed as if funk was all but gone from mainstream pop, the raw and uncompromising style has resurfaced thanks to an unlikely figure: a petite, flame-haired white woman with large, expressive eyes and a fierce musical attitude. But Nikka Costa isn't exactly new to the scene. The daughter of legendary composer-arranger Don Costa and a child singing sensation overseas in the '80s, she has released two American albums as an adult. Both sets - 2001's Everybody Got Their Something and 2005's can'tneverdidnothin' - blazed with flavorful hybrids of funk, pop and rock.

Oasis [Epic] *** cds After more than a decade of worldwide fame and multiplatinum album sales, Oasis seems to still be in love with rock's celebrated past. The British pop-rock group has gotten better at refurbishing familiar melodic hooks and rhythmic riffs. Perhaps that has become the group's signature. The long shadow of the Beatles still hovers over Oasis' latest album, Dig Out Your Soul. John Lennon's voice literally haunts "I'm Outta Time," one of the set's densest cuts. But Oasis still manages to show some musical maturity - even if the new album is at times very derivative of the Fab Four post-Revolver.

Musical time travel seems to thrill Raphael Saadiq. On his last album, 2004's overlooked Ray Ray, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter-producer went back to the blaxploitation era. The loose concept album positioned him as a funky fly guy whose songs seduced the ladies and enlightened everybody. But for the sound of The Way I See It, his new CD due out next month, Saadiq goes way back to soul's golden era, circa 1967. Everything - the eschewal of modern instruments, the high-pitched, reverberating mix of the music - recalls the urban sounds floating from transistor radios during the LBJ era. "With this record, I was going to the movies, you know," says the artist, who headlines Black Cat in Washington on Monday night.

The first day of the third annual Virgin Mobile Festival at Pimlico Race Course offered an appealing potpourri of sounds on the two main stages - but with a slight retro slant. Musically, most of yesterday's acts self-consciously looked back at, well, yesterday. Cat Power and Duffy opened the North Stage with sets that evoked dusty Memphis soul and uptown '60s pop, respectively. Power drew heavily from her latest album, Jukebox, a brooding, slightly nocturnal set of obscure soul and pop covers.

There were no record shops in the neighborhood, and the nearest one was two bus rides away. The tiny, hopelessly conventional Welsh town where Aimee Anne Duffy grew up offered next to nothing in the way of soul education. But years later, the singer, who goes by just her last name, would find the earthy stylist within. A new world opened up when, at about age 19 or 20, she discovered the sounds of Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and other legends from soul's golden era. Such vintage sounds largely inspired Rockferry, her critically lauded, gold-selling debut that was released in March.

Welsh singer Duffy - nee Aimee Anne Duffy - celebrated the stateside release of her debut CD, Rockferry, with a performance in May at New York's famed Apollo Theater, the legendary venue dedicated to the preservation of R&B music. In February, the troubled but talented Amy Winehouse swept the Grammy Awards, thanks to the success of her second disc, Back to Black, her arresting merger of '60s girl-group pop, R&B and hip-hop. England's Joss Stone counts three CDs in her repertoire, including 2007's Introducing Joss Stone, two of them gold sellers and one of them platinum.