Movers and Shakers: The 40 Most Exciting Soulful Artists of 2003

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The Be Good Tanyas homey hipsters
These three Canadian songbirds are fond of old-timey string instruments and twangy folk songs, but as savvy products of the Vancouver busking scene, they are anything but northern-latitude Dixie Chicks. Listening to the Tanyas, you hear echoes of the down-home quality of the Carter Family, the loose phrasing of Rickie Lee Jones, the earthy power of Bessie Smith. This resonance only reinforces the notion that the best artists connect past and present, this place and that place, British Columbia and the bayou. In the Be Good Tanyas? arrangements, traditional songs like ?Lakes of Pontchartrain? and ?Oh Susanna? take on a languid, front-porch feel. Their rusticness doesn?t feel contrived, and neither does the occasional electric guitar riff or cuss word in their original songs. They aren?t trying to live in the past?they?re just taking the best parts of it and singing them into the present. Blue Horse (Nettwerk Records) ?Keith Goetzman

Solomon Burke
Soul?s Old Soul
A sometime preacher and undertaker, Burke signed with Atlantic in the early ?60s and became one of the original titans of soul. Shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and Joe Tex, Burke defined the soul sound. (He also tried to organize his fellow musicians to recoup royalties lost to their record companies.) Ten years later, when soul got handed off to the oldies stations, ?the King of Rock and Soul? soldiered on in a stage revue (featuring an oversized throne), belting out his hits to smaller and smaller crowds. By the time he was picked up by indie blues label Fat Possum Records, Burke was all but forgotten.
Luckily, some of today?s greatest songwriters not only remember Burke, but revere him, and when they were approached by Fat Possum to contribute songs for a new album, they happily volunteered. The result is Burke?s new CD, Don?t Give Up on Me, a stripped-down set that brings his flexible, sensuous vocals to the foreground. Gone are the brass crescendos of old-time soul. Instead, Burke sings live in the studio backed by a simple combo?doing songs by Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and Van Morrison, among others. The result is a fascinating blend of an old vocal style with new material that favors exploration over glossy showmanship; it?s soul that?s worthy of the name. Don?t Give Up on Me (Fat Possum, 2002)
?JOSEPH HART

Vija Celmins artist of the eternal
Vija Celmins, a child of World War II, left her native Riga, Latvia, and immigrated with her family to Indianapolis in 1949, when she was 11. Critics have suggested that her history of displacement has a lot to do with why she paints and draws things that are both impersonal and permanent: clouds, water, stars.
There?s mysterious power in one of her small-scale views of a vast and starry sky?it?s both cosmic and strangely intimate. Her gentle and transcendent ripples of water and banks of clouds draw on the austerity and simplicity of minimalist art as a way of avoiding the all-too-familiar sentimentality of traditional land- and seascapes. Perhaps because of the quietness of her visual message, Celmins has long been immune to fame; a big show of her prints at New York?s Metropolitan Museum this fall may change all that. The Prints of Vija Celmins, by Samantha Rippner (Yale University Press)
?Elizabeth Larsen

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