Timur PANKOV
ALMATY, March 25
(THE GLOBE)
Carey was born on March 27, 1970 in Long Island, New York. She was born to ahalf-Venezuelan, half-black father and an Irish mother. As you might imagine, the family faced a fair amount of prejudice due to its mixed heritage. Mother Patricia, an opera singer and vocal coach, was disowned by her family when she married Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer. Over the years, the couple had various atrocities waged against them by bigots, including having their cars blown up and their dogs poisoned. The marriage crumbled under the strain of such malicious events, and the couple divorced when Mariah was three years old. Mariah�s older sister moved in with their father, and her older brother was soon off to college, leaving just Mariah at home with a mother who struggled to make ends meet.
Patricia Carey�s vocation qualified her to truly �discover� her daughter�s talent. �From the time Mariah was a tiny girl,� she recalled, �she sang on true pitch. She was able to hear a sound and duplicate it exactly.� The proud mother nurtured her daughter�s talent by coaching her at home, all the while trying not to force the issue too much. Mariah sang for friends, and performed in talent shows and at folk-music festivals; by the time she entered junior high, she had begun to write her own songs. In high school, she started commuting to Manhattan in order to study music with professionals, and upon her graduation, in 1987, she moved to the city. She paid the rent on her barren apartment by working as a waitress (she claims to have been fired from twenty restaurants because of her �attitude�), coat checker, beauty salon janitor, and part-time backup singer. It was this last gig, backing rhythm-and-blues singer Brenda K. Starr, that brought Carey close enough to Mottola to slip him her tape. After only ten months of slumming in the big city, Mariah Carey was about to become a star.
Carey�s 1990 eponymous debut album created quite a stir, largely because of the incredible virtuosity of her voice, which many say is rivaled only by that of Whitney Houston. Critics babbled on and on about her remarkable octave-dancing (Carey has a vocal range of between five and seven octaves, based on varying reports), but generally agreed that there wasn�t much substance to what she was saying. These days, Carey co-writes most of her songs, but her debut album was penned by professional hit-makers and it dripped with a cloying sweetness. However, nothing the critics said mattered much after the album sold over six million copies and made Mariah Carey an overnight sensation: two singles from the album shot to No. 1, and the music community awarded the newcomer with a gaggle of Grammys for her impressive debut.
Meanwhile, back at the studio, love had blossomed between Carey and Mottola. Home-wrecking advanced apace of recording, as Carey sent a boyfriend packing and Mottola did the same with his wife. Carey�s Emotions album (1991) and her MTV Unplugged EP (1992) racked up sales in the millions, but her most impressive production was her marriage to Mottola. Inspired by videotapes of Charles and Diana at their royal wedding, Carey and Mottola�a kind of self-styled music royalty themselves�put a half a million dollars into their June 1993 nuptials. Fifty flower girls, an eight-piece orchestra, and a boys� choir convened with three-hundred VIPs (including Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, and Ozzy Osbourne) to heap their blessings on the marriage. Carey remembers: �When I look back and think about it, it�s so unbelievable! I mean, it really is like Cinderella.�
Carey�s post-marriage albums (1993�s Music Box, 1994�s Merry Christmas, and 1995�s Daydream) offered more chart-dominating, syrupy pop. The generally well-regarded Daydream earned her six Grammy nominations and helped push her career sales to the eighty-million mark. Her status as the biggest-selling female recording artist of the nineties makes you wonder what heights she would be capable of scaling if her talent weren�t consistently shoe-horned by producers into predictable, harmless harmony. But if she has thus far been prevented from using her music to tap into and communicate the considerable angst of her childhood, the pop princess has acknowledged it in other ways - in 1995, Carey donated $1 million to a New York camp that provides summer vacations for disadvantaged inner-city kids. The camp was subsequently renamed Camp Mariah.
Singer Mariah Carey, who has a wonderful voice rivaled by only Whitney Houston
26/03/1885 - The first commercial moving picture film was produced in Rochester, NY on this day. Eastman Kodak, the film and camera maker still manufacturers a huge variety of film from the same place even today. Eastman Kodak was �developed� by George Eastman. What does �Kodak� mean? Nothing. One of the most widely recognized trademarks in the world was named because it had a unique sound that started with the letter �K�, and could be pronounced and spelled in almost any language. Film did go by the designation of Eastman Film at one time, but the name Kodak has been promoted as a lasting imprint in all forms of photography since 1892.
26/03/1944 - Diana Ross (Diane Earle) was born (singer: actress: group: The Supremes: I Hear a Symphony, Come See About Me; solo: Ain�t No Mountain High Enough, Theme from �Mahogany�, Love Hangover; actress: Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, The Wiz)
26/03/1953 - Dr. Jonas Salk announced a new polio vaccine on this day.
27/03/1841 - The first steam fire-engine was tested in New York City. Unfortunately, every time the burst of steam came out of the fire engine, the firemen thought their engine was on fire and would turn their hoses on it... Nah!
27/03/1942 - Michael York (Johnson) was born (actor: Cabaret, The Three Musketeers, Logan�s Run, Murder on the Orient Express, Midnight Cop)
27/03/1963 - Quentin Tarantino was born (film director: �Pulp Fiction�, �From Dusk Til Dawn�)
27/03/1970 - Maria Carey was born (singer)
28/03/1797 - On this date Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patented a device we commonly call the washing machine. Back then, however, there was a whole different way of speaking (and, as you�ll see, in spelling) to describe this wonderful invention. �This device is an improvement in washing cloaths. (Correct spelling.)� Wow! Cloaths! Good thing Nathaniel Briggs didn�t have anything to do with �vacuum cleaner�, �garbage disposal� or other modern conveniences...
28/03/1891 - The first world championship for amateur weightlifters was held in London.
28/03/1985 - Roger Waters of Pink Floyd made radio history as his Radio City Music Hall concert in New York was broadcast live using new high-tech sound called �holophonics�. It is said to have recreated the stage experience in amazing detail. Didn�t surround sound start out that way?
29/03/1848 - For the first time in recorded history, Niagara Falls stopped flowing. An ice jam in the Niagara river above the rim of the falls caused the water to stop. We imagine that tours on the �Maid of the Mist� were canceled this day ... and that ticket prices were refunded.
March 26
The Kazakh Concert Hall. The concert of Jazz music. 6.00 p.m.
March 27
The Kazakh Concert Hall. The day of Theatre.�The Composers are joking�. Humorous scenes from operas, joke miniatures.
From 4 th of March
Gallery of Modern Art �Orkhon�. Bouquet of Flowers Exhibition.
From 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
From 21st of March
The Kosteyev State National Museum. German Paintings of the 15-19 centuries.
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of Richard Spooner�s private Collection.
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of the works of S. Kalmykov, I. Itkind, V. Eifert, and Rudolf Nuriev�s painting.
From 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. Closed on Monday.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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