Carmen featured in Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival Review

Excerpted from Inaugural Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival Dazzles L.A. Music Revelers
By A. Scott Galloway – Photos: Matthew Imaging
June 30, 2022

Earlier, singer/songwriter Carmen Lundy made her debut as a leader at The Hollywood Bowl (she’d sung at ‘Playboy’ a few years back as a guest of Terri Lyne Carrington’s “Mosaic Project”). Carmen brought the finest Jazz vocal set of the day, pulling from her 15-album catalog plus three new songs from her October-slated CD, Fade to Black. Of those three selections, the women’s rights meditation “Ain’t I Human” was an attention grabber given the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe vs. Wade just two days prior. Backstage at the Bowl, Lundy shared, “When the pandemic began, I said I wasn’t going to write anything. Then stuff started happening, one thing after the other. I was surprised I was writing about stuff BEFORE it manifested. I wrote ‘Ain’t I Human’ about a year ago inspired by Harriet Tubman’s ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ speech concerning women’s right to vote. I figured when this audience hears what I’m singing, maybe they’ll think I wrote it yesterday for this festival. But I didn’t. Jazz vocals tend to reflect another time. A lot of the repertoire we sing was mostly written by white men of the past. I want to sing about the present that has to do with the future. 16 albums later, it may have taken me longer than one might expect, but I’m very happy with the transition of artist perspective that has happened for me across the years.”