DAILYSESSION

By Rob Kenner – NY Times

Gregory Isaacs, reggae’s “Cool Ruler,” whose aching vocals and poignant lyrics about love and loss and ghetto life endeared him to fans of Caribbean music, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 60.

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, June Isaacs, who lives in Kingston, Jamaica.

Cat Coore, the guitarist and cellist for the seminal reggae band Third World, has called Mr. Isaacs “the Frank Sinatra of Jamaica” for his elegant vocal phrasing. But as the singer’s friend and former manager Don Hewitt observed, “It goes further than that, because Sinatra was not a songwriter.”  [Read More]

By Randy Kennedy – NY Times

It’s not common for important philanthropic prizes to go to people whose work involves criminal trespass and who make statements like the following: “You never know who’s part of the police and who’s not.”

But the TED conference, the California lecture series named for its roots in technology, entertainment and design, said on Tuesday that it planned to give its annual $100,000 prize for 2011 — awarded in the past to figures like Bill Clinton, Bono and the biologist E. O. Wilson — to the Parisian street artist known as J R, a shadowy figure who has made a name for himself by plastering colossal photographs in downtrodden neighborhoods around the world. The images usually extol local residents, to whom he has become a Robin Hood-like hero. [Read More]