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Tyhundza

Vasti Jackson

Hattiesburg, MS, United States

Biography

Multiple Grammy nominated world-renowned guitarist and vocalist, 2020 Pinnacle Award Winner, 2019 Polar international Award recipient (Playing For Change), 2019 Grammy Nominee (producer), 2017 Arts Ambassador, 2016 Grammy nominee (The Soul of Jimmie Rogers) 2015 Albert King Lifetime Guitar Award, 2014 Cultural ambassador, 2012 Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame inductee, and 2011 Mississippi Living Blues Legend Award winner.

Vasti (pronounced Vast-Eye) Jackson is a consummate performer, songwriter, arranger, producer, and educator. From his early beginnings performing in churches, and juke joints in McComb, Mississippi, to festivals, concerts, and theaters around the world. Vasti moves effortlessly from blues, to soul, to jazz, to gospel, to world music, and beyond.

As an actor, Vasti plays co-lead role of Ike Turner in the 2018 and 2019 international musical tour “Simply The Best” The Tina Turner story.

Vasti currently performs the lead role as Robert Johnson in the theatrical presentation Robert Johnson: The Man The Myth The Music, and as Hobo Bill in the stage play Jimmie Rodgers: Americas’ Blue Yodeler. 2019 found Vasti performing the role of Old Lucas the theatrical presentation of Hell In High Water, and serving as musical director. Vasti is a guest artist and composer with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra presentation of Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale.

As an educator, Vasti communicates with enthusiasm, compassion, patience, and an innate ability to meet his audience at their needs. With the Playing For Change Foundation “Creating Positive Change Through Music, and Arts Education” Vasti has helped develop fifteen music schools in eleven countries with more than two thousand students.

Vasti Jackson has been featured in magazines such as Guitar Player, Living Blues, Back To The Roots, Nothing But The Blues, Juke Blues (England), Blues Revue, The’Sip, Blues Matters and many other publications. He has performed on Dan Akroyd’s House of Blues Radio Hour, the Starz Encore Network, WGN-TV in Chicago, and PBS. He has performed, written, produced, and recorded music for HBO, VH1, Mississippi Educational Television, the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), and radio and television programs in Australia, Uruguay, Finland, and Canada.

He is the only Mississippian to have two recordings nominated for the Grammy in the same category, with one win in the same year.

Vasti has played guitar on several occasions with the PFC Band and has since then become part of the family.

HEALING ANGEL PROJECT

Vasti recently launched his “Healing Angel” Project which is an expression of gratitude for those who offer their caring as a gift of health and healing, especially as we face the COVID-19 pandemic. Check out the video trailer, inspired by the music Vasti Jackson created as Artist-in-Residence at the Anne Boykin Institute for the Advancement of Caring in Nursing’s Summer Academy in 2018.

The forthcoming full-length video is designed to be an ever-expanding thank you for caring – nurses, physicians, CNAs, therapists, health caregivers, first responders, housekeepers, and all who lovingly live their caring ways to those in crisis. JOIN THE HEALING ANGEL PROJECT Please email to [email protected] a horizontal photo of caregivers you would like to honor along with their names, and places of employment so they can be included among those embraced by this music and our gratitude. https://www.facebook.com/Healing-Angel-Project-101825638180489/

“Healing Angel” is available online at all digital music platforms:

Apple Music: https://bit.ly/HealingAngelVasti

Google Play Store: https://bit.ly/HealingAngelGoogle

Spotify: https://bit.ly/HealingAngelStfy

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PFC Videos Featuring Vasti Jackson
Listen to the Music | Songs Around The World Movie

Jul 14, 2020

PFC 3: Songs Around The World Movie

May 04, 2020

From Mississippi to the Saharan Desert | Playing For Change Foundation

Jan 09, 2019

2018: What A Year

Dec 31, 2018

Preview | Bibamba | PFC Band live in New York

Sep 26, 2018

Member Exclusive | Bibamba | PFC Band live in New York

Sep 25, 2018

Congo to the Mississippi | Song Around The World

Sep 05, 2018

That’s What Love Will Make You Do | PFC Band Live

Aug 30, 2018

Rasta Children | Song Around The World

Jul 04, 2018

Dixie Chicken | Little Feat w/the PFC Band Live in Los Angeles

Mar 09, 2018

Behind The Song: “Everlasting Arms”

Mar 06, 2018

A Change Is Gonna Come | PFC Band Live at the Mayan Theater

Feb 27, 2018

Everlasting Arms | Song Around The World

Feb 09, 2018

Member Exclusive | Ellis Hall & the PFC Band Live in Byron Bay

Oct 28, 2017

Biko | PFC Band Live in New York

Aug 16, 2017

Pata Pata Recording Session at Apogee Studios

Apr 22, 2015

What’s Going On

May 10, 2014

Vasti Jackson Videos
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