Singer, songwriter, actress, popular podcast host, and all-round pop culture icon Kesha has teamed up with the London, UK/Austin, Texas-based Soundwaves Art Foundation to help raise funds for the nonprofit Stax Music Academy, an afterschool and summer music institute at the original site of Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee.
Soundwaves has created an artwork based on the 2017 audio recording of her mega hit “Praying” from her third studio album Rainbow.
Kesha has hand signed 100 fine art canvas prints, which are also hand numbered from 1/50 to 50/50; the image is 24 x 24 with a 3-inch white border. Iggy has also hand signed four original artworks on industry best crystalline canvas and added a different hand written lyric from the song to each piece. Original artworks are 40 x 40. All originals and prints ship unframed in a protective tube with a Certificate of Authenticity.
The signed artworks went on sale in June 2021with posts on Kesha’s social media platforms. The originals are $1,700 each, signed prints are $250 each, and unsigned prints are $75 each.
THEY MAY BE PURCHASED HERE.
In her Instagram post, Kesha wrote, “This is what ‘Praying’ Looks Like! Too cool! I partnered with @soundwaves_art to bring you a very limited collection of artwork created from the audio waves from the recording of my song “Praying I’ve signed 4 originals and 100 prints to help raise funds for the amazing nonprofit @staxmusicacademy in Memphis! Such an honor to be working with the beautiful people and the legendary Stax Records, which is home to Memphis soul musicians like Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and Isaac Hays among so many others. And now with the Stax Music Academy, they are carrying on that music tradition by teaching the next generation of soul musicians in Memphis!”
Sales will benefit the Stax Music Academy, which offers drastically reduced tuition by providing scholarships for the majority of its students. Former Stax Records owner Al Bell introduced the Soundwaves Art Foundation to Stax Music Academy earlier in the year.
Kesha joins Stax icon Booker T. Jones of Booker T. & the MGs, Huey Lewis, Elvis Costello, and Hall & Oates in partnering in 2020 with Soundwaves to launch artworks to benefit Stax Music Academy.
The Tennessee-raised Kesha has sold over 100 million records worldwide to date, including 87 million tracks and streams as of 2017 and 14 million album equivalent units as of 2019. She is also certified for 40.5 million records as a lead artist in the United States alone by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 35.5 million certified digital singles and 5 million certified albums. Including her featured singles, her total combined with her lead singles stands at 53 million, bringing her total record certifications to stand at 58 million, also making her the 15th highest certified female artist in the United States. That said, she topped eight charts on the 2010 Billboard Year-End Chart, including Top New Artists, Hot 100 Songs and Hot 100 Artists.
Having been nominated for 91 awards, Kesha has been nominated for seven Billboard Music Awards, two Grammy Awards, three American Music Awards, five MTV Video Music Awards, and three MTV Europe Music Awards, winning the award for MTV Europe Music Award for Best New Act in 2010. The singer has also been honored with the Gretchen Wyler Genesis Award, the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award, the Billboard Women in Music Trailblazer Award, and the Humane Society of the United States’ Voice for the Animals Award.
MORE ABOUT STAX MUSIC ACADEMY
The Stax Music Academy is a premier after school and summer music institute that offers industry-centric music education combined with creative youth development programming. It is the only music institute in the world that focuses on the musical art form created at Stax in the 1960s and 70s, teaching students how the evolution of rhythm-and-blues, soul music, and “The Memphis Sound” can translate into the present and future of the original music students are creating today. The Stax Music Academy is a program of the Memphis-based Soulsville Foundation, which also operates the Stax Museum of American Soul Music and The Soulsville Charter School, all located on one vibrant campus at the original site of Stax Records. The majority of the students attend the Stax Music Music Academy for a fraction of the actual tuition cost because of scholarships offered by the Soulsville Foundation. In the 2020/2021 graduating class, 100 percent of all seniors earned music scholarships to pay for their higher education. For more information please visit https://staxmusicacademy.org/.
MORE ABOUT SOUNDWAVES ART FOUNDATION
Soundwaves Art Foundation was founded by Tim Wakefield and his son Tom in 2007, and has raised more than $4 million for nonprofit organizations around the world by creating artworks based on songs by the world’s top musical artists from Pearl Jam and Paul McCartney to Fleetwood Mac and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Its fundraising efforts are focused on a few key areas: refugee rights, environmental stewardship, social and racial equality, mental health, music education, and disaster relief.