Please answer this: What were the names of the three older artists that the band wanted to pay homage to?  Answer the above question based on the context below:  Inspired by live instrumentation, turntablism, and classic soul music, Tony! Toni! Toné! recorded and produced their second album, The Revival, mostly themselves and released it in 1990 to commercial success. The record broadened the group's exposure to fans beyond their initial R&B audience. However, they became ambivalent about their newfound mainstream success and their music being labeled "retro" by critics. In an interview for People magazine, lead singer and bassist Raphael Wiggins expressed his dissatisfaction with the music industry, saying that "every record company wants to get a group and put 'em in a Benz with a car phone and a beeper, show them dressing in three different outfits, put them in a video shot on a beach with lots of swinging bikinis. You won't ever see us on a beach. We're just down-to-earth, funky, like-to-play guys." Before considering a follow-up album, the band recorded several songs for film soundtracks, including "Me and You" for Boyz n the Hood (1991), "House Party (I Don't Know What You Come to Do)" for House Party 2 (1991), and "Waiting on You" for Poetic Justice (1993).Having fulfilled their creative intentions with The Revival, Tony! Toni! Toné! wanted to pay homage to their musical influences with Sons of Soul. In a 1993 interview for The New York Times, Wiggins elaborated on their direction for the album, stating "We're paying homage to a lot of older artists who paved the way for us artists like the Temptations, Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind and Fire. They're the people who inspired us when we were growing up, people like Aretha Franklin, James Brown. We feel we're the sons of everything and all those people who came before us." He also explained the album's title as a declaration of them being descendants of those artists, "not in a grandiose sense, but from the standpoint that we really are the musical offspring of all that's come before us ... paying homage to our past, but creating in a contemporary environment."
++++++++
Answer: Sly and the Family Stone


Please answer this: In what year was the Silk Road reopened?  Answer the above question based on the context below:  Although the Silk Road from China to Europe and the Western World was initially formulated during the reign of Emperor Wu (141–87 BC) during the Han, it was reopened by the Tang in 639 when Hou Junji (d. 643) conquered the West, and remained open for almost four decades. It was closed after the Tibetans captured it in 678, but in 699, during Empress Wu's period, the Silk Road reopened when the Tang reconquered the Four Garrisons of Anxi originally installed in 640, once again connecting China directly to the West for land-based trade. The Tang captured the vital route through the Gilgit Valley from Tibet in 722, lost it to the Tibetans in 737, and regained it under the command of the Goguryeo-Korean General Gao Xianzhi. When the An Lushan Rebellion ended in 763, the Tang Empire had once again lost control over its western lands, as the Tibetan Empire largely cut off China's direct access to the Silk Road. An internal rebellion in 848 ousted the Tibetan rulers, and Tang China regained its northwestern prefectures from Tibet in 851. These lands contained crucial grazing areas and pastures for raising horses that the Tang dynasty desperately needed.Despite the many expatriate European travelers coming into China to live and trade, many travelers, mainly religious monks and missionaries, recorded the strict border laws that the Chinese enforced. As the monk Xuanzang and many other monk travelers attested to, there were many Chinese government checkpoints along the Silk Road that examined travel permits into the Tang Empire. Furthermore, banditry was a problem along the checkpoints and oasis towns, as Xuanzang also recorded that his group of travelers were assaulted by bandits on multiple occasions. The Silk Road also affected Tang dynasty art. Horses became a significant symbol of prosperity and power as well as an instrument of military and diplomatic policy. Horses were also revered as a relative of the dragon.
++++++++
Answer: 639


Please answer this: What is the first name of the person whose double triumph in piano and voice resulted in being awarded a special rose bowl as champion of the festival?  Answer the above question based on the context below:  In 1937 Ferrier entered the Carlisle Festival open piano competition and, as a result of a small bet with her husband, also signed up for the singing contest. She easily won the piano trophy; in the singing finals she sang Roger Quilter's To Daisies, a performance which earned her the festival's top vocal award. To mark her double triumph in piano and voice, Ferrier was awarded a special rose bowl as champion of the festival.After her Carlisle victories, Ferrier began to receive offers of singing engagements. Her first appearance as a professional vocalist, in autumn 1937, was at a harvest festival celebration in the village church at Aspatria. She was paid one guinea. After winning the gold cup at the 1938 Workington Festival, Ferrier sang Ma Curly-Headed Babby in a concert at Workington Opera House. Cecil McGivern, producer of a BBC Northern radio variety show, was in the audience and was sufficiently impressed to book her for the next edition of his programme, which was broadcast from Newcastle on 23 February 1939. This broadcast—her first as a vocalist—attracted wide attention, and led to more radio work, though for Ferrier the event was overshadowed by the death of her mother at the beginning of February. At the 1939 Carlisle Festival, Ferrier sang Richard Strauss's song All Souls' Day, a performance which particularly impressed one of the adjudicators, J. E. Hutchinson, a music teacher with a considerable reputation. Ferrier became his pupil and, under his guidance, began to extend her repertoire to include works by Bach, Handel, Brahms and Elgar.When Albert Wilson joined the army in 1940, Ferrier reverted to her maiden name, having until then sung as 'Kathleen Wilson'. In December 1940 she appeared for the first time professionally as 'Kathleen Ferrier' in a performance of Handel's Messiah, under Hutchinson's direction. In early 1941 she successfully auditioned as a singer with the Council for the Encouragement of the Arts (CEMA), which provided concerts and other entertainments to military camps,...
++++++++
Answer:
Kathleen