Category Archives: African American culture

Happy birthday Pharoah and World Dance Music classic #8

Pharoah turns 67 today.

Thembi (1971) – Pharoah Sanders
(with on the cover I believe, Lonnie Liston Smith)

Pharoah Sanders (born October 13, 1940) is an American jazz saxophonist. Ornette Coleman once described him as “probably the best tenor player in the world.” Most of Sanders’ best-selling work was made in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse Records, including the 30-minute wave-on-wave of free jazz “The Creator has a Master Plan” from the album Karma. Sanders’s works influenced a new generation when his music was a major influence on the British acid jazz scene from the late 1980s and 1990s. Most recently his work was compiled on You’ve Got to Have Freedom, which features my favorite and the most danceable and accessible track of Sanders: the 1980 You’ve Got to Have Freedom, which is number 8 in my World Dance Music Classic series.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdTgH1u7cmM]

World Dance Music Classic #8

Previous World Dance Music Classics

World dance music classics #7

Today, on the occasion of Grandmaster Flash‘s 49th birthday:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6e9G-ump3Y]

The Message (1982) – Grandmaster Flash

“The Message” is an old school hip hop song by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released in 1982. The song’s lyrics were some of the first in the genre of rap to talk about the struggles and the frustrations of living in the ghetto. The song’s chorus of “Don’t push me ‘cuz I’m close to the edge” has become one of the most well known choruses in rap music history.

See previous entries in this series.

Camille Paglia and black music

Camille Paglia was at the height of her popularity in the early and mid 1990s, right after the publication of her magnum opus Sexual Personae. While she is currently dismissed as a provocateur (or should I say une provocatrice?), her thought and writing are still valuable to me and she still is one of my main inspirations in the nobrow canon. Consider for example a speech she gave exactly 26 years ago at the M.I.T. where she said the following about black music:

“[…] you cannot be graduating from an American liberal arts college without knowing about black music. This is a great art form we have given to the world. Jazz, blues, Billie Holiday, Coltrane, Charlie Parker–there is no true liberal arts education in this country without that. We must do something to the curriculum to build that in. Right now dance, which is this enormous form, the most ancient of all art forms, is off there in the Phys. Ed. department–you go and take an aerobics class! You are not a liberal arts graduate until you know about dance–you know about it. You know about Martha Graham, you know about ballet, you know about the incredible contributions that African-Americans have made to dance.”

Burundi beat, or, obtaining copyright for a rhythm is a difficult proposition

Musique du Burundi (1968)

Burundi beat is best known as an appropriated drum style of British New Romantics bands Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants.

The original source of this tribal rhythm is a recording of 25 drummers of the Ingoma tribe, made in 1967 in a village in Burundi by Michel Vuylsteke and Charles Duvelle, a team of French anthropologists. The recording was included on an album, Musique du Burundi, issued by the French Ocora label in 1968. (pictured above)

In 1971 Mike Steiphenson grafted an arrangement for guitars and keyboards onto the Ocora recording for Barclay Records, and the result was Burundi Black, a seven inch that sold more than 125,000 copies and made the British best-seller charts. In 1978, Barclay released a twelve inch version.

In 1981, the track was re-released on Barclay and Cachalot records. This time, Rusty Egan, drummer with the new romantic band Visage, and a French record producer named Jean-Philippe Iliesco recorded a new pop arrangement over the Burundian drummers.

Mike Steiphenson holds the Burundi Black copyright. Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, and several other bands have made hits with the Burundi beat as a rhythmic foundation. The Burundian drummers who made the original recording are not sharing in the profits. In any case, as the Jamaican recording industry and the Amen break cases have shown, obtaining copyright for a rhythm is a difficult proposition.

Latin hustles and European folksongs


Soul Jazz presents: New York Latin Hustle (2007) – Various
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

New York’s melting pot of Puerto Rican, Cuban and Afro-American musicians led to stunning culture clashes in the 1960s and 70s when Latin styles mixed with Funk, Disco, Soul and Jazz to produce new hybrids such as Boogaloo, Latin Jazz, Disco and Salsa. All these are featured in Soul Jazz Records latest journey into Latin music, New York Latin Hustle.

The record features all the kings of Latin music – Tito Puente, Machito, Eddie Palmieri, Candido, Ray Barretto and many more, alongside rarer, lesser known names.
In the 1960s Fania Records and Tico Records released stunning Latin Boogaloo, Descargas, Latin Soul from the emerging New York Latin scene. In the 1970s, Salsoul Records similarly mixed Salsa, Soul and Funk to release stunning Latin Disco crossover material such as Candido’s ‘Dancin and Prancin’, which would go on to be a million seller.
New York Latin Hustle brings all this together and features Latin music from all these styles, labels and eras.

The album comes with extensive sleeve-notes and exclusive photography. –Soul Jazz

On an entirely different note, I’d like to introduce this album:


Brossa d’Ahir (1977) – Pep Laguarda & Tapineria
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

What do I know of this album? Nothing much except that it was produced or engineered by Daevid Allen (Soft Machine, Gong), that it sounds somewhat like this, that it’s sung in Mallorquí (Majorcan Catalan), that my brother discovered it via Jens Lekman and that it is recommended for Joanna Newsom fans.

Si boops deh. With his arms open wide

Click here [YouTube].

Enjoy. I always believed the lyrics were: “Civil check, arms open wide.” Who can tell me the title of the classical? song whistled at 2:30?

This song is by Sly and Robbie produced by Laswell.

While we’re on the subject of Mr. Laswell, Miles Post Mortem is a 1998 French language documentary by Pierre-Yves Bourgeaud for Arte television on Laswell’s Miles Davis remixes.