B12 Solipsism

*repost

The Funk is So Rubber

“The Bombay Connection, Vol. 1: Funk From Bollywood Action Thrillers” (Various Artists)

The Bombay Connection showcases the sound of the Indian action film of the late 70s and early 80s. Under the influence of films like Shaft and Dirty Harry a new kind of though Indian action film came into being in 1970s India. To match the loud fights and fast chases Indian composers developed a exciting brand of Bollywood funk. Wah-wah guitars, congas and funky moogs were effortlessly blended with tablas, dhols and Indian melody lines. This album compiles 12 (sic) of the best, incredibly original Bollywood Funk grooves, painting scenes of frantic chases through back streets in Bombay, secret plots conceived in subterarian headquarters by fake-moustached vilains and sexy seductive dances by female spies. The 6 panel digipack comes with a colorful 32 page booklet containing well researched info and a wealth of pictures.

the booklet is cool too, full of stills from the Bollywood Thrillers we’ve never even heard of, and a plethora of details about each obscure track.

In this first volume, we dig into the funky, bell-bottomed sounds of Indian action film music form the 1970s and 1980s. We have selected 13 tracks from the golden era of Indian funk, almost all from films that failed at the box office in their time and that are therefore hardly remembered, even in India. … But all of these films - along with the obligatory family drama scenes, comedy sequences and love songs - contained violent and kinky scenes that satiated the public’s thirst for action and sex and set the stage for the exciting funk tunes presented here.

Fun stuff, especially since the music was apparently recorded live in one take, without over-dubs. An amazing feat, since the tunes often shift tempo abruptly, heading into new directions, presumedly to follow the action projected on the screen.
—
Update: a great album. I’ll have to look for Volume 2.

“Chocolate City” (Parliament)

Can’t go wrong with George Clinton in his prime…

In a refreshing sign that math and hope can just get along, Barack Obama predictably sewed up the delegate count on Tuesday night and defeated Hillary Clinton in what turned out to be a long, contested Democratic primary. And now, for the first time ever, a black man is on track to inhabit the White House, fulfilling Parliament-Funkadelic’s dream of turning Washington, D.C. into Chocolate City.

Unfortunately for P-Funk’s iconoclastic frontman George Clinton — no relation to Hillary or Bill, for you squares in the house — Reverend Ike Turner and Richard Pryor have passed away, and are unable to fill the positions of Secretary of the Treasury and Minister of Education. (Clinton invented the latter.)

Similarly, Muhammad Ali and Aretha Franklin will have to forego their positions as President and First Lady, as Barack and Michelle Obama will be handling those duties. Which leaves only Stevie Wonder to fill Clinton’s other invented position, Secretary of Fine Arts.

[From Barack Obama's Victory Soundtrack | Listening Post from Wired.com]

Obama apparently likes classic 70s soul, that better include funk too. Don’t get me wrong, I like Stevie Wonder, but Parliament/Funkadelic/James Brown are a lot more fun to groove too, with the bonus that (seemingly) nearly half of all hip-hop songs borrowed beats from this trinity. Throw in Sly and the Family Stone, a little Fela Kuti for international flavor, and we’re talking a party, ya’ll! Whoo hoo!

*Reposted

“What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977)” (Various Artists)

Good funk never gets old. Start playing the Meters, or Curtis Mayfield, or Sly and the Family Stone at your next party, and watch the mood change to ebullience. Funk also has the side benefit of being ‘acceptable’ driving music for D and myself.

Various Artists: What It Is!: Pitchfork Record Review
It’s rather nice to have one, well-documented place to go for such a huge range of funk and soul tracks, and Rhino has taken advantage of it, consolidating things even further to compile what amounts to, as Oliver Wang says in his lead-in essay, a “shadow history of funk.” These aren’t the songs that blew up the charts, though you may have heard a few of them– Curtis Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go” or Wilson Pickett’s “Engine Number 9”, for instance.
…
There are names that pop up throughout the generous track notes, and two of the most common are the twin giants of New Orleans r&b: Allen Toussaint and the Meters, who often worked as Toussaint’s house band. Both are represented with their own tracks, but Toussaint penned a further seven, and at least a couple of Meters turn up on six tracks credited to other artist. The best of these is a full-on Meters romp, Cyrille Neville’s 1970 killer “Gossip”, The song opens with a towering “coral sitar” guitar riff from Leo Nocentelli that injects a heavy does of psychedelia to accent the rock-hard beat.

A few tracks later, you get a real sitar, courtesy of Ananda Shankar’s cover of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. Shankar was nephew to Ravi, and sold a truckload of LPs grafting virtuoso sitar playing onto psychedelic pop; “Metamorphosis” is the funkiest track from his self-titled LP, but “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is more immediate. On the less frivolous end of things is “Headless Heroes” by Eugene McDaniels, from his political funk opus Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, a record Spiro Agnew personally requested be withdrawn in spite of the fact that almost nobody heard it. When McDaniels refers to us all as “racial pawns in the master game” and asserts that “the player who controls the board sees them all as the same/ Basically cannon fodder,” you know he means it.

Paranoia rears its head on the dark funk of Baby Huey & the Babysitters’ “Hard Times”, an icy ghetto soul track with a chilling, guitar-soaked intro and lyrics about being held up by someone you thought you trusted. Baby Huey is one of many artists here worth investigating further– including the Meters, Curtis Mayfield, Wilson Pickett, Harlem River Drive, Mongo Santamaria, Fred Wesley, King Curtis, and Bobby Byrd. There are, however, a number of artists for whom further investigation is damn near impossible. More than a quarter of the bands included here never released a full-length album, so the Houseguests’ “What So Never the Dance” is pretty much it. This is where the value of a set like this really comes into sharp relief– Tony Alvon & the Belairs’ groover “Sexy Coffee Pot” has never been easier to come by than it is with this on the shelves.

and from the Amazon listing:

Too many reissue compilations are content to merely slice ‘n’ dice familiar catalog choices in not particularly original ways. But this four-disc, 91-track trove of obscure ’70s R&B and funk from Warner-distributed labels great and small argues there’s still treasure to be gleaned from studio vaults–a five-hour groove-fest that’s as interested in shaking booty as in opening ears. Even the genre’s groundbreaking usual suspects (Wilson Pickett, the Bar-Kays, Curtis Mayfield, Earth, Wind & Fire, et al) are represented by selections that aren’t immediately familiar, while Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin serves up a radically different, previously unreleased take of “Rock Steady.” Still other stars contribute their sonic touches to some of the lesser-known cuts, as witnessed by the patent trippiness of Sly Stone alter-egos 6ix and Stanga on “I’m Just Like You” and “Little Sister,” respectively; the stark, party-not-so-hearty contrast of the Mayfield-written-and-produced “Hard Times” by Baby Huey & Baby Sisters; and the Meters’ version of “Tampin’,” released under the moniker of the Rhine Oaks.

Sequenced in rough chronological order, it’s a savvy window into a musical evolution as well, with the rhythmic guitars, organ swells, and horn flourishes of traditional ’60s R&B giving way to sinewy synths and increasingly chunky bass lines as the decade grooves on. While savvy hip-hoppers will note that many of the rarities here have already been repurposed by shrewd mixers, it’s a revelation to hear them in their original form. A compelling deconstruction of an often clichéd and too-narrowly-defined genre, this is an anthology that showcases music that has influenced such contemporary artists as Tupac, the Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West, annotated by many of the original musicians who set the dance floor in motion.

Mike noticed that today was the 10 anniversary of the magnificent Fela Kuti’s death. There are only a few deceased musicians I would have really liked to have met in person, Fela was one. Most musicians are really just ordinary people who happen to make interesting (or not) music, Fela was more.

“The Best Best of Fela Kuti” (Fela Kuti)

You cannot have too much Fela in your house.

Ben Ratliff wrote (in 2000):

Album of the Week - New York Times:
FELA KUTI: ”Shakara/Fela’s London Scene” (MCA). For a foreign musician who didn’t have a serious audience stronghold in the United States during his life, MCA’s reissue program of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s 1970’s and 80’s records — there will be 10 CD’s by the end of the year — borders on extraordinary.

This, the first of the CD reissues, combines two early 1970’s records by Nigeria 70, which is what the Nigerian band leader called his ensemble after returning from a nine-month American stay in 1969.

Fela absorbed James Brown wholesale — the scrubbed rhythm guitar over drum patterns, the intermittent horn-section bursts, the leader’s hectoring vocal cries as he directed the band to change rhythm, ushered in choirs, played keyboards. But there is more to it than that. This music stays with single ideas even longer than Mr. Brown’s most truculent stretches, and Fela’s intensity is broader: the music was a political platform as well as an emotional one.

The percussion, the seat of both men’s music, is entirely different: some of the funkiest sections of Fela’s long tunes like ”Who’re You” and ”Fight to Finish” rely on combinations of Tony Allen’s waxing-and-waning drum kit patterns and an array of shakers, congas and tapped wood and metal. (Making the cultural exchange come back around, Mr. Brown, who visited Lagos in 1970, borrowed from Fela in return, as examined in Michael Veal’s forthcoming book

Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon

A word for Mr. Allen, the band director during this period of Fela’s career: he can’t be beat. Everything he does here is spread out, spacious, an inversion of tight, popping American funk patterns. On these records he uses toms as American funk drummers used cymbals and vice versa, and the incredible drama in the space between the music’s slithering quiet moments and its climaxes is due in large part to his great skill.

Really, can’t go wrong with these albums. Play one at your next party, about an hour from when the party starts grooving. You’ll see what I mean.

Wow. Mr. Brown practically invented modern funk and R&B. A great talent. His song’s lyrics were usually simple, but that wasn’t the point: you could (nearly had to) dance to the monstrous beats and grooves.

“James Brown - 20 All-Time Greatest Hits!” (James Brown)

James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’ - New York Times

James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured ”Godfather of Soul,” whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music.
…
Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie’s ”Fame,” Prince’s ”Kiss,” George Clinton’s ”Atomic Dog” and Sly and the Family Stone’s ”Sing a Simple Song” were clearly based on Brown’s rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown’s claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

I could probably sing you every note of the every song on the compilation referenced above (20 Greatest Hits), and in fact, if you happen to wander through my hallway today, you’ll hear my pale parody of Mr. Brown’s gutteral ‘Hunh’ as I sing along.

Check out this album too:

“In the Jungle Groove” (James Brown)