The Black Dynamite Sound Orchestra plays for its toughest audience yet: Stormtroopers.

Follow the Detroit hip-hop duo Invincible + Waajeed as they tour the Archer Record Pressing plant and watch their debut 7-inch, “Detroit Summer,” get pressed.

Contents include:
BARRY WHITE’S unlimited passion took him to the heights of music.
D’ANGELO’S organic sweet soul shook up modern R&B.
GIL SCOTT-HERON is still the first name on the rhyme scene.
Funkstress ERYKAH BADU enlightens from a higher ground.

Plus:
Melvin Bliss
An Oral History of the Wah-Wah Pedal
Ernie Hines
Bilal
Spree Wilson
The Bamboos
Kings Go Forth
Fine Artists Record Rundown
Studio Rundown with Bob Power

Tito Ramos, Curtis Mayfield, Joi, Jeff Redd, and D.J. Rogers RE:Discovered

Click here to buy.

From the mind of producer/arranger/composer Ed Bland comes The Cry of Jazz, an unclassifiable, partially-scripted film that examines race relations and jazz in 1950s America. Finished in 1958 and released the following year, Cry is “the first hip-hop film,” according to Bland.

Notable, too, is the inclusion in Cry of music and film from Sun Ra’s Chicago days (1945-1961). Shot between 1956 and 1958, this is the only known footage of Ra and the Arkestra from that period. The band at this time featured saxophonists John Gilmore and Marshall Allen, trombonist Julian Priester, and bassist Ronnie Boykins.

Pick up The Cry of Jazz here.

Pick up another film featuring Sun Ra here.

Read up on Sun Ra in Wax Poetics Issue 6 (if you can find it!).

From left to right: Al Jieh, DaVinci, and Ammbush. Photo by Ken Taylor.

In San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, the projects go up and the projects come down, but rapper DaVinci’s family has owned property there since the ’50s, part of a wave of African-Americans that left the South in search of better job opportunities. On DaVinci’s debut, The Day the Turf Stood Still, hard-boiled raps are underscored by soulful, sample-heavy beats, courtesy of his Sweetbreads Creative Collective collaborators Al Jieh and Ammbush.

“What You Finna Do?” deals with the gentrification of the Fillmore neighborhood. What did you see there in the ’90s?

DaVinci: Fillmore started off as a family-oriented community that was thriving with music. One thing I remember when I was growing up in the Fillmore was kids everywhere. I was one of those kids. Of course, crack hit hard. The projects were basically just stranded. Only half of the people from Fillmore were in Fillmore. Everybody else was dead or in jail or just strung out on drugs really bad. So that’s when they tore down the projects. That’s when the people who still did own houses decided to sell.

Your grandma’s been a Fillmore homeowner since the ’50s.

DaVinci: The ’50s, yeah. She passed away in ’96, but she left the house to all seven kids, which is a mess, but my family at least still owns the house. [My mom’s] been here since the ’50s. [She’s] one of the biggest hustlers I’ve ever seen in my life. Still to this day. Now, her hustle is she has clothes, vintage wicker chairs—shit that I call junk—from the ’60s and ’70s, which just fills up the house.

Al Jieh: This guy’s house is a time capsule.

DaVinci: Every Sunday, she push it outside and sell it and be making a killing.

Tell me about the Fillmore legacy, the rap music that came before you.

DaVinci: Man, I could start from the ’60s, but I’ll start where hip-hop started in the Fillmore, which was like Hugh-EMC, KPOO radio station. [Hugh-EMC] kind of inspired the Rappin’ 4-Tays, the San Quinns, all the old posses. [He’s been] helping out the younger talent in the Fillmore since the late ’80s. We all started off making tapes, on eight-tracks, just for fun. It would always be one anthem in the Fillmore like that, that the young cats would ride on all the busses with the radios playing it. It would get so big amongst the youth that the JT the Bigga Figgas or the Quinns would be like, “Yo, I’m gonna put this on my compilation that I’m putting out next summer.” We’d be local celebrities. We’d get to brag about it at school.

Is KPOO still there?

DaVinci: Still there. The first mixtape I ever came out with [Urban Royalty], I went there and they played it—immediately.

Ammbush: They played it all the way through?

DaVinci: The whole thing! If they see a young, up-and-coming talent in the community, then they always willing to help. And they still do it to this day.

Could you tell me about producing the album and where you recorded it?

Al Jieh: We recorded it at [Ammbush’s] studio, the Nest. In terms of production, he comes from that era you were just talking about.

Ammbush: It’s funny, ’cause [DaVinci’s] like, “The Hugh-EMCs.” “The JTs.” That’s really my era. We all had the same distributor: me, JT, RBL Posse. We would all go to the same place so they could disperse [the tapes] amongst the stores. I think it helps being from that old school generation. [Now] we have a new generation, and when we can all listen to each other and respect each other’s opinion, that’s when you’re gonna have the best music.

Al Jieh: A lot of times today, [producers] make a beat, send it off to the rapper. We actually sat in the same room, recording, bouncing ideas off each other, and arguing, like, “Nah it shouldn’t be like this…”

What were some arguments that came up?

Ammbush: I remember one.

Al Jieh: I know the one: on “Ben.”

Ammbush: Oh, that’s not even the one I was talking about.

Al Jieh: “Ben” is our single. [DaVinci] wanted more scratching.

DaVinci: Yea, more scratching in the hook. And there was another one.

Ammbush: “Guys Wanna.”

DaVinci: Yeah, [Al] put a breakdown in it that I didn’t want in there.

Al Jieh: He said that fucks up the groove.

DaVinci: Yeah, I lost that one, too.

Al Jieh: No, you won that one! We took it out.

Ammbush: Not on the album. It’s in there.

DaVinci: You took the one out at the beginning.

Ammbush: We split the difference. We had those moments, but I think that’s what it takes to make something solid.

On July 27, ESL Music and Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation bring us Babylon Central, a dramatic film written and directed by Hilton himself. Here’s the synopsis:

Sebastian James is a courier by day and aspiring DJ by night. When he forgets an important delivery, Seb finds himself an unwitting participant in an economic powerplay with a Saudi Prince and his attempt to change the currency for oil. As Seb begins to fall for the Prince’s daughter and his friends are dragged into the conflict, the powers that control modern-day Babylon – Washington, DC – are exposed, and the US Empire is called into question.

Accompanying the DVD release is a seventeen-song soundtrack to the film, featuring heavyweights like the Bad Brains, El Michels Affair, Dorothy Ashby, and Thievery Corporation. Get a taste here.

You can pick up your copy two days early at the Babylon Central release party on July 25 at the Eighteenth Street Lounge in Washington, D.C. Doors are at 8PM, and there’s no cover. DJ sets by Hilton, Ocote Soul Sounds, and John Bowen of Video Killers.

The Eighteenth Street Lounge is at 1212 18th Street, NW. Call ‘em at: (202) 466-3922.

The first twenty-five people in attendance receive free copies of Babylon Central and the latest issue of Wax Poetics!

RSVP to info@eslmusic.com to skip the line.

Here’s a trailer for the film:

And check out an interview with Hilton:

Photo by Alex Rapada

Gonjasufi is the name the dreadlocked, dark-eyed, Mojave Desert-dwelling Sumach Ecks assumes for his current musical incarnation. It’s more accurate to describe him as a vocalist than a singer, as the sounds that he disgorges on his debut album, A Sufi and a Killer, travel rapidly from warbling notes to gravelly wails and dry-throated cackles.

The haggardly psychedelic and Eastern-influenced feel of Gonjasufi is layered and complex. Produced by the Gaslamp Killer, Mainframe, and Gonjasufi’s Warp Records label mate Flying Lotus, A Sufi and a Killer is an involved listen. Ten rotations of the album may not bring you any closer to Gonjasufi than the first, but when an artist is shrouded in mysticism, sometimes what you don’t know about them is just as intriguing as what you do know.

While from the outside coming to understand Gonjasufi is as simple as carrying water in your hands, he is acutely attuned to his own sense of self. Gonjasufi speaks to Wax Poetics on his inner reflections, the role that yoga plays in his life, and what brought him to the sound that he shares with us now.

You’re originally from San Diego. What was it like growing up as someone different from the norm?

When the whole underground rap movement was going on, like ’90 through to ’93, there was a lot of artists in the Gaslamp District, so it was actually a pretty good spot to be in. Then from ’94, it just became a very military-type environment. Very conservative. So it was difficult [and I was] getting stopped by cops everywhere I went. I’m known throughout the city—the whole police department knows about me just ’cause of the way I look. So San Diego is a very racist town, [or] it was in the ’90s and early 2000s. Right now it’s not as much, but I struggled.

My father, he’s a judge out there. So I had to balance not speaking out as much as I really wanted to for the sake of his work environment. I almost feel like I was targeted more because he was one of the only Black judges in San Diego. So then the police would want to come and make an example out of me. So it was tough, man. I had to drop off the radar. I remember driving through a certain part of town, and I was like fifty [minutes], an hour out of San Diego out to Alpine, and they knew who I was—the police knew who I was out there. They asked me if I was still rolling through the same streets, so I sold my car, man, ’cause I felt like I was marked. The FBI was following me—some crazy shit, showing up to my father’s house—and I had to get off the grid. So I sold everything I had, my transportation, and I just started sleeping on the streets, and sleeping in friend’s houses and couches. Just trying to get out of the grid, and out of the spotlight, ’cause I was being watched. Like, for no reason; I wasn’t doing anything. So it was hard from ’97 to 2002. It was pretty rough for me out there.

It must have been extremely hard feeling like you were a target at all times.

Yeah, it was frustrating. It strengthened me, but I had to master the art of non-reaction. People would do stuff just to get me to react, so I had to just focus on going inside more and controlling my emotions. A lot of my anger got pent up and I didn’t know what to do with it. But when I found yoga, it helped me basically channel it, and release it, and let go of all this hatred that I had.

It’s interesting that the release came through both yoga and music.

Yeah. Well, you know, during that time that I was going through it, I was into drugs and that was my release, but that was basically just masking it. I’ve always been into music but I’ve never been able to really fully express myself the way I wanted to until I got into yoga. Once I started practicing yoga, I was able to soften up and realize that being soft was actually being harder than I ever was. Like going into those places that people are afraid to go into—like the darkest place in me and just sit in there until I could make it light—that’s what yoga’s taught me. It’s taught me how to go into all those dark spaces in myself and turn it into light. And that’s enlightenment. Self-realization.

Do you think that yoga has helped you to focus on the physical and mental connect?

Yeah. It’s definitely a marriage between them. What it’s done is help me to focus on my breath and my breathing, which is the bridge between the visible and invisible—my mind and my body. And the more I focus on breath and my breathing technique, the more present I am, [and] the more control I have over my emotions and my reactions. It’s different forms of yoga: Asana, and the Hatha practice of putting my body in these certain positions. Putting my head lower than my heart, and opening up my chest, and creating space between my heart and my lungs so that they can work in union. Inside my chest, they fight for space, and if I can create more space in there, and they can fall back in love with themselves, that has an effect on everything else. So it’s not only physical, but metaphysical, and it’s quantum physics, too. When I’m in this body, every element is inside me. And if I can master the art inside, then the outside world becomes a reflection of what’s inside of me.

Grupo Fantasma, the ten-piece Latin orchestra best known for its blistering live sets and work with Prince, is back with its fifth album, the fiery El Existential. With horns blasting, guitars grooving, and special guests like the Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood and Fania piano man Larry Harlow, El Existential is poised to top the massive success of GF’s last album, the Grammy-nominated Sonidos Gold.

El Existential is out now on Nat Geo Music. Pick it up here. Grab a free track here.

En route to some dates in Europe and Canada, GF will celebrate the album’s release at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on July 20. Pick up tickets here.

Watch the band make El Existential below.

Photo by Mario Luiz Thompson/Arquivo

Arnolpho Lima Jr., aka Liminha, is one of the multi-talented individuals responsible for shaping Brazilian music over the last forty years. Everyone in Brazil knows Liminha for his production work with Gilberto Gil—it spans about thirty years—but Mr. Lima is a versatile and influential musician in his own right. When I reach Nas Nuvens, the esteemed studio he and Gil established in the 1980s, I find that there are so many gold and platinum discs saluting Liminha’s talents that the walls of his office are not able to hold them all. And in addition to the array of instruments that seem to lurk in every corner, I was pleased to find the analog reel-to-reel that remains Liminha’s preferred method of capturing his magical productions. It is this old school sensibility, coupled with an open-mindedness and willingness to try new things, that has resulted in hits for everyone from João Gilberto and Jorge Ben to younger innovators like Ed Motta and Nação Zumbi.

Nas Nuvens is housed in a secluded spot, tucked into a hillside in one of Rio’s better neighborhoods. In its relaxed environs on a Sunday afternoon, I find that the only things to worry about are the mangoes occasionally dropping off the roof, and the toxic sand flies that seek the fine wine my host is kind enough to share with me. Over the course of the evening, Liminha regales me with tales of making music since the late 1960s. What follows are some of the highlights, focusing on his early years as the bassist for Os Mutantes, one of the most notorious Tropicália acts.

How did you become involved in music?

My mother was a piano teacher, and my father was a pharmacist who played violin, guitar, and mandolin. He wasn’t able to read music, so he improv-ed a lot. I started on acoustic guitar—a sort of dobro guitar—when I was ten. I remember I went to a college park with my sister for a party for the end of the year, and I said, “Man, I have to go to this college, because I want to step on that stage.” So the next year, I was at the college, and we put a band together with five acoustic guitars. Then, when I was thirteen years old, my father gave me a bass—just a piece of wood with no frets—but electric bass at that time was a very professional thing, so I felt I had taken another step. My mother used to lock my bass up, and I was only allowed to play on the weekends, because I started doing pretty bad in school. It was just music, music, music, music. Then I started to play in many garage bands, and eventually I had a covers band called Baobás. We used to play songs by Merseybeat groups like the Dave Clark Five, a little Beatles, the Turtles, Paul Revere, plus the Kinks, the Doors—in fact, I remember the first time I went to the studio, I recorded a cover of “Light My Fire.”

When did things reach another level?

Caetano Veloso was searching for a band to support him, and I don’t remember how, but he showed up at the place where we used to rehearse, and then he contracted us to be his support band. So that was my first professional work as a musician, when I was around seventeen, in 1967 or ’68. And that was the beginning of the movement that he was creating together with Gilberto Gil, called Tropicália. We were the second band that played with him on song festivals, which were competitions shown on TV.

You joined Os Mutantes shortly thereafter. How did it happen?

I met Sérgio Dias before, when I was sixteen, and we played together. I was very impressed, because he was a really brilliant guitarist, years ahead of his time. So we became friends, and when I started playing with Caetano, we played on TV shows, and we started to share the bill on programs like [O Cassino do] Chacrinha, a TV show hosted by a crazy clown. After I left Baobás, I was invited to play on a song festival with Gilberto Gil. Gil went to one of our rehearsals with Caetano, and I remember we were rehearsing his song, “Bat Macumba,” and he was watching me playing, and we exchanged smiles. So for this song festival, we put together a duo called Gil and Gilá: Gilberto Gil was playing accordion, and I was playing my father’s acoustic ten-string guitar, and Os Mutantes were there, playing their songs. So that was the first time that I played with them. Then they invited me for another song festival, to play the same acoustic guitar.

Photo courtesy of Paddy Corea

Stylistically, Demon Fuzz’s single album, 1970’s Afreaka!, is hard to pin down. But then, I guess that’s the point. Demon Fuzz went out of their way to keep people guessing; at gigs, they’d let people assume they were a reggae band, only to launch into some African-influenced jazz/rock number. Jaws hit the floor and feet started tapping. “We were different, totally different,” says Demon Fuzz trombonist Clarance Crosdale.

Demon Fuzz was a group of seven young musicians who came together after emigrating to London in the early 1960s. Since 1948, the British government had been encouraging people in the Commonwealth to settle in England, in hopes of replenishing that country’s war-depleted work population; a happy by-product was that before long, many a West Indian riddim could be heard emanating from the clubs and street corners in big cities like Birmingham and London. British kids soon had a different beat to shuffle to. Of course, these times weren’t without their problems: in 1958, just three years before Demon Fuzz members (and brothers) Winston Joseph and Blue Rivers arrived in England, London’s Notting Hill neighborhood had erupted in race riots.

But back to the music.

Paddy Corea arrived in London in 1963, and soon took up playing the tenor saxophone—his weapon of choice for irking neighbors. One day, he answered a want ad Winston had placed in NME, the British music magazine that many budding musicians bought in order to scour the classifieds. Corea auditioned, and Winston and Rivers recruited the saxophonist for their band. Organist Ray Rhoden joined up shortly after, and he brought in his good friend Clarance, a Jamaican musician who had studied trombone with Rico Rodriguez. A second saxophonist came on-board, and they began performing as Blue Rivers and the Maroons.

“[We] didn’t play only ska, we were a raw soul band,” explains Corea in an interview with Koldo Barroso for themarqueeclub.net. “Not the Motown soft string soul that BBC peddled. We did a lot of material from the small labels of the South. The kids from out of town were a bit confused. They were looking for the stuff they heard on BBC radio, and we didn’t play that. Rivers prided himself in trying not to be like the rest. At that time in London, every Black man who had a voice wanted to be a ‘soul’ singer, and very few of them could cut it.”

Every weekend, the Maroons would perform to dapper-looking crowds at clubs like the Roaring Twenties, and the Q Club, owned by Count Suckle, the West Indian DJ who possessed the deadliest sound system outside of Kingston. “We used to get a lot of write-ups in the West Indian press,” says Crosdale proudly. “We were sort of the best band around really.”

“Ziggy [Jackson, the band’s manager] had some contacts, and he booked just about every town hall in London,” remembers Winston. In 1968, Ziggy acquired some time at Regent Sound, a room on Denmark Street that had been the studio of choice for the Rolling Stones to record their first record in 1964. The session resulted in the LP Blue Beat in My Soul.

But barely two years after recording Blue Beat, the Maroons would part company with Rivers, and take a left turn in style and attitude. Paddy Corea reflects on what prompted the decision to move away from their ska and soul roots.

“It was while in Morocco that my idea for a different kind of band and a different kind of music was born,” says Corea. “I was at this time exposed to a new kind of music that didn’t have a Western European scale. I learnt the Sufi Arabic scale and the pentatonic scale there. I heard all these tribal musicians from the interior playing various drums, reed instruments, and a kora, which is a stringed instrument with a calabash as a resonator. These chaps would play the hell out of this thing, as good as a Yehudi Menuhin. All this synthesized into what influenced me to try a different approach to my music. Some of the members of the Maroons understood and appreciated my ideas, and were thinking of similar things, so we formed Demon Fuzz on our return to the UK.”

“I remember the last gig we did as the Maroons was in Huddersfield,” recalls Crosdale. “We decided we didn’t want to just keep playing people’s music. In fact, we had a job to go to the Star-Club in Hamburg. That’s where everybody went. But when they said you had to do seven half hour sessions, I was… [smiles and shakes head] So we decided we’d just break ways. [Rivers] and the [second] sax player stayed together, we went as Demon Fuzz. We spent about two or three months rehearsing. We didn’t play [live] for that time.” During this period, the group looked for a vocalist to replace Rivers and happened upon Smokey Adams, who was “playing in a second-rate R&B band in Shepherd’s Bush,” according to Corea.