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What is the role of the musician in music? This is a big topic that I'm only briefly covering here. But I have made an attempt to have it be relatively broad in scope. Talking about the role of the musician in classical, jazz, rock and pop, and traditional/folk music.
"When people misuse you, give Him thanks" - Otis G Johnson
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| Artist | Track | Album | Label | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Otis G Johnson | Walk With Jesus | Everything: God Is Love 78 | Holy Spirit | 1978 | Lo-fi gospel minimal synth from Detroit. What a combination of words. This is the first outsider artist I have played on the program. He sings a little bit, got a drum machine playing in the back, and plays a bit on a Hammond Organ. There are probably many records just like this -- it's much easier to record by yourself even for genres that somewhat demand the participation of many -- they just haven't been found. Everything: God Is Love 78 was released on O.G. Johnson's own record label, Holy Spirit, where he mostly released his own records, including singles. But he did also operate two other labels that had other similarly obscure gospel artists... though not many. He's also been a DJ and host of gospel programs. This record was rereleased by the great Numero, one of many rerelease labels operating today. |
| Omar Khorshid | Ah Ya Zain | Rhythms From the Orient | Voice of Lebanon | 1974 | 70s Egyptian bellydance music. This is particularly synthesizer-focused, which steers away from how this music would traditionally sound. Omer Khorshid was a guitarist from Cairo. After a lot of political turmoil in Egypt including shift from Soviet to USA support during the Cold War, the bread riots, and political repression of citizens, Khorshid moved to Lebanon to continue his music career which had just started getting along. That's where he produced much of his recorded output, including this record. |
| Francis Bebey | Agatha | Fleur tropicale | Ozileka | 1976 | Cameroon singer-songwriter-tinged bikutsi. Bikutsi is a traditional folk music of the Ewondo people in Cameroon. Generally, Francis Bebey's discography (which is quite large) is more in line with a traditional bikutsi, most notably with 6/8 time signature. However, on Fleur tropicale, he used an instrument associated more with modern bikutsi style: the synthesizer. This record is heavy on the spoken word, as you can hear in this track, which in my mind partly earns it the singer-songwriter label. The rest is due to much of the lyrics on the record being written by Francis. |
| Eddie Palmieri | Cobarde | Unfinished Masterpiece | Coco | 1975 | Descarga/salsa with jazz components from the ever-flourishing NYC salsa scene. The 70s were a big time for salsa; you had the rise of the Fania label, which had pretty much all of the big-time names from this era -- including Palmieri. This record, however, was put out by Coco, a label created by a former employee of Fania. This record is considered the peak of experimentalism in salsa, with this song being perhaps the most out-there showing of it. It really ramps up and gets crazier as the song goes on. The record itself is unfinished according to Palmieri, but Coco put it out regardless and used this 'unfinished' label as a way to market the album. |
| Henri Guedon | Sainte-Marie | Cosmozouk Percussion | Epic | 1975 | Kreyol djaz (creole jazz) from Martinque. Kreyol djaz combines influences from various styles of French Caribbean music with jazz. This particular style of it though reflects the spread of salsa and other latin american music styles throughout the world. Guedon was a pioneer in exporting different types of latin music to France (Martinique has not left French ownership since the Napoleonic Wars). This record in particular fuses guaguanco, descarga, and guajira along with zouk, a sort of vocalist-focused dance/party pop music. This track is moreso a jazz fusion heater though. |
| Jon Appleton | Chef D'Ouvre | Appleton Syntonic Menagerie | Flying Dutchman | 1969 | Musique concrete/sound collage from Hollywood. A collection of electronic soundscapes in a time where the concept of electronic music was mainly novelty, even when it did not carry any satirical edge like this does. I enjoy stuff like this because it really does break up the monotony of expected melodies and rhythms and such things like that. I don't mean to be pretentious, but... how about this: it's fun! Frozen lil' pizzas from Chef Boyardee! |
| Cody Chesnutt | Can't Get No Betta' | The Headphone Masterpiece | One Little Indian | 2002 | The most well-known weirdo neo soul record, The Headphone Masterpiece, featuring German, Japan, Rastafarian, and UK flags on the cover without a semblance of connection to anything going on in the music. I'd recommend listening to the album yourself to truly experience it because a more accessible cut like this does not represent that weirdness very well. Same record label that put out most of Bjork's records for some reason also put out Cody Chesnutt's The Headphone Masterpiece as well. This was before The Roots covered his song "The Seed" a year later, which is what he's most known for. The record is sometimes a little goofy, mostly overtly sexual in the most absurd way -- but it is extremely stylistically experimental and adventurous in a way I have honestly never heard before in any soul music, even in recent stuff. It's really out there. |
| William Onyeabor | Good Name | Good Name | Wilfilms | 1983 | Continuing on with the lo-fi elements here, here's some lo-fi synth funk from from Nigeria. Got electro elements in there as well: Roland TR-808 drum machine syncopation. Onyeabor was actually quite the success in Nigeria, enough for there to have recently been a Vice doc about him and his career titled Fantastic Man -- plus the millions of streams of his tunes on Spotify. Sort of as a side effect of afrobeat, the song is quite long, many of his songs are this way as others as well from this period. Despite the low fidelity being pretty strong here, the grooves are just as strong if not stronger. |
"The figure fades into the distance, blazing a tenacious path. For all of suffering humanity. Struggling, searching for peace." - Os Teatinos, "Potro Sem Dono"
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| Artist | Track | Album | Label | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Os Teatinos | Potro Sem Dono | Telurismo Vol. 1 | Continental | 1976 | Brazil again... but not at all MPB or tropicalia related! This is the music of the gaucho, the truest idea of the cowboy that exists as far as I understand. In the U.S., 'wild west' cowboys were contract cattle wranglers that worked in teams under a foreman. On the other hand, gaucho in the Pampas region were pretty close to the image of the loner, rugged horseman that is somewhat represented in the Hollywood cowboy. A little confusingly, gaucho music comes from the tropeiros, a group similar to gauchos but different mainly in occupation (tropeiros were traders and transporters), who sang songs while they travelled. These songs are considered the traditional folkoric foundation of gaucho music. A somewhat obscure group that kept this music alive were Os Teatinos, a nativist ensemble from the 70s. Gaucho music thematically speaks of independence, hardship, and pride. The chorus from this track reads: "Go, untamed colt, go free like I do." Name of the song translates to "Untamed Colt," by the way. |
| Jacques Dutronc | Les cactus | Et moi, et moi, et moi | Disques Vogue | 1966 | French beat music -- if you don't know beat music, it's 60s rock'n'roll that brushes up against garage rock but not quite getting there. Not rough and tumble enough I guess. Anyway, Dutronc is very popular/well-known in France as a pop writer and soloist, but not very much elsewhere. This track is from his first album after doing some writing for chanson singer Francoise Hardy. He says there's cacti everywhere (read: unpleasant people and things everywhere) and grunts, "aïe-aïe" and "ouille" after each stanza (read: ouch, ow). |
| The Chamber Brothers | All Strung Out Over You | The Time Has Come | Columbia | 1967 | West coast psychedelic soul quartet with a drummer who's considered part of the group -- make that a quintet. The four singers are all real brothers originally from Mississippi. They also all play instruments which explains why the drummer is part of the group (most vocal groups typically had an in-house band for their label who were foten uncredited). They had a hit titled "Time Has Come Today" from this same album which was released three times: first as a single in 1966, with this album in 1967, then again as a single in December of '67. The group was in the Questlove doc Summer of Soul, if you want some more of this sort of thing. I prefer this song for its energy. |
| Bo Diddley | Elephant Man | The Black Gladiator | Checker | 1970 | Weird turn here for Bo Diddley. Pioneer of one of the most used guitar strumming patterns, he's one of those 50s original rock'n'roll folks. Now, most of these folks by the 70s are not doing too great either artistically or popularity-wise. Consider Chuck Berry who would in 1972 ride his bizarre cover of "My Ding-a-Ling" all the way to the top of the charts -- distressingly his one and only hit, by the way. Instead of something like... that... Bo's here pulling way deep into some really fuzzed-out funk blues. It's raw and gritty, two words I would never expect to describe Bo Diddley with. |
| Grupo Mango | Mango | Mango | CBS | 1975 | Salsa group from Venezuela. This is the first track from their first record. It's got a great little bit -- it's great hearing little bits of descarga in places you don't expect it. There's some jazz notes in here as well. The group was born from the Joe Cuba school of salsa. |
| Andre Nickatina | Dice of Life (The Battle) | Conversation With a Devil - CR3 | Fillmoe Coleman | 2003 | Independent rapper from the west coast. When he was known as Dre Dog, he had his second album hit #3 on the kind of obscure Billboard Heatseekers chart in 1995. Conversations with a Devil is a combo CD/movie project labeled a knockoff of Scarface by critics. Strange, seeing that this song, lyrically not very notable, has a very mystical magical beat that works heavy pulling this song up. It samples an obscure Irish celtic new age harp song from the same year as released. |
| The Undisputed Truth | UFOs | Cosmic Truth | Tamla Motown | 1975 | Are you ready for Parliament/Funkadelic ripoffs?! Well, there were very few who tried so hard to sound SO much like them like this group does, so you gotta give them at least some credit for that. It's actually quite rare to find something actually completely disconnected from George Clinton that sounds so much like his stuff. The Undisputed Truth were originally a psychedelic soul group from Detroit in the early 70s (on Gordy/Motown). Somewhere along the way getting into the middle of the decade, their producer Norman Whitfield, who is known as one of the creators of psychedelic soul, was very central to whatever group he had control over's sound. The Undisputed Truth perhaps most centrally, as they continue to have the reputation of being basically Norman Whitfield's vehicle for experimentation. And you can clearly hear here what he's going for -- it's pretty overt. One of the vocalists is even doing a Bootsy impression. |
| Ata Kak | Obaa Sima | Obaa Sima | n/a | 1994 | Independently released tape from Ghana. It's party music! This has highlife elements, a Ghanian blend of western music and traditional akan and dagomba music -- leads to afrobeat later on. So this is considered "hiplife," a combination of hip-hop and highlife. Though I'd argue this also has hip house overtones, and serves largely the same purpose (party music). Ata Kak actually has decent credentials within the highlife scene, he played drums in a group with Anthony Frimpong, an early adopter of funk into highlife. This is another one of those lost and found records -- originally lost to time and bought by very few if any, and then found miraculously decades later and rereleased. |
| Guitar Red | Space and Time | Hard Times | Mod-Art | 1976 | Lo-fi synth soul from Chicago. This track is pretty dreamy, if a bit rough due to low fidelity and poor recording circumstances. On the majority of the album Guitar Red, real name Paul Johnson, plays drums with his feet and guitar while singing all at the same time. However, this track is pretty exclusively synth and drum machine, a rarity compared to the rest of the record. This is a great showing of the incoming super-integration of electronic music into R&B. |
| Bob Andy | My Time | Bob Andy's Songbook | Studio One | 1970 | Just a short bit of classic reggae/rocksteady. The record is a bit more like a compilation than a legit album, but works well regardless. Bob Andy is a legend in Jamaican reggae, he's considered very influential. Just wanted to play the song; it's a good song. |
| Michael Hurley, The Unholy Modal Rounders, Jeffrey Fredericks & The Clamtones | Fooey Fooey | Have Moicy! | Rounder Records | 1970 | Goofy country-folk collaboration of artists from the northeast US. Michael Hurley is the central figure of the album, so I'll delve most deeply into him: recorded his debut for the legendary Folkways Records in the mid-sixties, so he's predictably part of the Greenwich Village folk scene from that time. Hurly illustrates all of his album covers, this one included. Like everyone else on the record, he's considered more of a folk artist than country, but dipping into country from folk (especially as a non-southern artist) is very common throughout the 20th century... well -- also country comes from folk music so it's more of a roundabout thing anyways. |
| Sonny & Linda Sharrock | Apollo | Paradise | ATCO | 1975 | Now for something even more goofy, in my opinion. Sonny Sharrock was a jazz guitarist who first made his name with his debut spiritual/free jazz record Black Woman, with his at the time wife on the cover Linda. Now, going into the 70s, he could have stayed the path of spiritual jazz as many others did (e.g., Pharoah, McCoy Tyner, Billy Harper, Herbie Hancock). Instead, he turned to more Albert Ayler-esque direction with fusion, except not giving in completely to jazz fusion conventions. You can hear that pretty clearly on this track, with Linda vocalizing over the track turning a bit strange at points, but overall keeping it pretty dreamy. It does dive into a typical fusion backing with Sonny soloing over top, but because he's a guitarist, what he's playing is actually quite strange even for the genre. It's very wiry and springy, not adjectives commonly associated with jazz in general. When you only have wes Montgomery and Grant Green as your reference for jazz guitarist, this may come as a bit of a strange turn. |
| Red Rhodes | Poinciana | Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy | Countryside | 1973 | Decided to end it with some pedal steel that acts not very much like country and more like surf lounge -- think "Sleepwalk" by Santo and Johnny. However, this observation might just be a byproduct of pedal steel-focused instrumentation. Red Rhodes played pedal steel on a few Michael Nesmith records, which is what he's most known for in the country world. He was a session musician primarily, which garnered my interest in his solo work as most session musicians, even the most renown, do not have any kind of solo work whatsoever. |
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Timely timing, this program. Shocker statement: the Sex Pistols are the reason why conservatives today are calling themselves the new punks! Frustration, nihilism, anti-establishmentarianism and more!
