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CDs by James
Brown
Live
at the Apollo /
Messing with the Blues /
20 All-time Greatest Hits /
Star Time /
50th Anniversary Collection /
Foundations of Funk
The PayBack /
Say
It Live and Loud
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James Brown -- Messing with the Blues
Music
Commentary by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya Salaam
--from
Breath
of Life The ass end of an
elephant.
A lot of the paeans to James Brown, a lot of the
posthumous assessments, damn near all of the effusive
praise from the mainstream press is all—each an every
word—a case of judging an elephant by looking only at
its ass, i.e. they are looking backwards and making all
kinds of statements, much of which may be factual as far
as they go, but all of it is generally misleading
because they decontextualize James Brown from the times.
If you only look at an elephant’s ass, you will never
understand two of the elephants more distinctive
characteristics: it’s nose and it’s tusks. Everybody
knows “Say It Loud” and champions it as a song which
changed America. Well, that’s not entirely true. Also,
everybody knows that James Brown is the progenitor of
funk music, but there’s more there than usually noted.
Poltiics and Blues. This is what I’m talking about.
First on a political tip, JB was pushed into “Say It
Loud.” The black nation was on the move, burning up—and
not just metaphorically. Rap Brown was paying James
Brown visits. Brown’s core audience was more militant
than it had ever been, so militant that they
“encouraged” JB to cut his conk. JB even co-wrote and
produced a Hank Ballard song with the lyric: “how you
gonna get respect / if you haven’t cut your process
yet?” You better believe wearing an afro was a major
statement for/from James Brown, a statement he felt
compelled to make by the mood of black folk in the late
sixties.
“Say It Loud” (by the way, this is a live version from a
Dallas, Texas concert) is a contradiction and a paradox.
It was cut in Seattle (if I remember correctly—my books
are in storage so I can’t check it definitely), in any
case, band members were urging JB to do something that
spoke directly to the movement, and when JB decided to
do it, the band was on the road and typically he wanted
to do it when he was moved to do it so they went into
the studio and they had the idea to use a chorus of
children except they couldn’t find enough black kids so
it was actually an integrated children’s chorus shouting
“I’m black and I’m proud.”
Isn’t that a gas?
Brown believed in black capitalism. Brown embraced
Nixon. In later years he would recognize that “money
won’t save you” and cozying up to Tricky Dick was not
the best idea in the world. Rather than try to help JB
in his later years and offer him administrative support
in exchange for his many years of advocating capitalism,
the system tried their damnest to bury him. Which is
why, I don’t care how conservative he often was
politically, I will always embrace James Brown because
this was one negro the system could never digest. Money
issues not withstanding. His white wives and domestic
violence woes not withstanding. Etc. etc. (whatever
one’s particular disinclination to bow down fully on all
fours to Mr. Brown), for whatever reasons, nothing
disagreeable he has done outweighs how the system has
demonized and attempted to trivialize James Brown.
Let’s be clear,
while JB’s contributions to American music in general
and to rap in particular are incomparable, the fact is
it is the adulation and admiration of the rap audience
which has made James Brown immortal and made it
impossible for the system to ignore him. Young people in
general, and Black youth in particular are the secret
ingredient in the worldwide success of James Brown—and
you can take that to the bank.
I do not mean to downgrade JB’s musical genius or
entertainment expertise, I just mean to acknowledge that
our people’s love for James has kept James in the
forefront and by “our people” I mean essentially blues
people (especially if you understand that rap is just
21st century blues).
Blues power.
Yes, yes yall. Blues. So we have those four political
cuts: “Say It Loud,” “Funky President” (which it’s funky
flutes), "How You Gonna Get Respect" and “I Don’t Want
Nobody To Give Me Nothing.” Do yall realize that Black
people in America do not own (not even) one major
national media company: no television network, no radio
network, no national newspaper. Were it not for the
Johnson publishing empire… Let me stop, I don’t want to
go down this road. I’m just saying listen again, and
again, to “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing.”
Listen and listen hard.
But the other foot, the good foot, was and is the blues.
On these three cuts, JB is singing & talking, and
playing a mean blues piano. JB like you probably have
not heard him before. The blues. The bedrock foundation
of African American music. How foundational? Well,
everybody always be pointing to gospel music, but gospel
music as we know it is the blues’ outside child.
Kalamu, what are you talking about? I’m saying that
gospel music as we know it did not exist until Thomas
Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, and later on some other folk,
brought blues elements into the church. Anybody that
doesn’t believe this, you need to do some hard study and
get beyond mainstream Christian claims. Facts is facts.
Check it out.
But again, that is not the subject. Right now we are
talking politics and blues. That’s my homage to James
Brown.
Politics and blues: How the people moved JB and he in
turn moved the people. How he was based in the blues
because the blues gave him a way to express his life
experiences. How he developed a respect for kuchijagulia,
i.e. “self-determination,” mainly because didn’t nobody
give him nothing, he had to work, and work hard.
I guess that’s enough.
(For a more
"learned" posting on JB, go to our previous write-ups
here and
here.)
In the cosmic
sense, the sense in which we say for example that “Bird
Lives,” in that sense, James Brown is not dead, he is
just taking a well deserved rest. R.I.P. JB, R.I.P.
—Kalamu ya Salaam
Because of
scheduling conflicts, I’m having to write this response
before I’ve read Kalamu’s post. But I still I have to
say a word or two about J.B. I’m no fan of hyperbole,
but when it comes to James Brown, it’s actually
difficult to overstate is contribution to black American
music. He enjoyed one of the longest and most
significant careers in the history of R&B. If that
wasn’t enough, his rhythms are
also the cornerstone of a entirely separate genre of
music, that being hip-hop. I don’t think it overstates
the case to say that James Brown is the only musician
from outside of hip-hop culture without whom hip-hop
could not exist. In other words: no J.B., no rap.
RIP, J.B. You’re the man.
—Mtume ya Salaam
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Responses
Thanks for the
straight up blues pieces by James Brown. Maybe JB should
have done more of that. I always thought Bobby Rush was
a James Brown with the blues but of course with much
more honest country humor. JB was a man filled with
enormous contradictions (demons) as well as creative
talent and imagination. In a sense I preferred the
proto-political James Brown. There was much of the 60s
and 70s that he did not digest well. He just did not
have the education and intellect to do so. Though he
popularized a few Black Power/Black Arts ideas, he also
bastardized them for they really did not sink very deep.
He turned ideas into popular slogans for the dull
masses. And to a degree he became an embarrassment in
more ways than one.
It's true, as
Kalamu says, he could not be fully digested by the
respectable status quo. Overall, Kalamu's comments are
insightful and add greatly to tales about JB. I,
however, would like to take issue with his analogy: "I
mean . . . rap is just 21st century blues." That is the
second time I've read this week his analogy of blues and
rap. He made it more forcefully in the commentary
“HOWLIN’ WOLF, MUDDY WATERS, & BO DIDDLEY.” I generally
agree with Kalamu's views, especially when it comes to
music, but . . . Analogies in general are problematical.
The blues and rap analogy really stretches the truth of
things.
Yes, you can find
some "similarities" between the two but to say one is
the other does violence to the blues and to blues
artists. It is like saying a limb is a root; a son or a
cousin is the parent. The major difference between the
blues and rap is that the blues have a moral/ethical
center that cannot be approached by rap lyrics. It is
much more grounded in the community, among the people,
despite the criticisms of church and other respectable
folks. Rap cannot make such claims. Rap has its basic
root in minstrelsy rather than the blues, an appeal
outside of the community that blues never strove for. Of
course, R & B is another subject altogether and probably
should not be fused with the blues as one and the same
thing.
Again thanks for
the blues pieces by JB. They were new and refreshing.
—Rudy
the problem is us, not the
form
the real problem is
the state of our people not the form of expression. why
you think i mentioned the lack of national black media?
i believe you are right that "analogies in general are
problematical" but the limitations of any analogy does
not make the analogy wrong. the blues is a major
foundational element of all contemporary black music.
period. rap is a blues manifestation, especially given
it’s rootedness in the masses, it’s folk poetry of
language (those dazzling displays of verbal acrobatics
are unmatched in anything else happening in music today,
it’s a way with words and with the sound of words that
is astounding, if you can hear it). as for the
moral/ethical center that’s a whole other discussion
that requires us to ask whose/what morals, whose/what
ethics. there is no easy answer.
the
commercialization of rap is both the attraction of it
for today’s youth and the destruction of it in terms of
what you, Rudy, identify as "minstrelsy." the blues
musicians you revere and hold up as examples are the top
of the line, we both know there were more than two
jokers in the blues deck, there were a bunch of
minstrels in the blues, it’s just when we reference, we
reference by the best, and if we choose the best of rap,
we won’t be talking about the minstrels. thanks for your
comments. and, oh yeah, one more thing, i prefer the
blues-based/funk-based jb, which is to say, i prefer all
of pre-eighties jb, because afterwards he became just
the sort of minstrel that you characterize and chastise
rappers about. we may not want to see it, but who refers
to jb’s post "living in america" as great recordings?
— kalamu
posted 31 December 2006
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updated 12 October 2007 |
