Disco/Not Disco Pt3 – Cymande – Bra
Cymande
Listen/Download – Cymande – Bra
Greetings all.
The end of the week is here, and so is the final installment in the ‘Disco/Not Disco’ series.
It’s been interesting – at least for me – in that this is something that I’d been wanting to do for a long time, and kept putting it off until I had enough time to give it the thought it deserved.
The original intent was to present a couple of what I considered to be representative tracks from David Mancuso’s Loft repertoire, so that those of you reading, who may not have heard of him before might go a little bit further and as they say, read up on your read ups. Check any and all of the books I mentioned: Tim Lawrence’s book “Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979”. Lawrence’s tome, along with Peter Shapiro’s ‘Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco’ (since retitled) and Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s ‘Last Night a DJ Saved My Life’ for a comprehensive history of club DJs, including Mancuso and his NY scene contemporaries.
The third and last song of the week is perhaps the most challenging of the three selections.
I’ve written about Cymande (a band I love a lot) in this space before.
Though they never rose to the prominence of either Booker T & the MGs or Eddie Kendricks, Cymande did hit the charts here in the US, twice in 1973. First with ‘The Message’, a Top 20 R&B hit, and then again (and for the last time) with today’s selection ‘Bra’ which hovered outside the R&B Top 50. They did make it onto the outer reaches of the Pop charts, but nothing significant, which is shame because they definitely had crossover potential.
Earlier I suggested that ‘Bra’ was the most challenging of this weeks selections. I don’t mean to suggest that it was in any way far out, but rather that its off-center groove, with stop time interplay between the percussion and the bass, with a less than ‘straight ahead’ rhythm. It’s not that I can’t imagine people getting down to ‘Bra’, but it’s definitely the kind of record that dancers might have to warm to, gradually, as opposed to a stereotypical floor-filler.
And therein lies the rub my friends, because that’s precisely the kind of chance that Mancuso would take, i.e. pulling an LP out of the crates and dropping a track – like ‘Bra’ – that while unquestionably danceable, is as valuable a listening experience as it is for dancing.
Co-written by guitarist Pat Patterson and bassist Steve Scipio, ‘Bra’ does open with rhythmically unusual riff – backed up by the song’s signature horn riff – but by the time the chorus comes in, the addition of a strong rhythm guitar propels the beat, rounding its sharp edges and settling into a more conventional groove. This is not to say that the tune loses any of its complexity, but rather, like any dozen James Brown records, the polyrythms are woven together so tightly that even someone with two left feet would be compelled to move.
The first time I had a chance to listen to Cymande’s three album discography in depth (via an old CD comp) what I got out of the experience – aside from lots of quality music – was the impression that despite the group’s marginal chart success, the listening public really missed the boat. The old saw is to indicate that an artist was ‘ahead of their time’ but in the case of Cymande I wouldn’t say that this was entirely true. This is how I described their music when writing about this track almost exactly three years ago:
“Their music was a sophisticated mixture of American soul and funk, African pop, Latin sounds, rock and all of the various and sundry intersections of those sounds. A close listen to their first LP is like a drive through Harlem in the early 70’s with your car windows down, letting snatches of Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Santana and a thousand lesser groups (woven securely into the fabric, but essentially lost to the ages) drift through the windows and into your ears.
There are elements of early-70’s prog-cum-stoner rock guitar, hard drums, jazzy bass and horns as well as a bedrock of polyrhythmic percussion.”
If my approximation of their sound is accurate, the conclusion you would reach is that they were very much of their time, and looking back, it seems amazing to me that they weren’t more popular. There were plenty of black acts incorporating elements of rock music into their sound, and by and large, though there are Jamaican influences (which had been popping in and out of radio playlists for much of the previous decade), they never overpower the band’s funky groove. While it’s understandable that a pop audience might not get too far into their sound, I’m puzzled that they didn’t make more inroads with the more progressive rock audience.
That said, placed against the other tracks in this week’s series, it’s ot hard at all to see why ‘Bra’ was so popular at the Loft. Earlier this week one of the readers requested that I post a Mancuso set list, so I pulled out ‘Love Saves the Day’ an retyped the list below, which doesn’t seem to represent any one night, but rather an amalgam of Loft favorites for the years 1970 to 1973. There are a fair amount of what one might consider to be ‘obvious’ dance records (James Brown, Beginning of the End, Manu Dibango*), a couple of less obvious tunes for the trainspotters, including jazz rock like Traffic’s ‘Glad’ and Brian Auger and the Trinity’s version of Eddie Harris’ soul jazz classic ‘Listen Here’, the breakbeat fave ‘The Mexican’ by Babe Ruth, as well as unusual (likely transitional, mood pieces) like the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and Exuma’s ‘Exuma the Obeah Man’. While there’s a fair amount of info out there listing individual records as ‘Loft favorites’ I was unable to find any specific playlists from the venue’s early 70s heyday.
Interestingly enough, Mancuso has kept some version of his Loft going (at a number of different locations) continuously (though with decreasing frequency) right on through the disco and house music eras. He still travels internationally, putting on Loft parties around the world.
If reading in-depth studies of dance music culture isn’t your bag, see if you can track down the 2003 documentary ‘Maestro’, that follows the development of New York DJ culture from Francis Grasso in the late 60s, all the way through to the end of the Paradise Garage (with Larry Levan) in 1987. It manages to touch on most of the major players, and there are lots of interviews with people that witnessed the development of DJ/club culture while it happened.
I hope that this week’s series has been enlightening (at least musically).
I’m going to see if a hot shower will soothe the muscles and tendons I wore down shoveling snow.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you all on Monday.
Peace
Larry
The Loft – Selected Discography 1970 – 1973
From ‘Love Saves the Day’ by Tim Lawrence
Brian Auger & the Trinity – Listen Here
Babe Ruth – The Mexican
Barrabas – Wild Safari
Barrabas – Woman
The Beatles – Here Comes the Sun
Beginning of the End – Funky Nassau
Booker T & the MGs – Melting Pot
James Brown – Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine Pt1&2
James Brown – Give It Up Or Turnit a Loose
Chakachas – Jungle Fever
Cymande – Bra
Manu Dibango – Soul Makossa
Equals – Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys
Exuma – Exuma the Obeah Man
Aretha Franklin – Ain’t No Way
Al Green – Love and Happiness
Willie Hutch – Brother’s Gonna Work It Out
Intruders – I’ll Always Love My Mama
JBs – Gimme Some More
Eddie Kendricks – Girl You Need a Change of Mind
Morgana King – A Taste of Honey
Gladys Knight & the Pips – It’s Time To Go Now
Little Sister – You’re the One
Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up
Dorothy Morrison – Rain
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
O’Jays – Love Train
Olatunji – Drums of Passion
Osibisa – Survival
Edwin Starr – War
Traffic – Glad
Tribe – Koke
Troubadours du Roi Baudouin – Missa Luba
War – City, Country, City
War – The World Is a Ghetto
*The story goes that it was the NY club DJs that made Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’ a hit before it was widely available in the US, which explains the many covers/rip-offs of the tune that flooded the market before Atlantic released the song domestically
Check out the Funky16Corners Store at Cafe Press
PS Head over to Iron Leg for some country rock
PSS Check out Paperback Rider too.
Themocracy
And of course it’s sampled all over De La Soul’s — Three Feet High and Rising (who have a real clue, don’t you think).
Wow, thanks for the quick Post and the nice List. I Like 90 percent of it and most of these Tracks went straight to the Chaselist. But I could not find “Troubadours du Roi Baudouin – Missa Luba” anywhere. Never heard of the Band.. Do you know the Track?. Thanks again!! Would love to hear more similar Music in the Future.
Mizzl
Here it is:
https://www.amazon.com/Missa-Luba-Troubadours-Roi-Baudouin/dp/B00142RX0I
It’s a Conglese/French version of the Latin Mass
L