News & Updates — soul/funk

Happy birthday to my favorite Beastie Boy, Adam "MCA" Yauch. From snot-nosed NYC punk to immature road animal to a citizen of the world and ambassador for peace & justice. Proof that people can grow and learn and contribute after a reckless past. Anybody who shits on the Beastie Boys usually has another agenda that has nothing to do with music. Their late '80s-mid '90s period produced some of the funkiest and coolest music of any pop groups of the era.

One of my all time fave rap groups was the X-Clan, with their Afrocenric funky samples, mystical verbal conjurings and knowledge deeper than Atlantis. Professor X was always in the mix, offering insight and focus, as well as some devil-taunting. The Brooklyn-born son of activist Sonny Carson, Lumumba Carson picked up some of the provocateur genes from his father. Funk upon a time he knew Malcolm X as a kid, he himself got shot in a gang dispute, and after serving some prison time remade himself as a hiphop sage of knowledge and black pride, founding X Clan and also recording...

One of the great percussionists of the jazz-fusion era, Dom Um Romão was most notable as a member of Weather Report but was also a pioneering bossa nova musician. He started playing in Rio in the '40s and in the '50s formed the Copa Trio (with Dom Salvador) and helped launch the bossa explosion with Tom Jobim and João Gilberto. In the '60s he joined Sergio Mendes' band and started cutting his own albums. After a move to the US he replaced fellow Brazilian Airto in Weather Report in '71 and made several great records as a leader. He continued...

Happy birthday to the great Syreeta Wright, singer/songwriter and partner & collaborator with Stevie Wonder. Born in Pittsburgh, she moved to Detroit as a teenager. She danced ballet and sang in groups before getting a job at Motown in '65, starting as secretary and back-up singer. She made her first record, "I Can't Give Back The Love I Feel For You" (as Rita Wright), in '67. She started going out with her future husband Stevie Wonder in '68 and they started collaborating on songwriting, hitting first with "It's A Shame" for the Spinners in '69. After singing on Supremes demos,...

The great Cuban bassist and composer Juan Formell is best known for being the leader of Los Van Van, and for being the creator of the songo, a fusion of Afro-Cuban, són, charanga, jazz, salsa, soul, classical and pop. Born into a musical family in Havana, he started his career in the late '50s, eventually playing with Elena Burke. He formed Van Van in 1969 after leading Orchestra Revé (and turning them into Changüí '68) and set about becoming one of the most important figures in the history of Cuban music. Los Van Van were the leading band on the...