Funk music features on two excellent compilations this week: New Orleans' funk on New Orleans Funk Experience (Nascente, 2010) and Diablos Del Ritmo _ The Colombian Melting Pot 1960-1985 (Analogue Africa, 2012).
Eddie Bo
The New Orleans Funk Experience caught my attention in a music shop in Osaka, on offer in the store's Xmas sale. Any funk compilation from the "Big Easy" is worth checking out, as the city was not only instrumental in laying the roots of the genre; just about everything recorded there seems to have a touch of funk about it.
The 24-track compilation was selected by leading funk DJ Andy Smith and Dean Rudland. In the liner notes Rudland writes that the central figure in New Orleans' music in the 1960s was pianist/producer Allen Toussaint, and his work with the Minit and Instant labels and then, when he teamed up with Marshall Seehorn, the Sansu group of labels. Toussaint put together one of the most "influential rhythm sections of all time" _ the Meters, whose leader Art Neville would later go on to form the Neville Brothers. The Meters and star Lee Dorsey, whose straight-ahead funk features on one track, Gator Tail, were the backbone of his operation.
The compilation features some other big names like Huey 'Piano Smith' with his '50s R'n'B classic Don't You Just Know It, Chris Kenner's cheeky Mini-skirts and Soul, and some soul stompers from lesser known names like Eldridge Holmes with his wonderfully sung The Book and Maurice Williams' Northern Soul favourite, Being Without You, which I remember being a dance-floor filler in the late '60s. The Bobby Williams Group blasts out a funky tune with Boogaloo Mardi Gras, but the best funk tune on the compilation features the irresistible grooves of Gus The Groove Lewis on his Let The Groove Move You.
The man with the most songs on the album though is one of my favourites _ pianist and early funk pioneer Eddie Bo. His three tracks include a funky duet with Inez Cheatham, Lover And A Friend, the hard funk of What You Gonna Do with girl-group style chorus and another funk dancer, the neatly titled Fence Of Love. These are catchy songs; as Rudland says in the liner notes, "From the opening drums of A Lover And A Friend you will be hooked, and quite likely you will be up on your feet dancing in your living room. New Orleans music will get you like that." Can't argue with that. Highly recommended.
Diablos Del Ritmo is another well-researched and beautifully illustrated compilation from Analogue Africa. This one, apparently, is the result of record expeditions to Barranquilla by the label's founder Samy Ben Redjeb. He's uncovered a treasure trove of songs that represent some of Colombia's lesser known popular styles like palenque, terapia, mapale, Afrobeat and Caribbean funk. Fuzzy guitars and deep basslines dominate on songs from the psychedelic era during the '70s and there is some hard-edged Afrobeat from Wganda Kenya.
But it wouldn't be a Colombian compilation without some catchy cumbia and there are some good ones on the album; my favourite cumbia song so far is the beautifully sung Cumbia San Pablera by Conjunto San San, but each time I listen to this 2-CD set of 32 tracks, a new favourite emerges.
The album includes a lavishly illustrated 60-page booklet which includes an essay by Peter Wade titled 'The Evolution of Colombia's Tropical Sound', as well as extensive notes on the artists and labels featured. Fans of Colombian music will know some of the bigger names like Sonora Dinamita, Alfredo Guiteirrez and Wganda Kenya, all of whom recorded for the country's major label Discos Fuentes but some of the other artists featured are not as well known.
The first CD features Afrobeat, palenque, champeta and Caribbean funk, and the second one features paya, porro, gaita, cumbiamba, mapate, chande and descarga. This eclectic range of styles gives you an idea of just how rich the musical scene was in places like Barranquilla during the period covered in the album. They must have had some funky good times in those days because every track is designed to make the listener dance. One of my favourite compilations of the year. Highly recommended.
This column can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com
