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Earth, Wind & Fire CDs
That’s
The Way Of The World
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That's The Way of the World: Alive in '75 /
Greatest Hits /
Essential Earth, Wind & Fire
The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire /
Gratitude /
All 'N All /
Spirit
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That’s The Way Of The World
Earth, Wind & Fire
Reviewed by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya
Salaam
--from
Breath
of Life
There is never only
one road, and certainly, life’s highways are never
straight. Roads criss-cross. Even on expressways we
sometimes have to make U-turns and double-backs. And
sometimes we get into the thick of our emotional
connections to others. To our disappointment but not
necessarily discouragement, we find that there often are
more than a few cul-de-sacs, moments when everything
comes to naught. Days when there is no light. But then
there are also those special times when we glow and step
lightly, a smile on our lips, a song in our heart.
Earth, Wind & Fire’s music is a soundtrack for those
special feelings.
This is a selection and a blend of music from the band
we used to simply call ‘The Elements.’ Back then, when
you said ‘The Elements,’ everybody knew exactly who you
meant. They might even start to hum a favorite song.
Even if you weren’t a big fan, at least one or two of
their compositions gave you a special buzz, like that
third glass of chilled cream sherry or whatever
culinary, herbal or pharmaceutical item you habitually
used to facilitate attitudinal adjustments.
Earth, Wind & Fire. A Chicago band that got their start
on the West Coast. A pop band that was deeply invested
in spiritual studies. Soul singers who also dug jazz on
one hand and doo-wop vocal harmonies on the other. EWF
is one of the quintessential bands in which musicians
sang, danced and played their instruments, all at the
same time and with an elan that was charming and
captivating. Plus, they wrote some catchy songs. Often
as not in the Seventies, it didn’t matter where you
happened to be; you’d find your voice reaching upward,
cracking as you tried to get into the stratosphere where
Philip Bailey soared.
The band’s guru was Maurice White, but the specific
sound people generally associated with EWF was the
beauty of masculine falsetto. While all the guys could
croon, it was Philip Bailey that set a standard for what
male soul singers could achieve in the arena of
sensitive songs.
Well over three decades after bursting on the scene in
the Seventies, Philip Bailey is still able to do his
vocal magic. Unlike almost every other famous lead
singer in a group, Philip Bailey never had a major
career as a solo artist. He is forever associated with
EWF and they with him. It is profoundly significant that
a group of Black men could hang together for what
amounts to a lifetime. Beautiful.
I’ve grabbed a handful of songs, some of them among
their best, others gems that I happen to like including
the obscure “Dreams,” which was released relatively
recently. Listening to this reminds me of how much
breadth our popular music used to exhibit. So wide, so
varied, so many different influences, so many cool
sounds. That’s our legacy, our history, aspects of our
being that is frequently lost in the
instant-gratification orientation of 21st century nu-soul,
neo-soul, or whatever one might choose to call popular
Black vocal music. (Isn’t the need to label itself a
reflection of the limitation of labeling?)
Back in the day, we just used to turn on the radio and
pour our hearts out as we sang along with the angelic
sounds flowing from the speakers. Seems like a whole
other world away now. Yet EWF used to be as common and
welcomed as sunshine in late February; spring was coming
and it felt good, really, really good. Once upon a time,
that was the way of the world….
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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Pop? No way
Kalamu sees Earth, Wind & Fire as a pop band, albeit one
deeply invested in spirituality. I suppose that’s a
reference to EWF’s lightness of sound and the polished
style of their instrumentation. But for my
generation—meaning, today’s young adults who first heard
this music when we were kids—Earth, Wind & Fire is
classic, classic soul. EWF is Stevie Wonder and War.
They’re Maze, Teena Marie, Al Green and Donny Hathaway.
That real stuff. The stuff that made us feel like we
were going to be alright even if their was madness on
the television and craziness in the streets. Earth, Wind
& Fire was an integral part of the soundtrack to my
growing up.
Pop? No way. Listen to the ‘rap’ on "All About Love."
Listen to when my man breaks it down: "You are as
beautiful as your thoughts. Right on?" That’s some
black-ass shit! You’ll never find a pop record where the
lead singer breaks out psuedo-intellectual,
street-corner wisdom like, "You study all kinds of
sciences and, you know, strategy, mysticism and world
religion and so forth, you dig? And like, uh, coming
from a hip place all of these things help because they
give you an inside to your inner self, have mercy." You
can’t help but laugh listening to that. But if you
really understand where my man is coming from, you’re
laughing in a good way. You’re laughing with him, not at
him. Get out your steel toed boots, pick-axe and that
hardhat with the little light on it. My man’s trying to
take you deep. "Trees and birds," he said. Trees. And
birds! Come on, y’all. If you’re not feeling that,
what’s wrong with you? Actually, if you’re not feeling
that, tell me what’s right with you? You dig? Have
mercy.
—Mtume ya Salaam
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Pop or Not Pop
You know I’m not
going to get too caught up in labels, however, I do find
it interesting that you concede that EWF has a
"lightness of sound and [a] polished style," which we
both would credit to a pop orientation.
I, of course, did
not mean to denigrate EWF by saying they were a pop
band, maybe I should have said one of the best pop bands
ever, or a very deep pop band. Anyway, regardless of
what we call them, we both agree on how we would
characterise their sound. But then, Mtume, you go the
next step and infer that their "spiritual" subject
matter is too hip to be pop. I think pop can be deep
even as I recognize that the overwhelming majority of
pop music is shallow. I think EWF are deep.
None of the above
withstanding, I know (and I’m pretty sure you know also)
that EWF was heavily invested into reaching a crossover
audience. In fact, ironically,
That’s
The Way Of The World is partially a soundtrack album for a movie 70s
(it may have been early 80s) movie on the music
industry. One of the major plot lines in the movie was
the trials and tribulations of a Black band trying to
cross-over. In the movie the band was EWF and "That’s
The Way Of The World" was one of the featured songs.
Whether EWF is pop
or not is not my argument. For sure they made Soul
music. But there is a deeper issue. I don’t consider
"pop" a negative category. So, Mtume, here is my
intentionally provocative question: what do you have
against pop? ;->)
Inquiring minds what to know.
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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What do I have against pop?
What do I have against pop? Nothing. I like a lot of pop
music. I just don’t think Earth, Wind & Fire is an
example of it. When I think of pop music, I think of
music that isn’t aimed mainly at a black audience. I
think of music that, if it charts, charts most
successfully on the pop chart as opposed to the R&B
chart. EWF doesn’t qualify - I don’t care if their sound
is smoother than the grittier soul acts. Whether or not
they would’ve liked to have crossed over more than they
did, their records always seemed aimed at black folk
first. To me, that makes them a soul band. But like I
said last week, I listen to pop music all the time.
—Mtume ya Salaam
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Responses
I have a CD of Earth, Wind & Fire
that I’ve tried to listen to several times and I usually
popped it out of the drive before the first selection
finished. I rejected the sound. They were just not doing
it for me. It was curious for I liked the group and
their music during the time they were popular.
Your discussion is enlightening and
has helped me get a better grip on what was happening in
my ejections. As I recall, EWF was fresh at the time.
They were a kind of reprieve group. A reprieve from
Funk/Soul. A reprieve from Motown dancing groups. A
reprieve from disco. Bands were in. The Age of Aquarius.
They functioned for the times.
Their sounds however do not have a
timeless quality, that is, speaking and functioning to
present issues and present sentiments. Maybe "Reasons"
is an exception. Though they have excellencies I find
their "lightness" now a rather boring artifact of times
past. One can say that even the Stevie Wonder of the
period comes off rather bland and innocuous. Maybe there
will come another time in which such artistic
productions will find a more receptive ear.—Rudy
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These comments (not
just Rudy’s, but some of Kalamu’s as well) are really
surprising to me. I never realized EWF wasn’t respected
right along with the other greats of Seventies Soul.
Rudy says "Reasons" may be an exception but that the
balance of EWF’s catalog doesn’t continue to speak to
our present issues and sentiments. To me, that’s an
amazing statement. It’s hard to understand how something
like "Keep Your Head To The Sky" (my all-time favorite
EWF record) is irrelevant today. I was about to "in
these trying times," but really, depending on who you
are and what your perspective is, I think all times are
trying times. It’s just a matter of where your head is
at. (Not to mention your pocketbook.) As Bob says, "Who
feels it, knows it."
When I’m feeling
down about what’s going on out in the streets or over in
Iraq and Afghanistan or just about my own personal shit,
EWF records like "All About Love," "Head To The Sky" and
"Can’t Hide Love" are part of the soundtrack I turn to
to get me back on track. Those records remain as
relevant to me today as they ever were. And I know I’m
not alone on that. Maybe EWF just ain’t for
revolutionaries. I don’t know. I’m sitting here,
baffled, trying in vain to come up with explanations for
something that seems inexplicable. This is CLASSIC black
music, man!
And Rudy, I can’t
help but notice what you slipped in there about Stevie.
I HAVE to assume you’re talking about Eighties-era
Stevie. If we’re talking about the Seventies, we’re
talking about
Music of My Mind,
Talking Book,
Innervisions,
Songs in the Key of Life,
Fulfillingness’ First Finale. (The latter having been immortalized by
Eddie Murphy as "Fulfillin’, Fufillit, Fulfingly…fuck
it! You know, the good one!") How can you possibly be
referring to those albums as "bland and innocuous"?
Stevie’s Seventies-era output is as good as soul ever
got. If those records are bland and innocuous, soul
music itself is bland and innocuous!
I remember a couple
weeks ago we were talking about Bob Marley and, all of a
sudden, Kalamu threw Stevie under the bus. We weren’t
even talking about Stevie! And now you too, Rudy? What
the hell’s going on? It’s like I’ve stumbled into an
alternate universe where left is right and down is up.—Mtume
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Petit Bourgeois Funk
Make my funk the P-Funk / cause I
like my funk uncut!
OK, Rudy, let’s go
there—"there" being the deal on EWF, Motown, disco and a
bunch of other stuff from that period—but let’s take a
back road so we can see the landscape a little better.
First, read Mtume’s
take on De La Soul. Think of EWF as De La Soul and think
of P-Funk as Public Enemy and NWA all rolled into one.
You might ask, how could that be? The answer is simple
and obvious once you look at the context. Parliament was
Public Enemy and Funkadelic was NWA. Of course there are
important differences but right now I am addressing a
structural similarity.
If you go back and
look at the P-Funk albums from that period, they were
dissing EWF in a similar way that De La Soul got dissed
except those cartoons on the P-Funk albums were
scandalous.
Second, here’s an
anecdote. One night in New Orleans back in the
seventies, EWF was playing a major concert in the
Superdome. About a 1.5 miles away, P-Funk was having a
major concert in the Municipal Auditorium. I was
boarding the mothership. Later for the disappearing
pyramid.
If you compare the
sounds of both groups it’s really, really clear who was
the heavy hitter and who was the lead-off hitter
proficient at getting on base but seldom hitting home
runs. (Yeah, yeah I know I’m mixing a lot of metaphors
and skating on thin ice but “Aqua-boogie, baby”!)
In all seriousness
I used to refer to EWF as "petit bourgeois funk," with
all the strengths and weaknesses thereof. Now both were
into a form of metaphysics except P-Funk was just
tripping out and funking around. It wasn’t like they
seriously believed in a mothership. But EWF, well, they
were seriously into their metaphysics.
There are probably
about eight to ten other EWF tracks I really like but
beyond that, the deeptitude factor falls off or should I
say drifts away on the breeze. As drugged out as P-Funk
was, they were clearer about who and what the enemy was,
about the systemic nature of our oppression. Free your
mind and your ass will follow! Like that. Our problem
was not that we didn’t understand astrology. Our problem
is that we didn’t understand capitalism.
EWF and Motown (in
spades) were busy pursing the American dream, both were
equally aware of the fabled pot of gold atop Monkey
Mountain, it’s just that Motown was straight up
assimilationist and EWF was alternative. Their “sound”
reflected their worldview. I’ve got a couple of really,
really funky demos that EWF put together, so funky you
would swear it wasn’t EWF. That’s part of what makes me
certain that the lightness of their sound is by design.
They knew how to get down and dirty, but they preferred
pretty shit.
Now if you check
the various regional sounds of that period you will hear
in the music a range of attitudes about the system.
Philly Soul was the most advanced politically. As hip as
What’s Going On is, it is really an anomaly as far as
the Motown sound goes, which is why Gordy didn’t want to
release it. But if you want a hard edged political
statement you had to go to Chitown (do I have to say
Curtis Mayfield?) or even to Philly (see, yall going to
make me pull out O’Jays Ship Ahoy—now that was a
popular/political record! ("Money, Money, Money.")
OK, got it.
Third, the above
not withstanding, EWF in their prime was a great band.
If, as Mtume suggests, the rule of thumb for what pop is
revolves around the question of what audience the music
is aimed at and who are it’s primary supporters, then
it’s easy to see EWF fading to pale as the years wore
on. Even in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down
Curtis Mayfield stayed the course. Like he said: if you
had a choice of colors, which one would you choose, my
brother?
Every up has a down
and vice versa. By that I mean even though EWF was a
little too light to bump (unlike Bertha, of whom it was
said she had too much rump to bump), still we needed
their vibe to complete the 360 of our music. Just like
we need doctors and lawyers, even though we don’t need
their identification with the ruling class, we need the
beautiful sounds that an EWF at their best offers to our
community. In fact we need all the best from every
element
Obviously I’m
giant-stepping through this argument and not stopping to
connect the dots, but it ought to be clear that Motown
was never going to produce heavy funk precisely because
they were courting a crossover audience, but hey,
“That’s The Way Of The World.” BTW, Yall really ought to
see that movie! —Kalamu
P.S Mtume, I just
read your Stevie Wonder question. I think you’re
deifying Stevie. There’s a stretch of about 8 or so
albums prior to Innervisions that is… well, let’s just
say Stevie Wonder doing beach music is not a
particularly hip listening experience. But you know what
we’re really talking about here is local, national, and
international conditions and the response of individual
artists to those conditions. Artists are human beings,
and like all humans, artists respond and react to their
social conditions in a variety of ways ranging from
outright rebellion and revolutionary struggle to total
identification with the big house and all the inhabitant
therein. During the seventies Black folk locally,
nationally, and internationally were in high motion and
the music we made, filtered through the individual
consciousness of various artists, reflected the
prevailing forces (positive, negative, and contradictory)
of their time period. Or to paraphrase a more
contemporary artist: the music is a sign of the times.
What the signs says depends on the moving finger of the
artist doing the writing.
Rudy, there’s a big
difference between not liking EWF and thinking that EWF
is not worthy of being liked. Not liking EWF is a matter
of taste and opinion. Not recognizing that EWF was
extremely good at what they did is a matter using
politics to make aesthetic judgments.
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I’m deifying Stevie?
Beach music? Baba, you’re talking about Stevie in the
Sixties. That’s why I specifically said the Seventies. I
don’t even own a Stevie Wonder album that came out in
the Sixties. Here are the albums I’m referring to, in
order:
1971
Where I’m Coming From
1972
Music of My Mind
1972
Talking Book
1973
Innervisions
1974
Fulfillingness’ First Finale
1976
Songs in the Key of Life
1979
Journey Through the Secret Life of Plant
Those are the core
seven Stevie Wonder albums that I’m talking about. Those
are the albums that made Stevie’s legend as one of the
leading soul musicians to ever record.
Rudy said, “One can
say that even the Stevie Wonder of THE PERIOD comes off
rather bland and innocuous.” What period was he talking
about? Well, he referred directly to Earth, Wind & Fire,
a band whose first album didn’t come out until 1970.
That’s why I assume Rudy had to be referring to either
the Seventies or the Eighties. EWF weren’t around before
that. And just for the record, I’ve never heard Stevie
At
The Beach (Motown, 1964), nor do I care to. If y’all are
calling pre-1971 Stevie bland and innocuous, I’ll have
to say "no comment," but I don’t know a thing about
pre-1971 Stevie other than what I’ve heard on the radio.—Mtume
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You guys probably
got the music history down better than I. My memory is a
bit vague. I may have gone too far in my comments on
both EWF and Stevie. The point I wanted to make was that
I do not listen to either Stevie or EWF, anymore. I just
saw Stevie on TV recently and I just walked away. I
thought he was mimicking himself. And I liked both
Stevie and EWF, once. And I really admire Stevie for
what he did in supporting making MLK’s birthday a
national holiday. Presently, I’m into fighting music. I
want aggression against what’s happening now. I want the
rough edge cutting through the fog. I want working class
ideological music like the blues and the bluer the
better. Nothing else will satisfy. And it’s got to be
more than the words and nice sentiments, the overall
sound is gotta want to bring the house down. . . .
People can listen to whatever turns them on. I want the
blues and the more country it is the better I like it.
Where guys are being as real as you can be. Or I listen
to jazz, blue and radical. . . . In this week’s music
what turns me on is Miles and what comes after.—Rudy
posted 12 March 2007
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updated 19 October 2007 |
