Ibeji

A week past now, we were thinking on the power of Bitches Brew. Something about 40 years brought us back. From there we travelled a dusty road to Sonny Sharrock. The next fork took us to Wayne Shorter's super new, then back, as you might expect, first to Bitches Brew and then to its precursors. We say ancient to future, and it is paths like this we represent. The crossroad where the past crosses itself with the new and the new crosses with the past.

Here we fell down on our knees, the weight of the pondering upon us. Gazing in all directions we heard an echo, from the time before Miles plugged in, and the time when, after Miles plugged in, he and his fraternal twin brother Wayne, decided to part.

We offer this clip for your own pondering.

The brothers laid the tracks down once together in June 1967* as ensemble pieces. It's the great Columbia quintet on these tracks, and they are in fine form. The compositions, all Shorter's, are developed as relaxed duet melodies, played by both brothers in unison, and long solos developed over Tony Williams' steady glide, and Ron Carter's reminder that there is beat that holds it all together.

The later versions were laid down in August 1969, as Miles and Wayne were in the middle of Bitches Brew, and though the musicians walk across from the one session to the other, the tracks on Super Nova are Wayne's tracks. They are the tracks of a single leader, separated from his brother. He's switched from tenor to soprano. The band is no longer the standard quintet, but a rhythm heavy line up w/ two guitarists, Jack Dejohnette (who rocks the house whenever he find the place), and additional percussion (Chick Corea on drums?).

The separation is not complete. The brothers play together into the early 70s. Wayne describes the motivation as shared: Well, I had a time limit for myself in a sense. Five years with a band -- like with Art Blakey -- that's enough. With Miles it was a little more than five years... Miles was saying [whispers]: 'Don't you think it's time for you to get your own band?' And I had so many ideas, and the music was coming out like water and everything, and I said, 'Yeah. I think it's time. I think it's really time.'"† But the separation is underway.

Listen:

• "Water Babies," Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (ac-g, el-g), Sonny Sharrock (el-g), Miroslav Vitous (b), Chick Corea (d, vib), Jack DeJohnette (d, per). August 29, 1969.
• "Water Babies," Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b), Tony Williams (d). June 7, 1967
• "Capricorn," Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (ac-g, el-g), Sonny Sharrock (el-g), Miroslav Vitous (b), Chick Corea (d, vib), Jack DeJohnette (d, per). August 29, 1969.
• "Capricorn," Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b), Tony Williams (d). June 13, 1967
• "Sweet Pea," Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (ac-g, el-g), Sonny Sharrock (el-g), Miroslav Vitous (b), Chick Corea (d, vib), Jack DeJohnette (d, per). August 29, 1969.
• "Sweet Pea," Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b), Tony Williams (d). June 23, 1967

We approach September 26, the feast of the twins. The loa remind us that the twins are the most ancient, and tricky, and that they have power over water and healing, as well as separation and reunity.

After Wayne left Miles, they both had plenty of 'splaining to do, as much to themselves as any. One of the ways Wayne tells the story is here,† and perhaps the most noteworthy portion is doubled down over @ the red light. Miles worked heavily between conjuring muses and conjuring doubles, before and after his work with Wayne.

After listening and pondering at this crossroads we think we should prepare to consult the jumeaux and ask their help. We walk in separation from so much more than our lost brothers. We want their aid with those blues.

* We have much respect for the brovahs @ the Jazz Discography Project for making the chronology of an era more visible to mere mortals.

† Wayne Shorter is usually generous in his interviews, and this one is along those lines.

Is There Confusion?

A friend asked us to throw down some recommendations on Betty Davis, an easy enough task. We'll load up a clip in no time.

But she's left us some devilishly difficult 2ns, and we hesitate to throw such things into anyone's field of vision without offering a few prayers of our own.

:: pours a little liquor on the ground::

In Betty's work there's the groove, the voice and the visuals. And then there's sex (as in m/f) and beauty (as in aesthetics). They pile up all over Betty, just as she wanted, but, if the record (as in public, and as opposed to rekkids, slabs, 2ns or the whathaveyous we use to refer to the work in the tradition) tells us anything, it is that we treat her work as a ball of confusion.

Light in the Attic's rediscovery of Betty Davis was not only inevitable, but long overdue. Erudite cratediggers shoulda, coulda, woulda found their way to her stuff in the Thriller era 80s, instead of waiting 'til the Lady Gaga and Shakira era* 00s if they were brave enough. There must have been business hurdles they couldn't jump, or her sh1t woulda been loose again in the market before Rick James was smoking crack.

When Betty's albums first hit the racks there was no shortage of demand for groove. For those of us lissenning so late in the game, the trick is to distinguish it from all of the lofty precursors assigned in hindsight to Betty's list of influences. She's got deepsoul in her biography: the Jimi Hendrix boo rumor, the Miles Davis husband portion of her biography, the Greg Errico connection to Sly Stone and the Larry Graham connection to Graham Central Station. But we gotta call her sh1t her own. She shakes it fast, and right in front of us. She's not hanging behind it, waiting for us to find her lurking.

Her voice has more to do w/ Gil Scott Heron or the Last Poets, than Chaka Kahn, Patti Labelle, Marva Whitney or Vicki Anderson. The listed queenz all have something to tell us, but Betty is working hard to teach us a lesson on top of it. This expressly didactic tone in her voice sometimes feels, at least after the fact of nearly four decades, like a lecture on how to get the whole sexual power thing right. The too easy thing to do today is to call her ahead of her time. There is something much more fair to her than to call her the forerunner of a sexual revolution that is now over. She's only as good a singer as James "Blood" Ulmer, but that's the point. And that is why she sounds more right to lissenners versed in hearing Ma Rainey or Missy Elliot.

Then there's her body of visual work†, prolly the biggest source of distraction for fans and detractors. It's not surprising that someone who began her career doing fashion spreads for girls magazines has an eye for her own appearance, and a strong sense of how to push people around using that media. Her visual rhetoric, a move she busted the streets 7 years before Prince delivered his Dirty Mind,‡ is an outmoving spiral of irony and sincerity. It doesn't stop being one or the other. Just like Prince, Betty uses sex to write checks she can't fully cash. Just deal and move on. There's no point in averting your eyes, even if it won't free your ass when you keep on staring.

So, like Marvin says: "Come on, get to this":

• Betty Davis, "Anti-Love Song," Betty Davis (1973).
• Betty Davis, "Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him," They Say I'm Different (1974).
• Betty Davis, "He Was a Big Freak," They Say I'm Different (1974).
• Betty Davis, "They Say I'm Different," They Say I'm Different (1974).

These bullets are more than Brechtian exercises in drawing the lissener into a trap of desire x guilt = historical consciousness. They are an articulation of a tension the harsh voice of the day today and the sweet voice that promises something better that made Phillis Wheatley make a fetish of looking to the east (as in back across the Atlantic) to a creole dawn.

About 60 years before Betty Davis invited us to meet her at these crossroads to witness her conjure a Black Madonna, Jessie Fauset, who's now a sister of Maman Brigitte, invited us to pray to another angel, Sojourner Truth:

Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons,

Pounding our stubborn heart on Freedom's bars,

Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set

Still visioning the stars.

This is Betty's tradition. This is our tradition and we're happy to join her there. So high you can't get over it. So low you can't get under it. It goes on and on and on and on. To the break of dawn.

* We got nothing bad to say about these followers of Madonna. They are well-educated and offer a theory of action. There's just so much more things to say.

†

, etc.

‡

, etc.