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Blogarhythms 06 Jun 2007

Juba Dance paints Chicago orange There are certain acts I happen across that make me feel as though they make their music just for me, or at least people like me. Sometimes this feeling based on songwriting and lyrics which just happen to reflect my life in a special way. Others times it's the acts' sound, the individual tones & instruments they favor, and the sonic quality of their recordings. But the most powerful way an artist can make me feel a personal attachment to their music is by making music that defies convention. I don't mean getting "free" and making a bunch of random noise (although that can be okay too). I mean making music that just cannot be categorized by traditional genre-labels and that doesn't necessarily ascribe to a certain "sound" or the affectations of a specific "scene." Chicago's Juba Dance, a duo comprised of vocalist and musician Benjamin Lamar (who currently rests in Rio De Janeiro and plays in Brazilian Hip-Hop group A Fillial), and musician and producer Polyphonic the Verbose (who has produced for Blogarhythms featuree Serengeti), is just such an act. Their music could be classified as Hip-Hop. It's got drum-programming, and Lamar occasionally raps (his cadence reminds me of a cross between old Brother J and Mos Def a little something). But he also sings, and plays the trumpet. And some of the tracks on their album Orange (out now on Audio8 Records) are made up of live instruments. While others are all synths and drum-machines. Is it Futuresoul? Soultronica? I hear some old-school Doo-Wop in there too. It could be Jazz. Or maybe even Blues! No, I'm not gonna be the guy who coins the term Bluestronica... sorry. Did I mention the synths and drum machines? Whatever it is, it's very-much-so rooted in the various musical traditions of the metropolitan Chicago area. -- Listen to Juba Dance "Adams & Wabash" Juba Dance is that rare sort of act that demonstrates what the so-called "Hip-Hop generation" has taken from other forms of music, as well as what we've given back, and how modern music in general can be something new and exciting while paying respect to what's come before. And Orange is the sort of record that made me start a radio show called Urban Alternatives that people thought was a "Hip-Hop show," but which definitely isn't a "Hip-Hop show," just so I could smoosh genres together in a wild orgy of musical miscegenation and make sure there would be a place where a record like this would make sense! I could see anybody who digs the sounds of Sa-Ra, Prefuse 73 (and his many aliases), M.I.A., Aloe Blacc, Okayplayer message-board alum Wale Oyejide (both under his Science Fiction moniker, and his given-name), Spacek, Busdriver, Georgia Anne Muldrow, TV on the Radio, Kudu, the Definitive Jux school of so-called "space-rap," and the decade-spanning experimentalism of Prince, finding something to like about Juba Dance. I like all of those acts, and a whole host of others, so I found quite a bit to like about Juba Dance myself. -El Keter

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