Page 29 - Aruba Today

PEOPLE & ARTS A29
In this Nov. 12, 2015 file photo, Malik Isaac Taylor aka Phife
Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest poses for a portrait at Sirius XM
studios in New York.
New single by
Phife to air Tuesday
on Beats 1 Radio
NEW YORK (AP) — A new
single by Phife Dawg, who
died last month, is coming
out Tuesday, with portions
of the proceeds going to
charity.
The late hip-hop artist’s
wife Deisha and manager
Dion Liverpool announced
Monday that “Nutshell” will
debut Tuesday on Beats
1 Radio and will be avail-
able on iTunes. A video for
the song will be unveiled
Tuesday night at the Apollo
Theater in Harlem. “Nut-
James McBride pays tribute to the Godfather of Soul
Associated Press
James McBride, best-selling
author of “The Color of Wa-
ter” and “The Good Lord
Bird,” has written a furious vestigate the “amorphous
ode to the troubled life
and legacy of the incom-
parable James Brown. Part
appreciation, part biogra-
phy, the book is structured
as a mystery: Why has this
singular figure in Ameri-
can culture — a genius on
the order of Elvis Presley
and Bob Dylan — been so
grievously misrepresented
and misunderstood, all the
more so since his death in
2006 at age 73?
All-star benefit planned for
funk pioneer Bernie Worrell
HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Bernie
Worrell, funk’s “Wizard of
Associated Press Woo,” is amazed at the
lineup of friends and ad-
mirers expected to turn
out for his benefit con-
cert: George Clinton and
Nona Hendryx, Jonathan
shell” is a track from the Demme and Bootsy Col-
album, “Give Thanks,” that lins, Paul Shaffer and Living different kinds of music and
he had been working on at Colour.
the time of his death. Even Meryl Streep and
The family is donating 50 Rick Springfield, with whom
percent of the proceeds to Worrell worked on last
the American Diabetes As- year’s movie “Ricki and
sociation and the National the Flash,” are scheduled
Kidney Foundation. Phife to appear Monday night
died last month at age 45 at Webster Hall for “All
from complications of dia- the Woo in the World,” a
betes. His best known songs “funkraiser” to help pay
with A Tribe Called Quest for Worrell’s cancer treat-
included “Scenario” and ment.
“Bonita Applebum.”q “I think it’s an outpouring
of love,” the 71-year-old
Worrell told The Associ-
ated Press during a recent
telephone interview. “I’m
a humble type of person
who just tries to make peo-
ple happy.
I didn’t know this event
would be so big.”
Diagnosed a few months
ago with stage-four lung
cancer, the keyboardist for
Clinton’s Parliament-Funk-
adelic empire of the 1970s
has never been as famous
as some of the performers
at the Webster Hall show.
But he is revered by fellow
musicians and others who
know him and his trade-
mark riffs, screeches and
squiggles, essential to such
Unlike other writers who I’m Proud,” lyrics McBride
have focused largely on argues changed the self-
Brown’s groundbreaking image of black America
music, McBride seeks to in- “in one fell swoop.” He sits
down with Brown’s prote-
blend of black politics, cul- ge, the Rev. Al Sharpton, to
ture whom Brown imparted his
and music” that shaped hard-won lessons in show-
the Godfather of Soul.b manship, among them “Kill
He travels to the South to ‘em and leave,” the title of
interview Brown’s first wife, this book.
former manager and other And he unearths a tangled
close associates, includ- and tragic story,
ing the last of the Famous one rooted in Brown’s per-
Flames. In England, he talks sonal history of growing up
to former Brown bandlead- dirt-poor in a broken fam-
er Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis, ily in the segregated South
who wrote the music to and in America’s vicious
“Say It Loud, I’m Black and history of slavery and rac-
In this March 18, 2002, file photo, Bernie Worrell speaks at the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York.
hits as “Flashlight,” ‘’Give
Up the Funk (Tear the Roof
off the Sucker)” and “One
Nation Under a Groove.”
“Bernie was the key,” Clin-
ton says. “He knew so many
knew all the mechanics.”
“He gives you the theology
of funk,” David Byrne said
of Worrell, who has played
on such Talking Heads
albums as “Speaking in
Tongues,” and on “Stop
Making Sense,” Demme’s
1984 concert documen-
tary. “Bernie can take the
music to a very cosmic
place.”
Hendryx, who has known
Worrell for decades, orga-
nized the event and says
ism.
Heroes emerge, includ-
ing a small-town reporter
who has doggedly pursued
the legal maneuvering
surrounding Brown’s con-
tested estate, and villains
abound, most looking to
make a buck.
The entertainment industry,
McBride asserts, is one of
the bad guys,
treating black life as “frag-
ile compost for the Ameri-
can storytelling machine,”
grinding “old stereotypes
and beliefs into a kind of
mush porridge best served
cold, if at all.”
Tuesday 5 April 2016
Associated Press
that more than 70 people
have agreed to come.
She hopes the show will
raise around $75,000 and is
counting on an online auc-
tion (www.sweetrelief.org)
to bring in more, with items
including a signed poster
from the Rolling Stones and
a guitar autographed by
Carlos Santana.
She and Clinton lamented
that Worrell earned rela-
tively little money from his
P-Funk recordings — roy-
alties for the group have
been the subject of numer-
ous legal actions over the
years — and Hendryx was
determined that he not
“work himself to death” to
raise the money himself.
This book cover image re-
leased by Spiegel & Grau
shows “Kill ‘Em and Leave:
Searching for James Brown
and the American Soul,” by
James McBride.
Associated Press