The Electric Reporter: Joe Zawinul (1932-2007)

A year has almost passed since the passing of one of Jazz’s great underrated innovators, Joe Zawinul in September 2007. Sadly I’ve only managed to read a single obituary on the man since his death so here’s my two penny’s worth of thoughts on the brains and main innovator behind Weather Report.

The Austrian might not sport a household name as a Jazz artist unlike his fellow contemporaries Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea yet besides Davis, there are few as innovative in bringing new sounds to this old genre and adding a certain crossover appeal to mainstream listeners. Having being educated in music from an early age, Zawinul quickly left his hometown Vienna to follow his love of Jazz to the US. It was in the US that he started to attract attention from the Jazz aficionados, amongst other was saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and swiftly earned Zawinul a spot on Miles Davis’ legendary Bitches Brew sessions along with future Weather Report collaborator Wayne Shorter.

To you cats who are familiar with Bitches Brew, you would probably have seen Zawinul’s Weather Report sound shaping up. Yet with WR he and Shorter added electronic sounds and synthesizers to their classical Jazz repertoire which was quite unheard of at the time and quite despised of by Jazz purists around. Yet Weather Report continued to shape and reshape the sounds of Jazz with a handful of superb albums notably Weather Report (’70), I Sing the Body Electric (‘72) and the two Jaco Pastorius featured albums Black Market (‘76) and Heavy Weather (‘77).

R.I.P Joe, a revolutionary musician who passed away before his time, much like the appreciation of his music.

It did take a nation of millions!

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Released: 28 June 1988

Def Jam

Now yours truly wasn't stuck to his boombox in 1988, but 20 years ago Public Enemy came up and shook us up with It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. It might be kinda hard to imagine a mainstream rap group releasing anything remotely conscious or political AND got heard by the common man in The Bronx, Camden or even Menteng but these cats did with a bang.

Rap groups like this don't exist no more: Chuck D was the voice, Flava Flav the annoying hype man and Terminator X speaks with his hands with the unruly Bomb Squad handling the production. Bring The Noise, Don’t Believe the Hype, Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, Louder Than a Bomb and Rebel Without a Pause were outrageously fresh as they were influential. With hip-hop starting to polarise with the rise of NWA influenced G-funk it was one of the final ‘Golden Age’ records to address social issues without advising everyone to shoot everyone else they thought was at fault.

‘It Takes A Nation’ was loud, street smart, a thorn in the establishment, and sounded like a riot of beats and melody all in one record. Sadly for us it took another nation of millions to stop caring about social and political issues in rap thus buying much less of these records to push conscious rap mainly underground.

Boogie down Middle East

No, not block parties in Dubai nor battle rapping in Riyadh, but little-by-little the sounds of the Arab world and the Indian sub-continent have filtered through the sample options of the genres creative producers. Sounds of sitars and quirky Arabic strings indeed haven’t found their way through, say, Timbaland’s repertoire but further underground it is definitely having influence as could be heard in last year’s unique and engaging Dr. No’s Oxperiments’ Lebanese/Greek/Turkish mash-up or indeed his older brother Madlib’s Beat Konducta India (utilising dusty & ancient Bollywood soundtracks) where exotic sound bytes are layered on top of straight forward beats and loops. Think of a Turkish Jimi Hendrix jamming with James Brown or Ravi Shankar providing music for Rakim and you’ll get a vague idea of what I’m talking about.


Although moves like this can be seen as borderline pretentious, I see it as a step forward in this post 9/11 world as rap as a genre will always rely to some degree on sampling as its creative force and although the vinyl crates filled with funk and soul will always be available, sound samples from various parts of the world are and will further be exploited to enrich the sounds of this 20 year old genre. It’s also quite refreshing to see US artists embracing the culture and sounds of the unknown instead of running scared from it.

And say children...

...what does Marquevico mean?

...and you dont quit!

To all Marquevicians, have a taste of Marquevicolicious