For many years, Philadelphia radio legend J. Michael Harrison has introduced a delightfully freeform strategy to Temple College’s WRTI. Within the mid-90s, I used to be a teenage devotee of Harrison’s present “The Bridge.” On Friday nights I’d refill 90-minute TDK cassettes with Harrison’s adventurous DJ units. Like many younger folks, my urge for food for brand new music was ravenous and “The Bridge” helped college me on the unconventional sounds of free jazz, bebop and fusion. As a DJ, Harrison’s strategy to choice was freeform with out being formless. Every episode highlighted the depth and energy of Black creativity with typically underappreciated work from experimental Black musicians like Ornette Coleman, Solar Ra, Screaming Headless Torsos, and lots of extra.
One night time, Harrison got here out of a station ID and launched a track I’d by no means heard earlier than, Terry Callier’s “Dancing Girl.” I used to be instantly drawn in by the somber, minor key guitar motif of the track’s intro. By the point Callier entered – his voice richly textured and distinctive – I used to be offered. Because the track went alongside, the easy, evocative folks tune stunned me much more, unfolding right into a nine-minute epic that gives a glimpse of the indomitable spirit of Black creativity.
Take heed to Terry Callier’s “Dancing Girl” now.
Initially recorded in 1972 for Callier’s sensible sophomore album, What Colour Is Love?, “Dancing Girl” is likely one of the most formidable album openers of its time. At this level, Black artists like Isaac Hayes, The Temptations, and Curtis Mayfield have been already experimenting with prolonged, prolonged vamps. “Dancing Girl,” nevertheless, was constructed on a posh, suite-like construction that enables the track’s themes and imagery to shift together with the music. In a 2007 interview with David Hollander, Callier spoke concerning the album’s development. “[Producer] Charles [Stepney] had a larger concept, and so some of the tracks had anywhere from 25 to 30 musicians.”
Callier’s opening verse and refrain may very well be merely learn as a dream a few lover in movement, however a more in-depth examination means that the dancing lady that we comply with to “the quiet place” someplace “between time and space” is the muse itself. From right here, the tone shifts dramatically. Callier pulls us deep into the bowels of despair the place creativity can not heal the real-life scars left by a life lived in poverty, despair, and habit. Along with his voice booming and shaking on the fringe of breaking, Callier references Charlie Parker, framing the jazz legend’s heroin habit because the darkish and tragic flipside of Black inventive ecstasy:
In the meantime within the ghettos mud and gloom.
Chook is blowin in his room.
All these notes wont take the ache away.
And also you’ll absolutely come to hurt,
With that needle all up in your arm.
And dope won’t ever flip the night time to day.
Launched at a second when Issac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Surprise have been all experimenting and pushing towards the thematic and formal boundaries of soul music, “Dancing Girl” stays one of many excessive creative achievements of the early Nineteen Seventies. Even after we are left to languish within the worst socioeconomic circumstances, we’re capable of thrive creatively. Regardless of the entire bittersweet pleasure and outright ache that comes with being Black in a world formed by anti-blackness, the muse stays.
Inform her what you wanna do.
Boogie, bop or boogalo?
Take heed to Terry Callier’s “Dancing Girl” now.
