Bavu Blakes
I was born in D.C. …back when Let’s Get It On was the song…
[ photo by Sean Beasy lookin boi ]
I was born in Columbia Hospital two days after Nona Gaye, who was still the center of attention when I showed up. All that to say, I’ll always have a slight connection to D.C., bare minimum.
For the past couple of years, instrumental music from D.C. has been one of my favorite things. So here are some new ones from Apollo Brown, as well as the1978ers.
Continue reading “Couple Joints from D.C.”
Not Andrae Crouch, the gospel giant who got sampled tough for Strange Revival.
[ lookin boi ]
Not Andre Benjamin aka Dre3K of OutKast, who raps better than S. Carter and coined the phrase Everyday the 14th on The Love Below.
[ shoe model lookin boi ]
But Andrae Van Buren, a Memphis-to-Austin transplant who mostly plays alto sax, and sometimes keys. His new album, Deep ….nough said is available here on iTunes.
[ deep ….lookin boi ]
Andrae Van Buren aka Nookie Coltrane showed up in the Casual City in 1999, and immediately hopped on stage. He’s played the most with D-Madness and Mojoe. I know him well, so I asked him a few questions after the album dropped.
Continue reading “Andrae Van Buren Album”
Bill Withers is so relatively unsung.
He moved to L.A. to start a music career in his 30s, and it worked. LISTEN…
Here are the lyrics…
Continue reading “A Lovely Day”
Poet, Emcee, Capoierista, Leader, Minister, Social Worker, Real Guy…
I was honored to have him do the intro for our MLK Fest set, where he performed “Let This Be the Beginning”. That is only one of many moving spoken word pieces and songs Da’Shade has offered to the world, with astounding response as usual.
So here’s another one, a new snippet of a song I used to play on “Bavu’s Revue” in 2009. Da’Shade has gone multimedia, and is obviously warming up his camera… I presume this is, y’know, The Beginning!
We featured his group, Blacklisted Individuals, and another one of their songs, “Dance Sucka“, on the Blogs last year. Expect more to come (dap).
This is me dapping up co-headliner Chucky Sly, not to be confused with Chuck Reece who captured these moments with his camera. Sly and I merged our sets by transitioning with “This Just In” (Special Edition). We also went straight to the studio from the show. He also lives less than an hour from me now, in Corona, California.
[ The Look of Love ]
The experience I had on this Dallas trip was basically the exact reason why I perform and record music. There were at least 200 people there, and they were noticeably from different segments of the community. I’d estimate that about five different “scenes” all came together to make this night go as well as it did.
[ In the Face of Adversity ]
Despite a nagging injury, I did my best. Two weeks prior, I had an abcess sliced open and stuffed with gauze to drain. Then I had to change the gauze several times per day. Now if I told you where the abcess was, or how when they shot the numbing agent through the needle into it, it felt like a blowtorch shooting up my — nevermind. Overall, I felt like my energy and focus were lacking at this show, but the audience wasn’t treating me that way.
So I played right along (dap)
Continue reading “7 Shots from Dallas, Texas”
[ image by charles edward photography ]
These guys are bad, though. It’s such an honor and educational experience to know them, hear them, talk to them and play with them. The above photo is from the Music Lab on Oltorf in Austin, TX, on Sunday, January 16, 2011.
A week prior, I caught them playing a jazz set in downtown Fort Worth with a mind-blowing organist named Bobby Sparks and the homie Philippe Vieux on flute.
All that to say, make sure you check in or subscribe in February.
Thanks in advance,
Bavu
Scholar Emcee 