Sweat & Soul
It came to me in a dream.
All of my favorite musicians and singers performing on one stage throughout the course of a magical weekend. It was more than a soul concert, it was a massive festival of good music and positive energy. From childhood heroes to legends in the making, these artists maintained a constant flow of funk, jazz, soul, dance and inspiration throughout two days and nights in the sweltering Houston heat.
Friday night featured Macolm-Jamal Warner's band, Miles Long. In addition to their incredible jazz set, Malcolm & friends stayed onstage to accompany Choklate and Sy Smith. After the ladies did their thing, Eric Roberson's band came up and jammed with Miles Long for over an hour.
Erro hit the stage and did songs from his new album as well as his older joints before Anthony David hopped onstage with his guitar and brought the house down! The floor was hot and ready for Mayer Hawthorne to grab the mic and share a freestyle with Eric while Anthony interjected some wicked guitar riffs. This amalgamation of brown and blue eyed soul went on for an eternity until. . .
"Thank you and good night."
Saturday welcomed the soul champions Jesse Boykins III and N'Dambi. Both brought the grown & sexy vibe into the venue with their sultry, real lyrics. Kyra Simone, Jonas and Natalie Williams brought that funky UK flavor that warranted respect for our soul cousins from across the pond.
Saturday night was time for the Foreign Exchange to shine. Phonte slid across the stage in his signature Michael Jackson dance routine as Yahzarah & Muhsinah joined him on cuts from the Leave it All Behind album. Zo! and the Els were in rare form - not to be outdone by Malcolm's band from the night before. They went into a crazy house riddim that brought Carlitta Durand from backstage to perform "Saturday Night" from the Shibuya album.
At the point of exhaustion, the Els broke the beat down while Phonte and the ladies took a water break. Darien Brockington slid onstage with some cool towels and a microphone to start off a riff from Lisa Lisa & Full Force's "Someone for Me" in which Phonte, Yaz, Muhsinah and Carlitta joined in and the cellphones in the audience began to glow and sway.
The lights from the phones and stage were so blinding that I closed my eyes. I heard Phonte and Nic say "Thank you, Houston" into the microphone...followed by the sound of birds.
It was morning. I was laying in my bed with my iPod touch still playing in my ears.
I grabbed my moleskine notebook from the nightstand and sketched out the promo poster I saw in my dream. It looked something like this:
While others dream in color, I dream in HD and Dolby Pro Logic II 5.1 surround sound. Could this ever become a reality?
Until next time. . .
