Burnt Sugar Furthermuckin Live!

This post will eventually become somewhat of a review of the Burnt Sugar show this past Saturday at the Espace Culturel André Malraux. Let’s ease in slowly though, shall we? Start with the basics. First up: who is Burnt Sugar? A better question might be “who isn’t?”, but I’ll save the jokes for after we have a better understanding of it all.

Now. Going off the dome totally without the help of any bio material from any site or somesuch, I’d describe Burnt Sugar as an ensemble mob of mostly black musicians (like 19 heads, yo) playing avant-garde 21st century jazz improv under the direction of conductor Greg Tate. For those that don’t know, Tate has long held it down (like since the 80s) as a staff writer at The Village Voice in New York City, flipping words and verbs that’ve served as inspiration for a whole slew of hiphop-generation scribblers, myself included. He was the first I heard coin the phrase “furthermucker,” in fact, which I won’t define here lest the word lose its magical Rorschach qualities.

In the 90s, I saw a few precursors to Burnt Sugar go through the motions up in spots like Kokobar and The Cooler: Women in Love; Strange Yet Beautiful; Medusa Oblongata; Mack Diva. None were exactly like Burnt Sugar in concept though, and I only personally heard one full album from the lot of short-lived bands, The Witches of Bushwick by Mack Diva. One thing I’ll say is that I got ribbed once by my man Mike for bothering to go see these bands, like my attendance was genuflecting before the almighty Tate. I say that to say that I think this sums up the absence of critical attention to Tate’s bands over the years; you can never be a star in your own neighborhood. There are probably people who think of it like the Neal Pollock Invasion, or those records Billy Bob Thornton insists on continuing to make. But Burnt Sugar ain’t nothin like that.

Burnt Sugar is like a swarming sargasso sea of sound, and you’re swimmin in it with your head barely above water sometimes. We’re talkin two guitarists, sexy dred violinist prodigy Mazz Swift-Camlet, three Apple laptops, a beatbox, drummer, pianist, MC, four backup singers, four-piece horn section, a flautist/shaker guy, electric and stand-up bass, and a partridge in a pear tree (though I’m sure somebody’s used that one already), all on stage at once. Listen to their take on Dizzy’s “Night in Tunisia” though (like Karen R. Good and I one fine night at the Blue Note years ago) and you’re an instant convert; I guess you either love it or hate it, but if this description even sounds like something you’re liable to be into, you’d dig it… trust. And Tate is the bandleader with the magic wand, literally.

When you critique for a living, you tend to notice other critics’ bylines and what they lean towards writing about. If you know them personally, you see a pattern sometimes. Folks write what they know; they pick the subjects that let them talk about themselves (everybody’s favorite subject) through the guise of talking about other people. Having read Tate’s stuff on George Clinton, Wynton Marsalis, Tricky and electric period Miles Davis, and then to see him do his thing with Burnt Sugar at the Blue Note, it’s clear to me what he’s chasing.

So, the show. Well, we’re not there yet, because while co-headliner Brother Ali was warming things up, I sat outside catching up on Planet Brooklyn and whatnot with Black Rock Coalition president LaRonda Davis (caught a crush, must admit) and my man Luqmon Brown, lead singer of FunkFace. Got turned onto some bands that reminded me of how there’s always a bigger fish when it comes to hip music knowledge. I’ll spend all month downloading the following shit from LimeWire, and you might wanna do the same: The Noisettes, Lightspeed Warrior, The Objex, The Dirtbombs, The Dears, Kudu, Earl Greyhound, Game Rebellion, Milldred, Moisturizer. LaRonda and Luqmon sat at the booth sipping wine and selling Burnt Sugar T-shirts and CDs (which total about 11 at this point), live albums, double-albums, triple CD sets and chopped and screwed mixtapes sporting literary (of course) titles like If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Your Brilliance Then Baffle Them With Your Blisluth, The Sirens Return: Keep It Real ‘Til It Flatlines (a hiphop dig, natch), etc. My boy Derrin Maxwell (Burnt Sugar’s MC) rolled by with positive news about his own album, due this year. Then, 10:00, the show started.

You’ll have to see Burnt Sugar to make up your own mind, but sections of it are without a doubt transcendent. Your mind will wander during the two hours plus and you’ll think that this shit is what Prince should be doing with his time. You’ll wonder, “what was George Clinton actually known for? singing? playing?” and remember that he’s primarily a funk bandleader, like monsieur Tate. Yes, Sun Ra will come to mind. And you’ll marvel at the power of abstract art, that it empowers us all to think of what kind of lemonade we can all make out of lemons.

Postscript: at the end, Tate’s floppy red crocheted hat fell off his head while he jumped up and down, only to reveal another red knitcap underneath! Gotta love it.