There are some singers that simply defy description. Angela Bofill (correctly pronounced “bo-FEE”) is one of them. Like Sade, she doesn’t have a great vibrato, or really any vibrato. She’s not gonna shatter glass with her range like Minnie Ripperton. I couldn’t honestly say she ranks with vocal legends like Aretha, but she doesn’t have to. Aretha couldn’t do justice to her music. I think that’s because like many musicians, she brings her life to her music. Her afro-cuban roots are self evident in the music she writes. She’s proud of her heritage, and listening to her music connected me to a facet of my own existence as a person of African descent. Some of her stuff is straight R&B, some is fused with Jazz. All of it is just beautiful! And I’m really super glad that I came up at a time when singers like Angela Bofill, Phyllis Hyman, and others were changing the game with their sultry voices and New York fashion sense. The 90’s were an awesome time to be young in this country. And the music of Angela Bofill was a big reason why.

Some years ago, way back before iTunes when people still listened to the radio to get their music, there was a show I never missed on this college radio station called “Voz Latina” (Latin Voice), DJ’d by Lisa Levy. When I say I never missed it, I mean I never EVER missed it. It was like the 1940’s in my house. If I was out, I’d haul ass getting home so I could lock myself in my room and listen to my radio without anyone bothering me. She played some of the best Jazz I’d ever heard in my life. Not that “smooth” jazz crap people most think is Jazz. I mean the real thing. But being a proud Latina, she absolutely loved showcasing Latin Jazz. This was a Jazz unlike any I’d ever heard before…it was most definitely Jazz, but this was a unique expression of Jazz that was so powerful that it really existed in its own space. That was the first and last time I heard the voice of Mili Bermejo, as she sang “Identidad” (Identity). It never came on the radio again. I never even heard the name of the song. 

All I can say is white boy can jam his white ass off! San Francisco musician Joe Bagale (Otis McDonald) blew my socks off with his funktified tracks. Turn this on while you’re working or cleaning house and you’ll see what I mean. This is what you can do when you know how to use a computer. And I don’t know of anyone who made a more productive use of the pandemic lockdown. His YouTube channel is so hot that he’s got his own iTunes page now. While we were all sitting at home watching TV and wishing we could go outside and play, this is a catalog of music HE COMPOSED, performed and recorded while he was stuck in the house. And…he did all his own cover art too! I’m so jealous! I played music from preschool all the way through high school. And this guy here is why I gave it up. I knew I’d never be this good. I could only play what other people wrote. This guy hears this music inside his head and can lay it on tracks. You can’t teach it. You’ve gotta be born with it.

All I can say is white boy can jam his white ass off! San Francisco musician Joe Bagale (Otis McDonald) blew my socks off with his funktified tracks. Turn this on while you’re working or cleaning house and you’ll see what I mean. This is what you can do when you know how to use a computer. And I don’t know of anyone who made a more productive use of the pandemic lockdown. His YouTube channel is so hot that he’s got his own iTunes page now. While we were all sitting at home watching TV and wishing we could go outside and play, this is a catalog of music HE COMPOSED, performed and recorded while he was stuck in the house. And…he did all his own cover art too! I’m so jealous! I played music from preschool all the way through high school. And this guy here is why I gave it up. I knew I’d never be this good. I could only play what other people wrote. This guy hears this music inside his head and can lay it on tracks. You can’t teach it. You’ve gotta be born with it.

Q-Tip, Shaheed and Phife-Dawg…if you don’t know who they are, I don’t really want to know where you’ve been, because wherever it was, it wasn’t where the party was. Everything about their music just screams “New York”. Their music was at the heart of the “New Jack City” sound. If I have to explain that, you’re too young to understand what I mean. Ask Alexa to do a search for the movie. The “New Jack” sound is a uniquely New York musical art form from the 90’s that fused Hiphop with Jazz. It’s straight up Hiphop, but with horns, saxes, and a hard assed bass line under it (you know, Bass…as in that thing that looks like a giant violin). Weird, right? Not when you hear it. When they say “We’ve Got the Jazz”, they mean that shit. It’s the Jazz that created that hard, edgy East Coast sound that Snoop Dogg and the Cali rappers never quite got.