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The story of Sly Stone, the kaleidoscopic genius who destroyed his glory

2021-08-17T12:46:23.505Z


The documentary 'Summer of Soul' recovers the figure of one of the most important artists in the advancement of black music towards funk and other styles


Popular music is full of incredible stories. For a month, one of them has been discovered little by little by more people through the fabulous documentary

Summer of Soul

, which brings to light the legendary Harlem Cultural Festival, held in the United States in 1969, the same year as Woodstock, for what became known as the black Woodstock to honor and vindicate African-American culture and music, a sound and community plea to promote

black pride

in the midst of the civil rights struggle. And behind this story, there is another that deserves to be known by the more people the better: that of Sly Stone, the revolutionary genius of funk.

It appears in the middle of

Summer of Soul,

when the viewer is already trapped in this film full of exciting interventions since Stevie Wonder opens the film with his drum solo. There will be many more starring Nina Simone, Mavis Staples, Mahalia Jackson, David Ruffin, The 5th Dimension, The Chambers Brothers, Ray Barretto, Max Roach, and Gladys Knight. It is difficult to rescue a moment from those two hours of musical enjoyment, but it is worth stopping at Sly and The Family Stone.

Its appearance is full and radiant. As stated in the documentary, Sly Stone and his people led the sound change in 1969. It is seen how much of the public is displaced before the super figure from Texas, whose musical precepts are far from the heavyweights of the contest. The adults attending the Harlem Cultural Festival have grown up with the soul, jazz and, of course, the gospel that they nursed as children in churches. They are styles well represented in the Harlem event and, hence, that most receive with more devotion to anyone before Sly. The ovation to David Ruffin is paradigmatic in this regard. Ruffin is the star of The Temptations, Motown ambassador, triumphant sound. It is the visible face of the pop of African American genre. But Ruffin, even with his unquestionable quality,it already represents the past in that summer of 1969. Yes, the past. The future has a name: Sly and The Family Stone.

In the golden age of popular music, the future came fast, very fast. And he did it with the force of stellar comets. Sly Stone is the future and therefore still uncertain, unknown, yet fascinating. In

Summer of Soul,

there is interest in meeting this new talent of black music, this new brother who has Afro vindictive hair, wears striking and psychedelic clothes and wears colorful and immense glasses, of which Elton John would take good note few years later. People are expectant and, as indicated in the film, even more so when there is a white drummer in their group. Who are those guys who come out with a target on stage? With those pints? With those gaits? Who is that pimp who gets on the organ?

Sly Stone represents the future even in the year 2021. His contribution to music is so definitive that it deserves careful study. By influence and exploration, on that Harlem setting, I'd be at a similar height to Stevie Wonder. That's a lot of height. In the documentary, he and the band are seen playing

Everyday People

, one of their hymns, hummed to exhaustion by the African-American population. But it is only the tip of a great iceberg, a whole force of nature that shows between 1967 and 1974 an amazing kaleidoscope sound, addictive in its mix of funk, soul, pop, rock, psychedelia, jazz and whatever is within reach. to set a new, elusive, sparkling rhythm.

Sly and The Family Stone is in Harlem in 1969, the same year the group will hit the Woodstock stage and will shake tens of thousands of people with

Wanna Take You Higher!

And he is on both stages championing a radical sound change and without yet releasing

There's a Riot Goin 'On

, released in 1971 and perhaps the most decisive album of all, a magnificent display of his talents. It is the most cited by critics, although my favorite is

Stand!

There on the album are Stevie Wonder and The Jackson 5 - although these were still hatching! - with New Orleans funk, countercultural rock and a strange hypnotic pop. Everything in Sly and The Family Stone is a festive and contagious shaker.

The history of Sly Stone must be known to get closer to impressive music, but also to know one of the biggest boycotts that an artist has made of himself. It is good to note that the musician got everything off the radar from sixties black music meccas like Motown or Stax. He was one of the signings of Epic, belonging to the

major

CBS. The great Clive Davis, a top music industry executive who became Aretha Franklin's right-hand man upon his departure from Atlantic, wanted to sign groundbreaking black artists to try and compete with Motown. Sly and Family Stone, a personal bet from Davis, came to modernize the Epic catalog, which had grown strong with rock and roll, R&B and country artists.

It was a great signing, but no one ever imagined that Sly Stone, an obsessive drug addict with a special fondness for cocaine, would launch into the void from the very summit. Had he died young, like Jimi Hendrix, he might have achieved eternal glory. But no. Sly Stone simply stopped being interested in everything: the music, the concerts, the fame, the public, the history. Genius was a human disaster who missed performances, left recording studios hanging for weeks, could destroy a concert with his outbursts or overwhelming disinterest. In fact, there were dozens of them in which the attendees ended up booing the band because the singer and songwriter left visibly drugged and crazy. In 1975, Sly and Family Stone disbanded.The group was unsustainable and the public had stopped supporting them because of the record they accumulated. From a synonym of avant-garde they became a synonym of fraud.

After touching heaven, Sly Stone struggled with irrelevant records, with the help of friends and fans who called him for collaborations or tours, among them Bobby Womack or George Clinton, maker of the great Parlamient and Funkadelic. In the case of the latter, after all, he always knew that Sly Stone was one of the greats, a creator who how he took music to uncharted territory. They shared a common sound space, where funk stirs like crazy and colorful and does not expire. Because both George Clinton's best work and Sly Stone's are still valid.

Sly Stone is still alive, but his artistic career is not. His ruin has been portrayed even in a minor documentary: In recent years, he has been on trial with his former manager whom he accuses of having urged him to sign the transfer of the rights to his songs when he was drugged at different times. He won the cause. His existence is anything but that of a genius who can speak with the authority of his work. It is the voice of a man who starred in an immense fall to the point that the American press reported a few years ago that he was a beggar living in a caravan on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Apparently, there was something of a montage to cause pity for social services and their lawsuits. He has been a shadow of the man who revolutionized music for decades.

From legend to mess with legs. From a great creator of a kaleidoscopic and extraordinary sound, which elevated funk in the seventies, influenced the first rap and pointed paths from Prince to The Roots, to a guy who boycotted the glory. 

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2021-08-17

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