April 1, 2008

Now in its third year, April’s Black Music Festival will include a mixture of home acts like tropical-funk formation Arangu along with international names Maceo Parker and acid jazz pioneers James Taylor Quartet. Opening this robust fiesta is funk, hip-hop and slam poet collective The Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Before the festival opens BFE will get grooves going in L’Hospitalet and Mataró.

Formed in a New Jersey studio in 1993 by Lati Kronlund and Arthur Baker, Brooklyn Funk Essentials came about while the two went through old tapes of unreleased music by Maceo Parker, Tower of Power, and Michigan and Smiley. Lati explains: “We sampled and cut them up onto tracks. At the same time, I used to hang in hip-hop jazz and poetry slam clubs in New York where I met people who I invited to the studio.” After jamming in NYC, BFE released their first album Cool and Steady and Easy in ‘95. Lati points out: “Today’s BFE still has the original voices of Papa Dee, Everton Sylvester and Hanifah Walidah (formerly Sha-key) which is part of the signature BFE sound.” A sound that’s a spicy mixture of slamming beats, gliding grooves, biting, powerful poetry and sublime horns, all in a live performance that would make even the stiffest wall flower get down. In 2006 BFE took a departure from the pure live jam sessions of years past to tour with an electro- funk sound. “Sly Stone meets M.I.A - and it worked well in the studio, but when we took it to the stage we found that it didn’t have the same effect,” explains Lati. Papa Dee reflects: “I’m glad we did it ‘cause it made us realise what a great live thing we already had.”

Dee, a fan of Spanish and Catalan artists, is happy to make the return to Catalonia where BFE played last summer: “I really like a lot of stuff coming out of the Barcelona area – Ojos de Brujo, Kinky Beat, my good friends in Che Sudaka, La Troba Kung Fu, Barriobeats, Wagner Pa. I also love old-school Rumba Catalana – now that’s funky music! – like the great Peret, Tio Toni, Peret Reyes, Dolores Vargas. I met many of those artists when I was doing a documentary for Scandinavian television about music in Barcelona – beautiful people!”