Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Bright Moments
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Fly Town Nose Blues
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Dem Red Beans and Rice
It seems only fitting that the first post of Melting Pot’s second year be this 1973 record from Rahsaan Roland Kirk. If I had owned a copy of it on vinyl when we started up on 7/7/2009, I would have posted it then. In fact, if I’d really been on top of my game, I would have started the blog on August 7th, so that each anniversary I’d be compelled to post up something from Rahsaan since that day is his birthday. In some ways it does seem to fit more now, especially since the message of Melting Pot (i.e. “uncovering Bright Moments across the musical spectrum”) is finally matched with the picture that graces the cover of this album in the website’s banner…High time indeed to give the master his due.
Since my ears first experienced the joyful noise that is Rahsaan (somewhere back in 1994), he has been my favorite all-time musician. Kirk’s work balances all the elements of modern music that I enjoy. It has deep intellectual and spiritual heft but never at the expense of a rowdy good time. It is frequently playful while often carrying a sincere and serious social message. For Rahsaan, when it came to music, there were no boundaries, he was as comfortable playing a century old New Orleans’ second line rhythm as he was playing avant-garde “new thing” with intense fire.
He was also a master showman, as all his live recordings can attest to, though perhaps no record does it better than Bright Moments. Recorded at San Francisco’s Keystone Korner in 1973 and spread out over 4 sides, it features Rahsaan at the height of his artistry and with some of his best collaborators, loosely brought together as the “Vibration Society.”
What I’ve posted here are three songs that from the sound of the LP were performed in succession over the evening, I’ve switched up the order a bit so that “Bright Moments” can lead off. “Bright Moments” is so much more than a song, it’s more a description of a brief or perfect moment of beauty. Rahsaan explains “Bright Moments” in the spoken introduction through several examples, though this one was always my fave:
Bright Moments is like being with your favorite love
And you’re sharing the same ice cream dish,
And you get mad when she gets the last drop,
And you have to take her in your arms and get it the other way.
Musically, “Bright Moments” it’s a mostly straight ahead flute driven number, but there’s a feeling that’s evoked in the song that is as related to the introduction and the concept of “Bright Moments” as it is to the music. I would wager good money that it is impossible to remain depressed after listening to the full version of this song, just impossible.
Next up is “Fly Town Nose Blues,” which begins with a short rap from Rahsaan that has the crowd in stitches, but also serves the purpose of making sure the listener is aware (if they’ve never seen Rahsaan perform) that many of the flute sounds in the piece are derived from one of Kirk’s many creations, the nose flute, which yes…the man plays with his nose. Now, granted, playing an instrument with your nose should come off as a gimmick, and, in fact, many critics who just simply didn’t get Rahsaan certainly accused him of gimmickry throughout his career. But, when you watch Rahsaan perform you understand that it was never about gimmicks, it was always about the joy that comes from producing sounds that no one else would even dream of creating.
“Fly Town” is not only one of Rahsaan’s best live performances, its one of his most playful and also maybe his funkiest, though with some assistance from Todd Barkan’s synthesizer on the funky end of things.
“Dem Red Beans and Rice” closes things out for us here on an upbeat note with a trip back to the source of all great American music, New Orleans. There is, however, plenty more music to discover on the full LP, many more Bright Moments to be discovered and shared in Rahsaan’s catalog and elsewhere. My hope is that this blog, as the years go passing by, will be able to continually spread Bright Moments and allow music to bring just a little more sunlight to whatever corner of the world it may find you in.
Cheers,
Michael
