FEATURE: Spotlight: Black Pumas — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Black Pumas

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IF albums and tours are…

being held back, there is no end and delay when it comes to great new music. Black Pumas have been playing for a while now, but their eponymous albums arrived last year. I have been hearing Black Pumas’ music on BBC Radio 6 Music, and there is this wonderful fusion of the old-skool and modern. The band are led by singer Eric Burton and guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada. The Psychedelic-Soul band are based out of Texas and, to me, I think Texas is a part of the world where classic Soul still has life. Artists like Black Pumas and Leon Bridges are using 1960s and 1970s Soul as a foundation and adding something special into the pot. Black Pumas formed in 2017, and they have been gathering buzz and attention since then. The band/duo played South by Southwest last year, and they were nominated for a Grammy (Best New Artist) recently. It seems like the meeting and collaboration of Burton and Quesada was meant to be. Quesada met Burton through a mutual friend; Burton had been a busker for a while, and it seemed like his powerful and distinct vocals were the ideal match for Quesada’s Funk/R&B compositions. Although it is still the early days for the band, their unique sound and brilliant music is going to be a much bigger fixture soon enough. Though most festivals are cancelled this year, the guys will, no doubt, be booked to play a lot of the major festivals next year. In this interview with Rolling Stone, we learn about Black Pumas’ beginning:

“When the two finally met at Quesada’s Austin studio, it became immediately clear that they could complement each other. Burton’s smooth but gritty voice and original songs, like his rainbow-themed “Colors” (“My sisters and my brothers/See ’em like no other”), fit alongside the tracks Quesada had already cut, which were heavy on old-school electric pianos, live drums, and Quesada’s rumbly surf guitar. Quesada enhanced the classic-soul mood by introducing his younger collaborator to vintage R&B. “It made me want to go back and listen and figure out how to project the way Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye could,” Burton says. “Adrian really appreciated the tonality of my voice and the way I was reaching to embody these older artists that fit the canvas he was giving to me.”

Soon enough, the duo had a name, Black Pumas, inspired by Quesada’s fascination with jaguars (his studio has a jaguar logo) and a play on the Black Panthers. The moment of creative truth came on stage, when they debuted their act at an Austin club. “I remember telling my wife not to come — give us a few weeks, because it might suck the first couple of times,” Quesada recalls. Quesada assumed Burton would be seated with his guitar, but to his — and Burton’s — surprise, the singer opted to stand up and perform, drawing on his theatrical background. “When I got to put the guitar down, I found it was very freeing,” says Burton. “It elevated what we were doing.”

“Everything I had ever seen, Eric was playing troubadour, singer-songwriter style with a guitar,” says Quesada. “I didn’t even know that he had James Brown-level frontman chops. As soon as we stepped off the stage the first time, we pulled each other aside and said, ‘There’s a spark here.’”

From there, buzz began building. Black Pumas released “Black Moon Rising” on Spotify, scored a single deal and then a full-album contract with ATO Records (the label co-founded by Dave Matthews and currently home to My Morning Jacket, Brittany Howard, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard). About a year ago, they scored a Best New Band award at the Austin Music Awards and released their debut, Black Pumas, a few months later”.

Many publications tipped Black Pumas as ‘ones to watch’ in 2020, and I am excited to see whether they will follow up on their impressive debut soon enough. It is a shame they cannot tour at the moment, as so many people here would love to see them play. Their songs, as I said, seem to melt the classic Soul sounds with something modern and local to them. If you have not heard of Black Pumas, go and investigate them now (the links are at the bottom of this review). When the band had a chat with The Independent about their debut album, they addresses claims about revisiting Soul’s past:

“While most critics have been enthusiastic about the Black Pumas debut, some have suggested that their sound can drift into pastiche territory. “I’d agree with that analysis only to the degree that we were trying to honour soul music, to honour the song structure and the lyrics,” Burton says. “The poetry of soul is more a feeling, as opposed to being super worried about where we’re headed.”

“One of our goals is unity in a time when there’s a lot of divisiveness,” Quesada says of their music. “We’re not trying to make a political statement, but you look at our live show and you see these people from all different backgrounds and ethnicities and genders – it’s about inclusiveness.”

“Whatever’s going on politically doesn’t decide who we are,” Burton agrees. “Our biggest challenge is to be honest in the sharing of our experience. We don’t worry about trying to make explicit political statements… life is more precious than that”.

I am going to finish up shortly, but Black Pumas is an album that you need to check out. I think it is one of 2019’s most-underrated records; a debut that is full of memorable cuts and original intent. Pitchfork reviewed the album and had this to say:

“Black Pumas sounds like a band name coined at the twilight of the soul era, when R&B turned grittier, trippier, and funkier. It’s a name that evokes that of the Black Panthers, the African-American activist group who defined militant protest during the late 1960s and early 1970s—which is not coincidentally the period that the Austin-based duo of guitarist/producer Adrian Quesada and vocalist Eric Burton consciously conjure on their eponymous debut album.

At no point on Black Pumas do Quesada and Burton shy away from signifiers of the past. Rhythms roll with the tight precision of the Hi Records rhythm section, “Fire” is punctuated with horns straight out of Stax, “OCT 33” finds Burton obliquely nodding at Otis Redding’s “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song),” the title of its opener “Black Moon Rising” echoes Creedence Clearwater Revival’s doomsday classic “Bad Moon Rising.” Black Pumas are too clever to succumb to pure nostalgic pandering, though. They pointedly avoid the pitfalls that plague well-intentioned retro-soul records, favoring feel over authenticity, playing as much for the head as the heart”.

Black Pumas are a group you need in your life. I think they are primed for some very big things and some huge festival slots. One does not hear a great deal of Soul and Psychedelia in the U.K., so Black Pumas are going to inspire a lot of artists. They are terrific and, when you dig deep, you will be bowled over by…