Lend me your ear. To be told of what makes legends. Organic rhythm meets ancestral royalty. Playing for the divinities.
Music is telling. Stories. Folklore. Myths. All are versed through movement. After all, dancing is a spoken language. To learn how to speak a language; best advice is to travel to where the language is spoken. To be immersed in the language. To be consumed in the language. The same holds true of dancing. Go where the dance lives.
On the dance floor, dancing is the body’s natural reaction to music. Dancing to music forms a covalent bond to sound. For every song has a story. Every song tells a story. Stories told on dance floors the world over. Listen to their confessions.
2234
When Donnie’s “Cloud 9” (The Quentin Harris Mix) warmly greets guests entering the establishment thereafter is Meli’sa Morgan’s “Still in Love” (Meli’sa’s In the House) steering bodies to the dance floor. DJ Charles Gatlin provides the strewn soundtrack. There is something amiss about the sound emitting from several speaker cabinets front stage. That begs questioning. “Is the volume low?” The party’s top promoter asks against loud thumps with no mid-range. The soundscape is not only challenged but the room’s temperature. Can a dancer get some AC?
Take a deep breath. Ah, the smell from cancer sticks chokes. For a break from the sweltering heat indoors, take a step outdoors. Onto the spacious patio, near the bar to the right, stands a circle of conversationalists. Shooting the shit, gulping and inhaling to “Cuban Rum” by Cassius MC Fawner. Music provided by Nat Black standing behind hardware on a table planted on a spacious stage underneath a hanging banner. A breeze brushes gently against the hairline as faces smile seated at tables on the round. Sneakers easily glide across the cement. Dancing underneath the stars is priceless. And outdoor dancing without masks is far safer than indoors dancing without masks. Tellingly, only a handful of patrons wear the required masks indoors. Real talk, the main event should occur on the patio.
Back inside the sauna, cough Tavern, brings to mind the country and western saloons of yore. When watering holes spotlighted liquor. Think rustic walls and a bar as the center of attraction. Behold, the 21st century tavern come nightclub with faux plants and wall mirrors, not only serves lemon pepper wings but a wooden dance floor. Flanked by rectangular wood tables and tall black chairs. A waitress scurries by delivering mozzarella sticks to shadowy figures lurking at tables. The room is aphotic. So dark, there is difficultly recognizing the facial features on the lady asking, “What’s your name?”
Charlotte.
Charlotte, North Carolina? The name is not synonymous with Afro/deep house music culture, let alone registers on the GPS of cities to party. Alas, the winds of change a blow in Queen City. Where a group of like-minded promoters are determined to forge a moving soundtrack. Be it the deep sounds emanating from NYC to the acid of Chicago, the CLT is experiencing yet another house music revival. This time, the man responsible for putting the heart back into the city’s soulful house market is Orbit’s top party promoter.
Steve Howerton is up next on the ones and twos. Telling his story through song and mix. Mouths sing “Sacude” as the Louie Vega Brooklyn Mix of Tony Touch’s latest shakes booties and bodies alike, DJ Chus & Sparrow & Barbossa featuring Idd Aziz’s “Nyakua” stuns with approval of screams and handclaps as Zepherine Saint X Miranda Nicole’s “Shine” has everyone feelin’ brighter than a mutha.’ As the minutes dance onward, anticipation builds. The time arrives.
2400
The heart feels the thump. The pulse of the rhythm shakes. The drums talk. Ancestral voices singing, “Lovery.” The Tuccillo & Kiko Navarro classic interpreted by Yoruba Soul needs no introduction. Yet is the perfect opener. To those unfamiliar with the Yoruba brand. Google Yoruba Soul. Find the familiar face.
That smiles in front of fifty or so dancers. His mocha skin meets locs covered by a hair wrap. Whose ear-wear, two giant gastropod shells dangling from elongated ear lobes make statements far greater than the black Motor City Wine tee he wears.
Born Christian Warren in Saint Louis, is where the adopted lad realized his love for music and devoted himself to his life-long call. During adolescence when his peers played ball and ran the streets, he was a maverick, never tagged or trope. After fleeing to the West Coast as a teenager by adulthood his pursuit to shed cooperate constraints for self-freedom led him to Ifá. When he realized, conceptualized, and packaged his sui generis. Orchestrating his sound. Architecting his lane. That distinguished him most amongst his musical influencers. Think no black artist was ever marketed as a soulful house music bohemian. That is until the rising of the artist known as Osunlade. His mass appeal being a modern-day Black hippie.
That brings Ankara print, a MJ “Dangerous” tee, white sneakers, and ball caps to crowd the tavern. There is diversity in age, gender and skin tone, sadly only a sprinkle represents the LGBTQ community. Even the silver haired seated at the tables are now standing and shuffling their feet on the black carpet. Look above at the bodies swaying overlooking the glow of the revelry below the second floor. Partying to Tekniq featuring Colbert’s “Matters of the Heart.” Your new FSF: favorite song forever.
The Story Teller
Osunlade is well versed at the art of storytelling. Stories told through music. He plays that speaks volumes. Be spoken prayers to ceremonial rituals in native tongues. The crowd never assumes. At this particular ceremony, the outspoken artist speaks a most striking colloquy. Expected is his compendious catalog of chart toppers; “Idiosyncrasy,” the anthem, “Dionne,” the loop, and “Cantos A Ochun Et Oya,” the classic, and the who’s who of his Yoruba Family, Afefe Iku to Mike Steva, thrown in his playlist. But thus far Osunlade’s narrative takes an unexpected turn.
Into progressive house territory via DJEFF & Black Motion featuring Malehloka & Miss P’s “Don’t Let Me Go” that builds into a frenzy of cheers and a whirlwind of bodies spinning 360 degrees. Pelago’s “Tone Depth” electrifies. Music like this is not worthy to be played for mere mortals. When harmonic flutes and keys play solo before the drums crash down on dancing heads, sends an inebriated dude karate chopping his arms and stomping his feet for the remainder of the party. Poor guy. His muscles will be sore come tomorrow.
The High Priest of house music gives the crowd a breather by playing “Dionne” before he whips his tribe back into a furor, this time with G-Washington featuring Miriam Makeba’s “Warrior Mbube,” the voice of the ancestors. That provides the escape for these troubling times.
“Squeeek. Pow. Pow. Pow.” Is dancing to Heavy-K’s “Gunsong” a guilty pleasure during America’s current pandemic – gun violence?
Throw into the mix Roberta Flack cooing “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” And dang. Are the people dancing into Osunlade’s twisted warped fantasy?
Yes! Playing Afefe Iku’s “Mirror Dance” at any other party is well, trite, but tonight is befitting as this marks the genre defining star’s debut gig in the CLT.
Watching Osunlade communicating through movement while playing music is as entertaining as listening to Osunlade communicating through the music he plays. Most of the time, the artist bops, leans back and dips low while he holds the controls but tonight he minimally sways left to right. That is disappointing, unlike the shaking of percussions and drums galloping through the muffled soundscape. Again, the playlist oscillates this time showcasing his remixes. Osunlade’s Lonely Mix of Tortured Soul’s “I Might Do Something Wrong,” the anthem that put Yoruba Soul on the global map of Afrocentric house segues into the Osunlade Yoruba Soul Remix of Jazztronik’s, “Dentro Mi Alma” that energizes a Latino couple to merengue. Or not. In the center of the wooden floor stands one NASCAR loving bro and four bleached blondes scratching their heads, thinking, “I don’t know what to make of what is going on.”
Of course, there is no Osunlade rite without Osunlade paying homage to the Purple One. Late Nite Tuff Guy’s “Do I Believe in God” (LNTG Muscle Mix) throws dancing feet a controversy but brings out some sensual sexy swerves. Wait. Is that Atlanta’s Ghostcam standing inside the sound booth filming the ancestral ceremony?
Experience the pulse of the dance floor. From the beating of live drumming of the conga. When the drum talks, speaking freely to those that communicate by stomping feet and gyrating hips. Feel the shakers creating seismic waves bouncing off the ceiling rafters. A small dance circle crops open. Where one dancer crowned with dreads kneels on bended knee and holds the cencerro for the drummer to beat in staccato jabs. Visualize the magnetic joy as one woman with arms outstretched welcomes her ancestors in a communion of movement. A glance around the room reveals many souls experiencing out-of-body bliss as Aquarian Dreams’ “Love & Tears” (Original Club Mix) plays on.
“You can’t be tired,” says another dancer to two women seated on the elevated platform of the once VIP section. “I drove all the way from Atlanta and he from Virginia,” he continues. To whom one of the women appears shocked. Telling the story works. The younger lady picks up her feet and steps her leg out showcasing fancy footwork.
The mind says no. Don’t do it. But the body says yes. The knees drop to the wooden tiles. As the spine inches ever so slowly backwards to every thump until the flesh touches the floor. Supta Virasana. This is reclining hero’s pose. To Detroit’s Theo Parrish featuring Maurissa Rose’s “This Is For You.” That serves as Osunlade’s closing love letter to the thirty individuals left dancing.
Thinking, if someone had the idea to sell sweat rags at the event, they could rub shoulders with Dangote and Adenuga, or at least Winfrey. Again, holding the party outdoors would have been novel. Where the sound system played crisp and clear. Where the setup was spacious. The cement had less traction. The temperature was less suffocating. Who better to play a moon ritual than Osunlade? Now that would be a celebration of Olympic proportions. Yet the sweltering heat could not hold back the multi-talented multi-hyphenated self-proclaimed “burner.” Instead the “Build a Fire” producer brought additional heat. That set the room ablaze. Heaping burning coals atop dancing heads. Telling his story through melody and refrain. In what was the epic party of the summer.
words: aj dance
graphic: aj art
Share this:
Tags: #dancefloormagic #housemusicexcellence, afro house music, ancestral house music, Charlotte NC, CLT, dance, dance music, deep house music, DJ Charles Gatlin, house music, house music dancing, Morehead Tavern, Nat Black, Orbit Productions, Osunlade, Queen City, stevehowerton, Yoruba Soul