Do You Juju?

BERTHA BAPTIST
Gary Bartz Ntu Troop
Juju Street Songs
Prestige : 1972

BG, alto sax, percussion; Andy Bey, electric piano; Stafford James, bass; Howard King, drums, percussion.

McCoy Tyner’s Expansions…Miles Davis’s Live-Evil…Mtume’s Alkebu-lan…Pharoah Sanders’ Summun Bukmun Umyun…for a period there in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gary Bartz was showing up in all the right places. And setting it down right in the pocket, however deep that pocket went. In 1972, Bartz took the lessons learned from these collaborations and forged the missing link between Live-Evil and Sextant.

Well, okay, maybe it doesn’t quite scale those peaks, but “Bertha Baptist” is still one seriously funky slab of kozmigroov goodness. The rhythm section keeps it solidly swampy, with a steadiness that’s subtly undermined and expanded by Bey’s electric piano and Bartz’s weaving volleys. Bartz seems to be several places at once, harmonizing with himself in this studio-created hall of mirrors. Someone had some fun with the panning, too, as any headphone wearers will soon discover. Nevertheless, it still has the feel of an organic jam; not for these guys the airless virtuosity of late Seventies jazz-funk.

The track does a fine job of conjuring the dynamism of an electric tent revival, but there’s less gospel in this “Bertha Baptist” than straight-up funk. Bertha is undoubtedly strutting down the same side of the street as the denizens that populated the landscapes of Superfly and Funkadelic. Not to mention On the Corner. (Is that her dress swishing, on the latter half of the tune, during Bey’s solo?) The  juju here is mostly secular.

So…what makes you shake your rump?