The perspective of an outsider often provides a more accurate view of a
culture that those on the inside are capable of giving. That has
certainly been the case for American popular music. And it's definitely
the case that when foreigners surveyed the American musical landscape,
they cherished as treasures genres that those of us born in the gold
ole U.S. of A. discarded as trash. Blues musicians like Muddy Waters
were musical prophets without honor in 1960s America when the blues
were derided - if not totally ignored. European musicians understood
that the blues were the musical foundation of what became known as Rock
‘n Roll. Of course, many people within the American musical
establishment also understood that, but they were unwilling to
acknowledge that fact. Musicians from "across the pond" took the blues
into their musical woodshed, and used it to reshape the music known as
Rock ‘n Roll. The music that emerged was steeped in the blues. Those
Brits brought that music to America and reinvigorated rock music in the
mid 1960s. More importantly, they sought out the blues men whom they
revered - determined to give men like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker
the credit they so richly deserved. The reverence that Toriano, the mastermind behind ensemble Soul
Basement has for American blues, soul, funk and jazz is evident on the
group's latest recording, The Awakening of the Heart.
The album consists of nine original recordings that serve as a review
of soul music in all of its funky diversity. The group could have
recorded an album of covers of funk, Southern soul, R&B and
neo-soul songs. Instead, they opted to record new tunes in these
genres. In doing so, Soul Basement runs the risk of cutting an album
that makes a lame attempt at recapturing what some believe is a distant
past. For the most part, The Awakening of the Heart is an album that rises far above those mediocre expectations. SOURCE OF THIS STORY