| Rhythm People (The Resurrection of Creative Black Civilization) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1990 | |||
| Genre | Jazz, funk [1] | |||
| Label | Novus [2] | |||
| Producer | Steve Coleman | |||
| Steve Coleman chronology | ||||
| ||||
Rhythm People (The Resurrection of Creative Black Civilization) is an album by the American saxophonist Steve Coleman, released in 1990. [3] [4] He is credited with his band, the Five Elements. [5]
Coleman wrote or cowrote all of Rhythm People (The Resurrection of Creative Black Civilization)'s songs. [6] David Gilmore played guitar on the album; Dave Holland played bass. [7] [8] Members of the M-Base music collective contributed, including Cassandra Wilson. [9] [10] Coleman rapped on "Dangerous". [11]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    [12] |
| Robert Christgau | A− [13] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [14] |
| Los Angeles Times | [15] |
Robert Christgau deemed the album "almost true fusion," but praised the "secondhand funk" aspects. [13] The Chicago Tribune determined that "Coleman's alto sax is agile enough here; it just doesn't have any of the vitality of the [street] life with which it tries so hard to connect." [16] The Los Angeles Times admired "Robin Eubanks' fat trombone doubling Coleman's elongated alto sax melody through 'Neutral Zone', and the slippery, peek-a-boo performance of 'Ice Moves'." [15]
The St. Petersburg Times wrote: "Taking polyrhythmic cues from Africa, Coleman has derived a freewheeling funk beat that eschews taut 4/4 patterns." [17] The New York Times concluded that "though the record has copious amounts of improvisation and complicated rhythmic and harmonic movement masquerading as funk, it is basically an instrumental pop record of great complexity." [18]
AllMusic wrote that Coleman's "solo style (often relying heavily on whole-tone runs and unexpected interval jumps) is intriguing." [12]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Rhythm People" | |
| 2. | "Blues Shifting" | |
| 3. | "No Conscience" | |
| 4. | "Neutral Zone" | |
| 5. | "Ain't Goin' Out Like That" | |
| 6. | "Step'n" | |
| 7. | "Dangerous" | |
| 8. | "Ice Moves" | |
| 9. | "The Posse" | |
| 10. | "Armageddon (Cold-Blood-Ed)" |
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the mid-20th century. It deemphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. It uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, and dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths.
The term "M-Base" is used in several ways. In the 1980s, a loose collective of young African American musicians including Steve Coleman, Graham Haynes, Cassandra Wilson, Geri Allen, Robin Eubanks, and Greg Osby emerged in Brooklyn with a new sound and specific ideas about creative expression. Using a term coined by Steve Coleman, they called these ideas "M-Base-concept" and critics have used this term to categorize this scene's music as a jazz style. But Coleman stressed "M-Base" doesn't denote a musical style but a way of thinking about creating music. As famous musicians did in the past, he also refuses the word "jazz" as a label for his music and the music tradition represented by musicians like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, etc. However, the musicians of the M-Base movement, which also included dancers and poets, strived for common creative musical languages, so their early recordings show many similarities reflecting their common ideas, the experiences of working together, and their similar cultural background. To label this kind of music, jazz critics have established the word "M-Base" as a jazz style for lack of a better term, distorting its original meaning.
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