Earth, Wind & Fire

Interview with Maurice White of E,W&F by David Fenton

(Editor's Note: Grudging recognition is finaIIy being accorded the geniuses of modern-day popular music-Stevie Wonder, the Isley Brothers, Gamble, Huff & Bell - even though the stunning variety, the emotional depth and the social weight of their musics remain invisible to most white Americans. These qualities are quite effectively obscured by the term "disco music, " which seems to me to be just another wav of saying "those niggers sure do love to dance. " Anybody with feeling left sure loves to dance, but dancing and feeling wonderful do not preclude even the highest degree of human intelligence. In fact, one might easily say that the highest intelligence is that which is carefullv rooted in the dance of the feelings, and that music without feeling - music which does not move you can hardly be called intelligent.

It is exciting to have popular music as dance music again - modern day rock and roll in the United States started out like that ten years ago, and as it became removed from the dance it lost , most of its intelligence, wit and interest. The Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Mothers, Big Brother and the Holding Companv, the Doors, the MC-5, were all dance bands in 1965. Dances were where music was played and heard, and the spirit inherent in that period was remarkably similar to the feeling of today. Plus the songs were saying something about what was happening in the world -something like what "Living for the Citv", "Fight the Power, " "Rich Get Richer, "and "That's the Way of the World", for example, are saying right now.

One of the most prominent figures in the new wave of black music - dare we cali i! "the new black music"? - is Chicago 's Maurice White, founder, leader, composer, arranger, , i and producer for the miraculous Earth, Wind & Fire band, the non-stop nine-piece spectrum music orchestra whose latest LP, That's the Way of the World, topped the popular music charts for some time, spawning a number one single ("Shining Star ") and a top-ten follow-up (the title song). Maurice, one of the pioneers of the "fusion music" which is very happily gaining a wider audience each day, has conceived HW & F on the broadest scale: in every way a commercial performing band with a deep grasp of popular musical raste, Earth, Wind & Fire uses its popular base as an instrument through which to express emotions and intelligence from the entire spectrum of black music, from African and New World roots : through blues, jazz, R&B, rock and roll, Jimi Hendrix, Motown, and out into the provinces of Ra.

Maurice 's kalimba struck me as the perfect metaphor: an electronically amplified African thumb piano, plugging the ancient lore into the wall of industrial sound to produce the full spectrum of musical possibility. That's the Way oí tne World and Open Our Eyes, their last two LP's, have so much music from so many different places woven into such a beautifully seamless and thoroughly elegant fabric; and their live performances, as their recent two-night smash appearance at Pine Knob, spread the fabric out to embrace and capture the mind and body of the audience.

Maurice White and Earth, Wind & Fire have il all, and what's more, they give it all to you. The SUN's David Fenton caught Maurice backstage at Pine Knob befare EW & F's second show there, and the interview below was edtted from the tape of their conversation.) -John Sinclair

SUN: You've had incredible success recently in terms of rising to the top of the charts while making some incredibly beautiful music. Other black artists are beginning to enjoy the same level of success at last. Do you think this signifies a change in popular music?

Maurice: Well, for a long time after the influx of ground music - basically white underground music-there was a time when most black music was in the background. English groups came over here and they started to influence the public with a form of music that had already been experienced in the U.S. during the 5O's and 60's. So what's happening now is like America is reaching back to its roots again to draw out a new music, and usually that music always come from the black musicians. They're the ones that come up with all the musical trips, and we can start back with the blues and you notice how American music really carne about.

But now, of course, black people as a whole are experiencing the same kind of "underground" situation that the whites experienced four or five years ago. My group, Stevie Wonder, a lot of the other groups that're out now have been part of that underground scene - the Isleys - everybody involved in that has been people who have been associated with pulling the level of humanity's head upward once more: to start to think in a positive manner about themselves.

SUN: It's true that black people have experienced the "underground" phenomenon that white people did, but certainly your audience isn't comprised solely of black people.

Maurice: No. What has happened, due to the fact that we're talking on a spiritual level, this encompasses everybody. The same thing I say to one person, I can say to the next. We're into the mind and the soul and things of that sort, and this is why we have like a very mixed audience. because we have people of all kinds that feel the same way we do.

See, our band came about more or less as an entity to render a service to humanity, that's what it's all about really. It came about to try to help change things. You know. our purposes are all different, because we aren't in the music industry to have hit records.

SUN: Would you say, then, that there's been a change in the audience that has enabled you to reach the successful level?

Maurice: Yes, there has been a change. I think people now are just accepting feelings that are true; they don't have time to segregate their music anymore, you know? Which is good for everybody.

SUN: Traditionally many musicians have looked upon themselves as part of the minstrel tradition, the whole communicative tradition. Do you regard yourself in this light?

Maurice: Yes. Well, in our situation we are a bunch of people who have humbled ourselves to the universe. You know, allowed ourselves to be used for a positive purpose. That's what we're all about.

SUN: I read an interview once where you mentioned the jazz influence on yourself. For example, when I listen to "Africano" on your new album, I hear John Coltrane. And your production work with Ramsey Lewis on "Sun Goddess" was really stunning.

Maurice: Well, I was with Ramsey's band, as his drummer, for three years just before I started Earth, Wind & Fire, so our association goes back to that.

I once had the opportunity in Chicago to sit in for Elvin Jones in Coltrane's band, and it was one of the things that changed my life around completely. Trane was very encouraging to me and he was very inspirational in terms of giving me this positive will to keep doing what I was doing. I never forget enlightening words because enlightening words don t come your way too often. When you get them you I should utilize them. He was responsible for encouraging the concept I had in mind. I consider him the major spiritual force of his time, and he is still a force.

When I formed the group I was playing with a jazz trio. But I formed the band because I wanted energy that could appeal to more titan one segment of people. I noticed a change in people my age. (l'm 29 now.) They wasn't just digging on jazz - music was going some other place. Not to put jazz down - my age group wanted jazz, but they wanted something else too, so this was the reason I formed Earth, Wind & Fire. To appeal to people, with a total appeal. So John Coltrane stood out in my mind. He was one person who totally influenced me on a positive level musícally, and it's only natural that you might hear him in my music, yes.

SUN: In that regard , do you think your music has the potential of turning people on to the more "pure" forms of jazz?

Maurice: Well.jazz as a whole, the word jazz, is no more. There's a new music that's evolved, and that music is spectrum music. Which encompasses everything. That's what real life is coming to be now. Life is coming to encompass everything - you have to think of everything now. You can't sit off in a corner someplace and say I'm this or that you got to encompass the whole universe. This is what life's about. And music is taking the same shape.

SUN: What keeps you creating all this music that people love so much?

Maurice: The people keep us doing it. Because like I said before, we are a reflection of the people, and so in turn what they do has turned us on. They tell you almost what to do.

SUN: Once you're able to reach them, once they let you put out records, put you on the radio. . . .

Maurice: Well, you go through a test, you know, in reference to that. We went through a test for a long time. The first two or three albums we made, you know, it's like we wasn't going to change until somebody heard us. It was like saying to the people, OK, you might not like it, but the next one's going to be the same, and the next one, until you finally get accustomed to hearing us.

SUN: Where this has certainly worked well for you, it seems that many genius creative musicians are having a hard time eating regularly because their music is considered "too far out" for the popular taste.

Maurice: There's another way to look at that, too. In being in music, a lot of the time we tend to be very selfish. Like for instance I could find a certain type of music that I love, and I could get off in a corner and play that and not play anything else. I could go to a concert and play this all night long and nobody would get off on it.

OK, so I could go home and say, the people ain't cool, because they didn't get off on what I did. But you're not sharing that way. So what we have to do, we play, we give you a little and in return you give us something back. We're communicating our message to the people, and the people are allowing us to play what we want. It's a beautiful marriage.