BOOM shaka-laka-laka BOOM shaka-laka-laka BOOM shaka-laka-laka BOOM!
Maybe that’s why people of a certain age are called baby boomers. Even if they never made it to the orgy of music and madness known as Woodstock, they surely remember the funky chant from “I Want to Take You Higher,” an unexpected monster hit by Sly and the Family Stone (featuring a backing chorus of 400,000 fans).
That band occupies a hallowed position in the history of rock ‘n’ roll for several good reasons. For one thing, it synthesized many musical streams coursing through the highly hippified late 1960s: soul and funk, jazz and blues, heartfelt gospel and trippy rock. “Psychedelic soul” is what the band called its groundbreaking blend.
Perhaps more crucially, Sly and the Family Stone was the first genuinely integrated major rock group. Women and men, black and white played and sang side by side, gleefully demonstrating what’s described as “the gospel of tolerance and celebration of differences” by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Sly and the Family Stone in 1993. (The band’s first hit was the slow, sweet “Everyday People,” which first popularized the diversity motto “Different strokes for different folks.”)
The late Cynthia Robinson was the first black woman to play trumpet in a top rock band; how many more women rock trumpeters can you name? Frontman Sly Stone — real name, Sylvester Stewart — eventually vanished from society and reportedly may be living in a van. Just last month, a Los Angeles jury awarded him $5 million in royalties he never received.
If You Go
• What: 19th annual Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival, featuring 16 concerts, 200 wines, six restaurants and 30 local crafters.
• When: 4 to 10 p.m. Aug. 26; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Aug. 27; and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Aug. 28.
• Where: Esther Short Park, West Eighth and Columbia streets, downtown Vancouver.
• Cost: $60 for advance three-day pass; $25 at the gate for Aug. 26, $35 for Aug. 27, $30 for Aug. 28 (see website for discount advance-purchase prices).
• Seating: Blankets and low-backed chairs OK. No tall chairs, please.
• Complete schedule: vancouverwinejazz.com
• Information: 360-906-0441 or visit vancouverwinejazz.com
So don’t stop chanting that endless chorus. Founding band members Jerry Martini and Greg Errico have never stopped playing it. In this 50th anniversary year of its birth, the rebooted Family Stone — featuring saxophonist Martini and drummer Errico — will take Esther Short Park higher during a 90-minute set on Saturday night.
That’ll probably be the pinnacle of the 19th annual Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival. But great music will scale great heights all weekend long. And, speaking of celebrating differences, it’s nice to note the diversity of this year’s lineup.
‘Overnight’ sensations
Grace Kelly is a 24-year-old Korean-American alto saxophone virtuoso, singer and “Rising Star” in this year’s Downbeat Magazine critics’ poll. “Jazz and beyond” is Kelly’s description of her cutting-edge sound, which blends mainstream jazz with smoother, funkier and even hip-hoppier beats. She’ll be leading her quartet at 2:30 p.m. Saturday.
Sunday’s headliner is Bettye LaVette, a soul and blues singer who became “an overnight sensation” after decades of hard work in the business. LaVette was a minor Motown star in the early 1960s who struggled toward the top but only became a cult favorite — until the early 2000s, when she recorded a killer album called “A Woman Like Me.”
The album almost went unreleased and unheard, but then LaVette commanded some attention by bringing the house down at an industry insider’s private birthday party. “A Woman Like Me” was issued in 2003, and it won the W.C. Handy Award for Comeback Blues Album of the Year as well as Living Blues Magazine’s Best Female Blues Artist. LaVette has been riding high ever since; her latest album, “Worthy,” was released in 2015. She sings at the Wine & Jazz fest at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
And then there’s Tiempo Libre, a Cuban band with a base in Miami and an amazing backstory. The seven members of Tiempo Libre were childhood friends who studied classical music at Havana’s top conservatories before fleeing their native country for different destinations. All eventually found their way to Florida and found one another again; they created this new band in their precious “free time” — and called it what it was.
You might have caught Tiempo Libre on “Dancing With the Stars” or “The Tonight Show.” You might even have caught them onstage at Portland’s Winningstad theater last year, blowing a version of their own band autobiography in an award-winning Broadway-scale show called “Cuba Libre,” which ran for two months. “Cuba Libre” is the tale of musicians who grow up under dictatorship and yearn for freedom — most especially pianist and bandleader Jorge Gomez, who left Cuba with one small bag, supposedly to “visit” family in Guatemala, and never looked back.
Tiempo Libre is the Friday night headliner, kicking off at 8:30 p.m.
