Events

[FUNK] On Friday, January 29, New York City improvisational music group Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber will come to Nietzsche’s to perform two sets, presented by Hallwalls. One set will be a series of original pieces, led by Burnt Sugar’s conduction master, Greg Tate. The other will be a set of Rick James cuts titled DopeSex&Dem Wild Buffalo Love Joints. That set will be led by the musician Shelley Nicole, who chose to do the music of Rick James because, as she tells me, he has been a part of her musical life since childhood. 

“For as much as everyone knows him, you know his music is still being played on the radio, but I feel like he doesn’t get as much love for the work and dare I say genius that the music really is,” she says. 

“So many Rick James songs are so iconic. So for us, it’s about bringing in different rhythms, different instrumentation. Maybe where the singers might be, maybe the horns or the keys will land or vice versa. I know this is Buffalo, this is his hometown. People are going to be like ‘what’s this woman going to do?’ but I’m really excited about it.” 

Burnt Sugar doesn’t work like your typical band. The group is led by utilizing the Conduction system, conceived of by the composer Butch Morris, and passed on to Burnt Sugar leader Greg Tate. Conduction is a term derived from the world of physics and is meant to describe how the band’s leader “conducts” a freely improvising group of musicians. Burnt Sugar has released more than a dozen records full of original music, but has only recently begun delving into the repertoires of some of their favorite artists.

“Rick is a person who carried on the mission of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. He really brought this star quality to funk, this rock star quality to funk, like a Sly, or a Hendrix, or a Bowie,” says Tate. 

“He just has so much versatility and variety. He could give you just great sexy dance tunes, crazy rocked out numbers, or amazing ballads. And they’re very much his own style.”

After performing a musical theater rendition of Melvin Van Peebles’ classic blaxploitation film Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song in 2011, they continued down that path, producing shows based on the music of James Brown as well as repertoire shows on David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Sun Ra, and now Rick James. Musician Shelley Nicole got involved with Burnt Sugar for their James Brown show, which was titled Indomitable and starred Brandon Victor Dixon as James Brown.

“[Greg Tate] asked me to be part of that. It was great. We did three nights at the Apollo. It was huge because we had two drums, a huge horn section, strings. It was an event,” says Nicole. 

Now, she will be leading the band using the conduction technique passed down from Butch Morris to Tate. She’s still new to it, she says, though she leads her own, albeit smaller band: Shelley Nicole’s blaKbüshe. For her, coming to this process as a conductor has been about being open with the music so that she can take it to unexpected places.

“I’m pulling from Greg, who is pulling from Butch, I’m pulling from my life growing up in the choir, and I’m pulling from leading my own band,” she says. 

“It’s not like coming to a cover show. It’s about taking the music, reimagining it, and then sending it back out into the world as we imagined it.”