FFWD Weekly
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CD Review
by Mary-Lynn McEwenMARVIN PONTIAC
Greatest Hits
Strange & Beautiful Music· Marvin Pontiac held the tribal belief that having your photo taken would steal your soul – six months after the photos on the album cover were secretly taken at Emerald State Mental Institution in 1977, Pontiac was struck by a bus and killed.
Gather at the shaman’s fire, gather tonight. Jazz guru John Medeski, airy soulfolk diva Kate Fenner, indie band slut Calvin Weston (Dub Narcotic), African pop queen Angelique Kidjo – gather round to add your touch to this laying on of hands, hands that milk notes from a dead man’s gift box. Some have called it world music, but Marvin Pontiac’s rich voice, which coaxes life’s cockhorse to gallop in bliss, has more in common with the ’70s soul acts that shared the decade with Pontiac’s vocal tracks.
Laid down more than 20 years ago, the tracks seem almost lifted out of the sarcophagus and charmed to dance again by the worshipful efforts of this Henderson Directory of musicians. Best of all, the songs slide between styles – funk and folk, soul and sauciness – as luridly as Pontiac himself seems to slide between this world and the Other Side when his voice fills the room.
4/5
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