A kalimba in a stadium
A thumb piano in a stadium should be a contradiction. Maurice White treats it as a thesis. The kalimba, which he had taken up in the Ramsey Lewis Trio, sits inside Earth, Wind & Fire as a small wooden argument against the idea that soul has to choose between sweat and shine. Horns answer it. Philip Bailey’s falsetto answers the horns. Verdine White’s bass answers everyone, melodic and rude at once. On a good night the group does not look like a band so much as a procession: capes, pyramids, a spiritual language borrowed from Egypt and from the South Side of Chicago, and a rhythm section that could play a wedding or a cosmic joke with the same commitment.
Maurice had drummed for Ramsey Lewis, learned the studio from the inside, and in 1969 put his own group together in Chicago before moving the operation to Los Angeles. The early records search. Head to the Sky in 1973 and Open Our Eyes in 1974 find the face: Bailey has joined, the falsetto and the baritone in a double lead that few groups can balance. Columbia is the label. Charles Stepney, arranger and co-producer, is the secret architecture, a man who hears strings as rhythm. When That’s the Way of the World arrives in 1975, tied to a film almost nobody remembers and a soundtrack everybody does, Shining Star goes to number one. The philosophy is on the sleeve. The proof is in the horn line.
Gratitude, the live album of that year, shows the procession at work. Spirit in 1976 is dedicated, in part, to Stepney, who dies that May, far too young. The group does not collapse into tribute. All ’n All in 1977 is the bright peak: Serpentine Fire, Fantasy, Brazilian color, a devotion that never gets vague because the drums will not allow it. Then September, not the month, the song. Written with Al McKay and recorded in 1978 for the first best-of, it names the twenty-first night for the way the syllables sing, not for a diary entry. White said as much. The specificity is a gift to every couple who has ever needed a date that sounds like dancing. September becomes the group’s handshake with the rest of the century.
I Am in 1979 opens the door wider. Boogie Wonderland, with the Emotions, is a collaboration that feels like a family reunion because it is one: the Emotions were part of the same musical neighborhood. After the Love Has Gone is the ballad that proves the falsetto can mourn. Let’s Groove, from Raise! in 1981, updates the suits without updating the joy into irony. Through these years the horns, the Phenix Horns, are not a garnish. They are a second lead singer. Verdine’s bass remains the plot twist. Ralph Johnson’s percussion and Maurice’s drums keep the procession from floating off. The staging, with its pyramids and disappearing acts, would be circus if the records were not so severe in their tuning.
The later catalogs, Powerlight, Electric Universe, the reunions, the long tours, are the life of a group that became a holiday without becoming a costume. Maurice White’s health forces him off the road; he dies on 3 February 2016. Bailey and Verdine carry the name, which is the correct inheritance: the voice that goes high, the bass that refuses to walk in a straight line. The songs do not date the way trend pieces date. They date the way good arrangements date, which is to say they keep revealing the players inside them.
Earth, Wind & Fire’s cult, if the word still fits a group this loved, is a cult of uplift that does not cheat. The lyrics talk about shining and fantasy and devotion. The tracks talk about time, horn voicings, and a falsetto placed exactly where a string line would have been lazy. White believed the audience could be spoken to as if spirit were ordinary. He was right often enough that the ordinary started to include a kalimba solo. That is a kind of miracle you can count.
Put September next to That’s the Way of the World and you hear the same invitation at two volumes. One is a night. The other is a creed. Between them sits a band that dressed like a myth and played like a workshop. The sun in the lyrics is not a poster. It is the brass section, aimed upward, in tune.
