It hurts to even type it… RIP, Keith “Guru” Elam, the famously monotone vocal half of one of the most foundational hiphop crews ever, Gang Starr, the absolute definition of East Coast underground boom-bap. A lot of y’all knew he’d been in the hospital since a cardiac arrest and subsequent coma; what most (myself included) did not know was that the Guru suffered from multiple myeloma, which he succumbed to April 19. (There is also the heartbreaking business of the posthumous press release, supposedly penned by him on his deathbed, slamming DJ Premier and naming his partner Solar the only one to manage his legacy; Solar claims that he woke from his coma to write it, but his family calls bullshit. Damn, damn, damn.) Guru was a living legend, who claimed it was “mostly the voice” but who nonetheless had a style like no other, whose music did nothing if not impart jewels—his messages of self-knowledge and integrity stuck in more than a few young minds, mine included. Through his Jazzmatazz series, he teamed with legends of the jazz and R&B medium from Donald Byrd to Chaka Khan, repping his culture while building bridges to preceding musical forms, all for the love of music and his people. Rest in Power, OG, and much love to the Elam family, whose hurt I can’t imagine. The chain and the star live on, as does the Guru—
forever slick, forever timeless.
Timeless (clunky segue, sorry) is also the name of a three-part concert series produced
and exquisitely filmed live by production house Mochilla, using a massive crew of musicians to pay tribute to the music of influential Ethio-jazz inventor Mulatu Astatke, seminal and much-sampled Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, and another of our lost legends, James “Dilla” Yancey. On April 30 there’s going to be a screening of all three at the Seattle Art Museum (you know, the place across from the Lusty Lady, another institution we’re losing), with live video reedits courtesy of Beat Junkies OG triple OG J.Rocc; afterward there’ll be a little Q&A with composer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, director B+, and codirector Eric Coleman, hosted by yours truly. The afterparty for all this goes down at the HG Lodge (fka the War Room for the cave dwellers).
But in the words of Chuck D: What goes on? Welllll, on May 1 you got the second-annual Spring Classic at Nectar, a festival of sights and sounds anchored by badass Big World Breaks, and with guests such as Tiffany Wilson, Helladope, Spaceman, Hi-Life Sound System (that’s Khingz plus B-Flat and Crispy of GodSpeed), and DJ Audeos. Party-pants and ID required. Lastly, I see Living Legend, Mid-City rep, and bumba-dread rocker Murs is NW bound; first at the Royal in Olympia on May 1, then at Neumos on May 2 with one of the West’s sharpest blades, Psycho Realm founder Sick Jacken, and international locals the Let Go—who allegedly played their last show last week. But then again, Murs’s Oly stop was advertised as his only stop in Washington. So yeah, this is my last and only column, y’all—send me money though, and I’ll think about it. 