Whitney Houston Wembley Arena, London | 1988
“I first heard African drum rhythms and chants at the movies, and they weren’t too different from the old Negro spirituals I grew up with in the South. There was a relationship. Though I didn’t know anything much about Africa, it felt familiar,” Isaac Hayes writes in the foreword to The Black Chord, the landmark book by photographer David Corio and journalist Vivien Goldman, first published in 1999. A quarter of a century later the dynamic duo have returned with a revised and redesigned edition from Hat & Beard Press that takes on even greater resonance in light of the perilous state of music journalism today.
With The Black Chord, Corio and Goldman trace the African rhythms as they spread across the globe as a guiding spirit whose force would help outlast and overcome the pernicious wickedness of the Transatlantic slave trade. Carried in the heartbeat of millions enslaved across North and South America, Black music forged collective bonds, giving voice to a people who had been stripped of their freedom, family, history, and land while maintaining an unbreakable connection to their shared ancestry.
“In Africa, we see music as a tree and Africa is the foundation; music like blues or rap are the branches,” Senegalese musician Baaba Maal told Goldman. “When I see Michael Jackson dance, I recognize something that comes from very far away. Maybe he feels he created it, but cultural expression sleeps within us through the generations until someone feels it. Because culture is something that can never disappear.”
Because of its very nature, music — like language — is a living thing that constantly reinvents itself while staying true to its roots, defying the strictures of taxonomy with one fell swoop. For this reason, Corio and Goldman understood efforts to approach Black music by genre would come up short. Instead they imagine the book as expressions of collective experience with chapters titled Roots & Culture, Heart & Soul, Revolution, and Explorers. The Black Chord weaves Corio’s intimate portraits and concert shots into a visual mixtape of the late 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. The book features of a wealth of icons including Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Fela Kuti, Celia Cruz, John Lee Hooker, Grace Jones, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and The Notorious B.I.G., to name just a few.
For the book, Corio returned to his archive, which goes back to 1976. His sister had just gotten engaged to Wreckless Eric, a musician signed to Stiff Records. Eric introduced Corio to the in-house photographer, who was looking for a second assistant. The interview was short and sweet: “He had me roll a joint and I got the job,” he says.
Corio, then a teen, started taking live photographs at shows, stayed up all night printing the pictures, then dropped the off at music papers the next morning before heading over to his day job at a liquor store in the West End. Eventually, New Musical Express called with a gig.” They were like the Bible, or Rolling Stone,” he says. “I remember them saying, ‘Oh, what are you doing tomorrow? Can you go and photograph Bob Marley?’ The next day I went to see Bob Marley was in the afternoon and U2 that evening.”
That was the start of what would become a singular career driven by a love of Black music in all its forms. “I worked at NME until 1982, 1983 and then I started getting bored by the sort of music they were covering,” he says. “They weren’t big on Hip Hop or reggae, so Black Echoes [the first British magazine devoted to Black music] seemed like the obvious place to go. I was doing three or four jobs a week for them: features, portraits, and live shows so I got to meet everyone when they were in town.”
Back in the days, it was just Corio, the reporter, and the artist in a room before the show, collaborating as artists brought together by a shared love for the music. Although freelance journalism was far from a lucrative career and mainstream media largely ignored Black artists until they had no other choice but to catch up, Corio never sacrificed his integrity or independence for a paycheck. As a result, his photographs are a record not only of the artists but also of the encounters he had, perhaps none so clearly crystallized as his portrait of Curtis Mayfield backstage in 1983.
The R&B legend had arrived in town to play the Glastonbury Festival, one of the biggest stages in the world. And the night before he did, he played a tiny “chicken in a basket” nightclub in Essex.“We go backstage, knock on the door, and Curtis opens the door and first thing he does is give me this huge bear hug,” Corio says. “I was sort of used to meeting musical heroes, but it was like, Oh my God, I’m so wrapped up in Curtis Mayfield! And he just did the interview.”
Corio remembers a little story that never made the article because it was impossible to verify but nevertheless spoke to both Mayfield’s character and the collaborative nature of creativity that is the hallmark of Black music. When asked if he had anything to with What’s Going On, Mayfield revealed he used to visit Marvin Gaye at the studio while has recording the album. It was still very loose, still finding its form, so he would play a bit of guitar and a bit of percussion. But when the album was completed, Mayfield’s name was nowhere to be seen. “Curtis said that he didn’t want to take anything away from Marvin because he knew it was going to be one of his masterpieces,” Corio says. “He was so humble and generous. He was always just peace and love like an old hippie. He didn’t want to take credit for something that he didn’t think was his own.”
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