The 10 Best Budos Band Songs
Photos via Daptone Records
It’s safe to say that 2017 was an incredibly trying year for everyone at Brooklyn’s Daptone Records. The NYC-based home to some of the world’s best funk, soul and afrobeat bands is now without two of its most visible luminaries—two of the faces that any music fan immediately would have associated with the word “Daptone.” First there was the incomparable Sharon Jones, a dynamite live performer and reigning queen of soul who passed away in late 2016 after battling pancreatic cancer for years, but left us a final gift—her wonderful last album Soul of a Woman, which hit shelves in November.
Then there was Charles Bradley, the magnanimous “Screaming Eagle of Soul,” who never met a crowd to which he didn’t immediately profess undying love. Like Jones, he was stricken by cancer, which cut short a miraculous late-career revival that had made the soul singer one of Paste’s favorite performers in the world—just check out the video from an incendiary live show he played for Paste in front of a hometown crowd in 2015. As with Jones, Bradley was a titanic figure on stage. They’re both irreplaceable.
And yet, the show must go on for Daptone, and one of the major standard bearers are the wonderful Budos Band. It was about 10 years ago that I first stumbled across their intoxicating rhythms, likely via some long-forgotten Pandora station, and immediately I knew it was like nothing I’d heard before. At the time, I had no conception of “Afrobeat.” I’d never heard the name “Fela Kuti.” All I knew is that the music of The Budos Band immediately resonated with me like the soundtrack to a private film I was composing in my head. Every track evoked cityscapes, or vistas, or moments of cinematic importance. Everything about them screamed “This is the best band that Quentin Tarantino somehow hasn’t discovered yet.”
That doesn’t necessarily make it easy to write about, or properly describe, The Budos Band. Their sound is a unique melange that isn’t quite like any other large instrumental funk band on Earth. Drawing upon inspiration from the roots of Ethiopian music, along with some of the Afrobeat sounds found on the 1998 album Soul Explosion of stablemates The Daktaris, they fused that foundation with the grooves of ‘60s American soul music to make something entirely their own, which was originally referred to as “afro-soul.” Over time, that sound has grown heavier, incorporating more guitars and influences from early ‘70s heavy metal, while retaining the signature Budos horns and hand percussion. (Read Paste’s review of their 2017 album .) One thing has never changed: The sinister, wicked vibe with which almost every song carries itself. If a Budos Band song could be personified, it would look like Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and that’s a fact.
In honor of their four albums and 12 years at Daptone, then, let’s commemorate The Budos Band by mulling over 10 of their greatest compositions.
10. “Raja Haje” – Budos Band III
The first three albums by The Budos Band—appropriately titled Budos Band I, Budos Band II and Budos Band III—feel of a kind. Their cover images imply power and danger with a single, fierce image. A volcano erupting. A sinister-looking scorpion. A hooded king cobra, hissing and ready to strike. The sounds on each album reflect those images in ways that are largely subliminal and empathic. Budos Band III is the cobra, but although “Raja Haje” does have a certain “slinky” quality to it, what they really seem to be pulling from more here is the “king” in cobra. Consider: naja haje is apparently Egyptian, referring to “the cobra used by the Pharaohs as a symbol of their power over life and death.” And “raja” of course has kingly connotations, being a title for a king or monarch in south and southeast Asia. The composition is incredibly fitting for these purposes, full of pomp and circumstance, it has the slow beat of a march. It reminds one of the procession of a great kingly figure as he parades before the populace, probably mounted on the back of an elephant. Imagine Aladdin’s arrival in Agrabah, only with more dignity and momentousness, and you’re basically there.
9. “Chicago Falcon” – Budos Band II
Because I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, it’s difficult for me to not love this song on name alone, but it’s also one of The Budos Band’s most recognizable and approachable jams. There’s some gritty urban flavor here; a certain sound that seems like it would have been well at home in a classic ‘70s blaxploitation movie set on the Chicago streets, or perhaps in a modern throwback such as Black Dynamite, which incidentally does have a character named “Chicago Wind.” The impeccable organ solo midway through nails a late ‘60s/early ‘70s vibe that conjures images of stretched Cadillacs with fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
8. “Magus Mountain” – Burnt Offering
2014’s Burnt Offering, the most recent Budos Band album (announce a new one, please), marked the moment when the group took a collective breath and decided to make a conscious departure from the formula of their first three numbered LPs. Not a huge departure, mind you, but a calculated, purposeful one. The album takes some very clear inspiration from early ‘70s heavy metal and the mysticism of bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and nowhere does that form a more perfect synthesis with the Budos sound than on “Magus Mountain.” The mere reference to a “magus” or wizard certainly feels like it fits the psychedelic vibes of the era, does it not? The song opens with some very un-Budos-like guitar noodling that could easily be the opening of a Led Zeppelin jam, before interweaving the lead guitar with driving Budos horns and psychedelic keys in an irresistible groove and the big conclusion you’d expect. This song is a perfect example of the more recent Budos sound, which I’ve found appeals to certain listeners who don’t gel with the first three albums. If you need plenty of guitar to be hooked, Burnt Offering is going to be your jam.