CHR Music Radar Vol. 4: The Records Keep Talking

Jazz harp, gospel, Afrobeat, New York disco, deep house and Nina Simone all share the same room in CHR Radar Vol. 4.

Shuffle it and the conversations get interesting.

CHR Radar Vol. 4 moves like a record collection rather than a genre shelf.

Flying Lotus can sit beside Teyana Taylor. Dorothy Ashby can lead into Nas. Gospel can collide with deep house. Fela Kuti can appear after Kerri Chandler. Nina Simone might suddenly sound like the funkiest person in the playlist.

That is exactly how it should work.

The point isn't to follow a sequence. It is to hear what happens when records from different eras and musical worlds are given permission to bump into each other.

Here are six worth knowing a little better.

Dorothy Ashby: “Soul Vibrations”

A harp does not immediately announce itself as a funk instrument.

Dorothy Ashby apparently never got that memo.

On 1968's Afro-Harping, Ashby and arranger Richard Evans placed her instrument inside an unusually rich mixture of soul, blues, funk, jazz and orchestral experimentation. “Soul Vibrations” opens the album with layered percussion and Ashby's harp sitting comfortably in a groove far removed from the instrument's usual classical associations.

That is part of what makes Ashby so important to the CHR universe.

She wasn't simply a jazz musician using an unusual instrument. She was refusing to accept the boundaries people had assigned to it.

The harp could swing.

It could get funky.

It could sound elegant without behaving politely.

That willingness to cross categories is all over Vol. 4.

Nina Simone: “Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter”

Even the title sounds like a dare.

“Funkier Than a Mosquito’s Tweeter” was written by Aillene Bullock and first associated with Ike & Tina Turner, but Nina Simone's 1974 version turns it into something unmistakably her own.

Her performance is loose, sharp and almost menacing.

This is one of the pleasures of encountering Simone outside the handful of songs that usually define her legacy. The classical pianist, protest singer and interpreter could also settle into a nasty groove when she wanted.

And that is a useful reminder for CHR listening in general.

Great artists are usually much larger than the genre label we inherited for them.

Sometimes the fun begins when you wander into the less obvious rooms.

Orlando Julius & The Heliocentrics: “Jaiyede Afro”

There is a beautiful loop inside this record.

Nigerian saxophonist Orlando Julius was part of the generation that helped shape the mixture of highlife, jazz, funk and African rhythm from which Afrobeat developed.

Decades later, he recorded with The Heliocentrics, a London collective fascinated by jazz, psychedelia, funk and African music.

So “Jaiyede Afro” isn't really old music meeting new music.

It is closer to a conversation between an originator and musicians who grew up hearing the consequences of what his generation created.

That kind of circular influence is one of the recurring ideas behind Radar.

Music travels outward.

Someone somewhere else absorbs it.

Years later, the sound finds its way back home wearing different clothes.

Inner Life: “Make It Last Forever”

If there is a secret highway running through CHR playlists, it probably passes through New York's Paradise Garage.

Inner Life featured the enormous voice of Jocelyn Brown and worked with a remarkable circle of New York dance-music figures including Patrick Adams, Greg Carmichael and Larry Levan.

“Make It Last Forever” became part of Levan's musical world, with an epic version later appearing on collections devoted to his Paradise Garage mixes.

This is where disco history gets more interesting than mirror balls.

Records like this helped establish the idea that a song could be stretched, reshaped and rebuilt specifically for the room.

Not radio length.

Not album length.

Dance-floor time.

Seven minutes suddenly makes perfect sense when nobody wants the groove to stop.

Taana Gardner: “When You Touch Me”

Masters at Work Re-Edit

This one contains several generations of New York club culture inside a single record.

Taana Gardner's original “When You Touch Me” was an extended late-'70s disco workout associated with West End Records and mixed by Paradise Garage legend Larry Levan.

Years later, Masters at Work, Louie Vega and Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez, returned to it.

Their re-edit stretches past thirteen minutes.

That isn't nostalgia.

It's continuity.

Levan's generation helped build New York's modern dance-floor language. Masters at Work inherited that vocabulary, mixed it with house, Latin music, hip-hop and their own Nuyorican identity, then passed it forward again.

The record doesn't need updating because the original was outdated.

It gets revisited because the groove still has unfinished business.

Fela Kuti: “Lady”

Musically, “Lady” is almost impossible to argue with.

Tony Allen's drumming locks into Fela Kuti's keyboards, horns and guitar until the song seems capable of continuing indefinitely.

But the lyrics make the record considerably more complicated.

Fela used “Lady” to attack African women whom he believed were adopting Western ideas of gender equality. His views on women remain one of the most troubling parts of an otherwise enormously influential political and musical legacy.

And that tension is worth leaving intact.

CHR doesn't have to flatten music history into heroes and villains.

A record can be rhythmically revolutionary and culturally influential while carrying ideas worth challenging.

Sometimes knowing the story behind a song makes listening less comfortable.

That can still make the listening richer.

Let shuffle make the introductions

That is part of what makes CHR Radar Vol. 4 feel so alive.

Dorothy Ashby turns a harp into a funk instrument.

Nina Simone finds another shade of herself.

African musical ideas leave home, travel the world and return.

Paradise Garage disco stretches into house culture.

Masters at Work reaches backward without moving backward.

And Fela Kuti reminds us that brilliant music doesn't always come attached to uncomplicated people.

Around those six records are Flying Lotus, Nas, Björk, Teyana Taylor, De La Soul, Kerri Chandler, Glenn Underground, Sylvester, Moodymann, Louie Vega and plenty more waiting for shuffle to create the next connection.

That's the fun.

You don't need to hear the playlist in order.

You only need two records to land beside each other and make you wonder:

Why do these somehow belong together?

That's usually where the Radar starts.