“Increase The Peace” - Stanley Clarke :: “At The Movies - A Compilation” - Epic Soundtrax
Philly-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and soul/funk master of the retro realm, Stanely Clarke, first came onto the scene with his trailblazing outfit Return To Forever in the early 1970s. Considered to be one of the earliest jazz-fusion groups to come out of the decade of rhythmic Renaissance, textured tonality and the fundamentals in foundational funk, Clarke would continue his cosmic quest, not only in the genetics of the genre, but into his generations main nerve of inspiration, iconic enlightenment and the atmospheric adolescents of something so timeless and critically classic that it simply can not be contained in any sort of vessel, or instrument alone. Having befriended the great Chick Corea, who at the time was working with the mighty Stan Getz, the two would begin working together both on Return To Forever and collaborating on what would eventually become Clarke’s dynamical debut solo album, 1973’s “Children of Forever”. A definitive introduction to a career defining moment, Clarke would continue his rhythmic rampage throughout the years with infamous titles like 1974’s s/t, “Journey To Love”, “Modern Man”, “Rocks, Pebbles And Sand”, “Time Exposure” and 1995’s highly acclaimed compilation and cinematic collection entitled “At The Movies”. Having worked with some of the most legendary names in the industry, such as The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Herbie Hancock, Pharaoh Sanders, Dexter Gordon and Larry Carlton, Clarke even turned down illustrious opportunities to work with the late Miles Davis, Bill Evans and Ray Manzarek, while staying true to his poetic participation in Return To Forever before departing sometime in 1977.
While sophisticatedly supplying a super soulful soundscape throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Clarke entered the following decade with a more commercial commute and wide-reaching approach with his melodic meditation by working on such films and television shows like “Passenger 57”, “Poetic Justice”, “Higher Learning”, “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, “A Man Called Hawk” and the cultural masterpiece, “Boyz N The Hood”, from the mind of the late and great John Singleton, who would become the youngest Academy Award nominee for best director at just the age of 24. Capturing the electrifying essence of youth, boyish bravery, the harmony of the hood, total trauma fallout and the endless efforts of community and connection to culture, Clarke sincerely suspended both space and time, while composing the music for “Boyz N The Hood”, which in return, helped to define and respectfully locate an entire generation and its retrospective reality in society in Black America. Its lingering soulful sting of fatherless neighborhoods and the crippling constitution in constant questioning, both Clarke and Singleton flip over the rocks of despair and repair the atmosphere of the gun-smoke filled skies and give an instant increase in peace like the legends before them.
“Film has the ability to transcend cultural barriers. It can bring people together, bridging gaps and fostering understanding.”
Clarke worked on a number of projects with the late director, but by 1991 the two would go on to manifest the masterful magic of historical insight, family dynamics, broken home life and the corruption of crime, in order to bring forth one of the most captivating accounts on just what the black communities of America have to stand up against, that to this day, still echos throughout the streets and numbing neighborhoods in this Trump polluted country we call “The Land of the Free”. With tracks like "Father and Son", "Theme from Boyz N The Hood", the marvelously moving "Black on Black Crime", “Passenger 57 Main Title” and “Justice’s Groove”, “At The Movies” is a splendid account of Black Culture that truly transcends its era with elevated hopes for peace, love and harmony, while protecting the youth with political poetry, feverish prophets of the future and a solace focus on optimism and poetic productivity as we continue to move forward in this unbalanced reality and reaction to total terror and cultural fall out.
