The Wild Magnolias - They Call Us Wild

The Wild Magnolias are the penultimate New Orleans Mardi Gras funk band, and I mean that literarly, as in Mardi Gras is their entire reason for being. Emerging from an African-American gang-land tradition that goes back decades, the Magnolias are one of the Mardi Gras Indian tribes, gangs of men that traded street brawling and crime for massive funk song contests and flamboyant Mardi Gras costumes. This black Indian culture, rooted in caribbean influence, was so pervasive through the wards of New Orleans in the seventies, even the City's first family of funk, the Neville Brothers had their own Tribe, the Wild Tchoupitoulas led by their uncle "Big Chief Jolly" Landry. Wearing their sequined coats and headdresses, these tribes would parade through the neighborhoods and wards, searching for other Mardi Gras Indian tribes to engage in an all out funk and roll battle.. The result is some of the most smoldering music to emerge from the Big Easy.

Recorded in1975, this reissue of They Call Us Wild is matched as a two-CD set with The Wild Magnolias, the debut album from 1973, and both discs are a rollicking good time of down home funk. A simmering stew of call and response chanting, gruff boasting vocals, deep rolling baselines, scat guitar and tons of caribo-african polyrhythms. The Magnolias lock onto a grove and don't let go. Imagine Parliament/Funkadelic dispatched from the outer reaches of space and plopped down face-first in the bayou, with as much zany flamboyance as George Clinton can muster, a hint of the barrio groove of War, and a smattering of early Meters bass thumping, and you'll begin to get a feeling for the way Big Chief Bo Dollis leads his Indians through their funk/caribbean pastiches.

Originals like "Handa Wanda," and "Two Way Pak E Way," set the pace with thundering funk bass hooks leading into an African-style call and response that is so mesmerizing it becomes hypontic. Calypso touches flitter across "Meet the Boys (on the Battlefield)," while the rolling funk version of the N.O. classic "When the Saints (come marching home) needs to be heard to be believed. Ol' Louis Armstrong never heard the song played like this before.

Admittedly, The Wild Magnolias would be best seen to be appreciated. With their tribal outfits and the outrageous flamboyance of Big Chief Bo leading a full band of percussionists, one can only imagine what they must be like, parading through the streets of New Orleans, pounding out the funk to the thousands of drunk and gyrating revelers. Still, this CD collection adequately brings their stomping good time back to the suburbs. Plug it in, turn it on, mix up a hurricane, grab your beads, let loose your ass and bring Fat Tuesday home. Amen. -- Racer X

Buy here: They Call Us Wild

http://www.wildmagnolias.net/
http://www.sunnysiderecords.com/