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Shuffled! is a weekly column appearing every Thursday here on BPRLive. Each week, we welcome a person from the APA community to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles.

Today’s Shuffler: Patrick Rosal

Patrick Rosal is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive , which won the Members’ Choice Award from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and most recently My American Kundiman, which won the Association of Asian American Studies 2006 Book Award in Poetry as well as the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award. His chapbook Uncommon Denominators won the Palanquin Poetry Series Award from the University of South Carolina, Aiken. His poems and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies including Harvard Review, Crab Orchard Review, Indiana Review, North American Review, The Literary Review, Pindledyboz, Black Renaissance Noire, Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Non-Fiction, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art , and the Beacon Best. In the 1980s and early 90s, he produced music for Metroplitan Recording Corporation, working with acts like April, Laissez Faire, and Joey Gold. He still loves an impromptu jam session.

Peep his shuffle now…

“Slick”
Willie Hutch
I don’t know a whole lot about Willie Hutch, except that he’s classified under Northern Soul, a kind of, I guess, 60s/70s R&B that feels real west coast. I got turned onto it because of Steve Parks’ joint “Movin’ in the Right Direction.” This Willie Hutch tune sounds very “Shaft”ish. In any case, I think Loleatta Holloway was also associated with Northern Soul. She went on to record “Crash Goes Love” which was a huge dance hit and b-boy favorite in the early eighties (the flipside of the 12-inch had a nice ballad called “Sweet Thing” – not the same as Chaka’s). It was a forerunner, along with Chris Barbosa-produced Shannon hits, John Rocca, et.al., the forerunner of Latin Freestyle music. One of my favorite Northern Soul groups is Breakwater — good, danceable, funky.

“Instant Karma”
John Lennon
I’m the middle of three kids. My older brother, of course, was the object of much of my childhood awe and ire. We started playing guitar at the same time and he was a huge Beatle fan – still is – and it was passed on to me. He had all the first-print vinyl’s of those 70s John Lennon albums, Shaved Fish, Walls and Bridges, Mind Games, etc. I’m a huge sucker for Beatle ballads like “And I love Her”, “Here, There, Everywhere”, “Julia”, etc. My brother loves to tell a story about how I was like eight years old and I cried when I was listening real intensely to “She’s Leaving Home”. Thanks, Anthony. I love all the Beatle music, but I’m really drawn to songs on Revolver like “I want to Tell You”, “She Said, She Said”, and “I’m Only Sleeping”. My first album was a Beatle compilation album called Rock and Roll Music, the cover of which was silver and had an illustration of the Beatles embossed in color.

“Rush On Me”
Stephanie Mills
I love this era of music, downtempo, grinding R&B. I was 18, my first year in college, when this came out. I was about to get put on academic probation and eventually kicked out of school for being out DJing, making music, and getting into all kinds of adolescent trouble. Most of the parties were jamming to freestyle by then, but I held artists like Stephanie Mills, Kashif, and Shalamar close to my heart.

“Along Came Betty”
Art Blakey
I bought an Art Blakey compilation because I was starting, in my late teens, to teach myself some jazz piano, and I loved the simple, direct, four-chord funkiness of Bobby Timmons’ “Moanin’”. My musical ear couldn’t translate much else to my fingers. Is that Freddie Hubbard with that pretty much singable horn solo?

“Sitting in Limbo”
Jimmy Cliff
I’ve been pretty nomadic the last few years, and I don’t know how it happened, but Jimmy Cliff ended up being a continual companion on the road. There’s no other way to say it, except that Jimmy Cliff has an uplifting feeling, a sense of surviving struggle. Who writes and sings like that any more? Being on the move, having a kind of life of contingency (granted, a chosen one) has its challenges and Jimmy Cliff kept me up when I needed to be up.

“What Good is a Castle”
Joe Bataan
I don’t remember how I first heard of Joe Bataan. I remember going to Filipino parties in Jersey way back in the day and hearing “Rap-O Clap-O” while all the hard-shoed dudes with cumberbuns would be spinning some auntie in red or silver lamé on the dance floor. I had no idea Bataan was half-Filipino (I didn’t know his name). As an adult, post-google, somehow I came across his bio and realized, not only did Joe Bataan write and produce “Rap-O Clap-O”, but he was a major musician, songwriter, producer for seventies dance music. He was the founder of Salsoul Records, a label that fused Latin orchestration (“salsa”) and soul music. Roger Bonair-Agard, Lynne Procope, and myself, through a group called Vision Into Art, performed a spoken word piece to a new arrangement with this at the Whitney Museum last year. Joe Bataan, I understand, still performs. I’d love to catch him.

Last 5 posts by shuffled

• Shuffled! Delia - August 14th, 2008
• Shuffled! Giles Li - August 7th, 2008
• Shuffled! Alexander Chee - July 31st, 2008
• Shuffled! Terry Park - July 24th, 2008
• Shuffled! Theresa Vu of Magnetic North - July 17th, 2008

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