Juju

Legendary music by "lost" bands hardly ever measures up to its own hype. This just might be an exception. Oneness of Juju albums are the sort of holy grail that keeps soul collectors thrashing about at night. To the label's everlasting credit, Strut has relieved listeners of that problem. The music itself is the direct forebear of bands like the Brand New Heavies, a mix of club funk and disco that at times tends to get a little precious…

Fulfilling the potential promised on his Blue Note debut, Night Dreamer, Wayne Shorter's JuJu was the first great showcase for both his performance and compositional gifts. Early in his career as a leader, Shorter was criticized as a mere acolyte of John Coltrane, and his use of Coltrane's rhythm section on his first two Blue Note albums only bolstered that criticism. The truth is, though, that Elvin Jones, Reggie Workman, and McCoy Tyner were the perfect musicians to back Shorter. Jones' playing at the time was almost otherworldly. He seemed to channel the music through him when improvising and emit the perfect structure to hold it together. Workman too seemed to almost instinctively understand how to embellish Shorter's compositions…

In the late 1970s, Gary Bartz's work became quite commercial. But earlier in the decade – when the alto and soprano saxophonist led his Ntu Troop – he was more ambitious. Recorded in 1972, Juju Street Songs is among the risk-taking efforts that came from the Ntu Troop. This ambitious LP finds Bartz drawing on a variety of influences – everything from John Coltrane's modal post-bop to world music to the electric fusion that Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock were providing at the time. The term world music, of course, can mean a lot of different things; for the Ntu Troop, it means a strong Middle Eastern/Arabic influence on the moody "Teheran" and more of an Afro-Caribbean outlook on the exuberant "Africans Unite.".

One of the band's masterworks, Juju sees Siouxsie and the Banshees operating in a squalid wall of sound dominated by tribal drums, swirling and piercing guitars, and Siouxsie Sioux's fractured art-attack vocals. If not for John McGeoch's marvelous high-pitched guitars, here as reminiscent of Joy Division as his own work in Magazine, the album would rank as the band's most gothic release. Siouxsie and company took things to an entirely new level of darkness on Juju, with the singer taking delight in sinister wordplay on the disturbing "Head Cut," creeping out listeners in the somewhat tongue-in-cheek "Halloween," and inspiring her bandmates to push their rhythmic witches brew to poisonous levels of toxicity.

Fulfilling the potential promised on his Blue Note debut, Night Dreamer, Wayne Shorter's JuJu was the first great showcase for both his performance and compositional gifts. Early in his career as a leader, Shorter was criticized as a mere acolyte of John Coltrane, and his use of Coltrane's rhythm section on his first two Blue Note albums only bolstered that criticism. The truth is, though, that Elvin Jones, Reggie Workman, and McCoy Tyner were the perfect musicians to back Shorter. Jones' playing at the time was almost otherworldly. He seemed to channel the music through him when improvising and emit the perfect structure to hold it together. Workman too seemed to almost instinctively understand how to embellish Shorter's compositions…