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A blue
funk
Fantastic news: Oakland songsmith
Fantastic Negrito will bring his blend
of blues, punk, funk, gospel, and soul
to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s
free R&B concert series at MetroTech
Commons on July 18. Lyle Owerko
Fantastic Negrito to bring ‘blunk’ to free festival
COURIER LIFE, J 24-7 ULY 12-18, 2019 47
By Kevin Duggan It will be a fantastic show!
A Californian roots singer will bring
his soulful songs to a free afternoon
festival hosted by the Brooklyn Academy of
Music at MetroTech Commons on July 18.
Oakland-based Fantastic Negrito will
perform his powerful blend of blues, punk,
funk, soul, and gospel — or “blunk,” as he
calls it — and he said that the show will be
a spiritual experience for the audience in
America’s Downtown.
“They can expect a whole lot of church
without the religion,” said the musician,
who goes by Xavier Dphrepaulezz offstage.
Dphrepaulezz grew up in Massachusetts,
the son of a Somali immigrant dad and
a mother from Bedford-Stuyvesant, the
eighth of 14 kids. The family moved to
Oakland, California when he was 12,
where he discovered a wide range of
musical and artistic influences, including
the painter Basquiat, the band Parliament
Funkadelic, and David Bowie, Little
Richard, and Prince.
“When I was a young kid and saw
Prince dressed in a trench coat and garters
— while I wouldn’t necessarily wear that, it
was pretty impressive to see that,” he said.
The artist began playing straight funk
in the 1990s, but a serious car crash in
1999 put him on a different path. He
joined the burgeoning Afro-Punk movement
in the early 2000s under the moniker
Blood Sugar X, and in the 2010s
he took on the name Fantastic Negrito,
gaining attention by winning NPR’s Tiny
Desk contest, and delivering a powerful
performance at the public radio station’s
cramped venue in 2015.
He has since released two full-length
albums — each of which won a Grammy
for Best Contemporary Blues Album —
and he released a music video earlier this
month for the track “The Suit that Won’t
Come Off” from his 2018 record “Please
Don’t Be Dead.”
The song and the record are part of this
fight against the current political turmoil
by trying to create unity through music,
according to the artist.
“People are trying to make it normal
to be a Nazi — I’m not accepting that,”
he said. “One thing music does, it unites
people, even people that have differences.
Music can give them a reason to come
together — it’s a great ice breaker.”
The Bay Area songster will sing at the
Downtown space as part of the Academy’s
R&B Festival, which has free concerts
every Thursday through Aug. 15.
He will share the bill with Brooklyn
United Evolution Drumline, a Kings
County group of school-age drummers.
Their performances will be separate,
but at the suggestion of this reporter,
Dphrepaulezz said he may join forces with
them on stage.
“You never know, we used to do that
all the time in the streets. I came from
the streets doing busking, and we used to
always meet up with people in Oakland
playing drums,” he said. “You just planted
the idea, so we’ll see.”
Fantastic Negrito at MetroTech
Commons Myrtle Avenue between
Lawrence and Bridge streets Downtown,
(718) 636-4100, www.bam.org. July 18 at
noon. Free.
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