Earth, Wind & Fire were the biggest black rock band of the 1970s. But today, they're among the era's most misunderstood platinum acts. The group's discography nearly mirrors black music's evolution, from the Afrocentric jazz of the Black Panther years to the quiet storm balladry and slick corporate funk that marked the end of that tumultuous decade with a merciful whimper. As the visionary leader, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Maurice White sought to encapsulate it all, and he succeeded remarkably. When you hear an Earth, Wind & Fire record, you know it. The soaring brass section led by Andrew Woolfolk and the Phenix Horns, the marvelous interplay between White's cool spoken-sung vocals and Philip Bailey's lush falsetto, and White's kalimba (aka African finger piano) gave them a unique, oft-copied sound. However, their capacity for hit singles has sometimes reduced them to pop-culture clichés, whether it was 1979's wildly over-the-top disco nugget "Boogie Wonderland" or Julia Louis-Dreyfus doing the funky-white-girl dance to "Shining Star" on Seinfeld.Then there's that other black rock juggernaut of the '70s, Parliament-Funkadelic. The two organizations were rivals, and P-Funk figurehead George Clinton claimed that E.W.F. were "earth, all wind, and no fire." They celebrated the African American experience in markedly different ways. P-Funk adopted a cryptic language based on street slang, black popular culture and authors like Ishmael Reed. Their music was often intentionally cryptic, which not only protected them from homogenization (or "the placebo syndrome"), but also created a cult of believers dedicated to propagating Clinton's message of funk epiphany.
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