In Gratitude, for Maurice White, the Spirit Leader of Earth, Wind and Fire

In Gratitude, for Maurice White

He was a Chicago drummer who followed his astrological chart into the history of American music. And he did it on black terms that reflected black spirituality and an ancient Egyptian heritage. Maurice White, an icon of the 1970s and the creator of Earth, Wind and Fire’s sacred secular funk music, was 74.

Born of the Earth are Nature’s children

Fed by the wind, the breath of life

Judged by the fiery hands of God

–“Earth, Wind and Fire,” from the 1976 “Spirit” LP

The white album that I grew up with did not belong to the Beatles. As a child in the 1970s, fiddling around in the album collection left behind by my older brother and sister when they finally moved out, I saw it. When I opened up this album cover, I was surrounded by pictures of these sweaty black men in crazy outfits grooving their hearts out. Boy, did they look weird to my young eyes!

That white album was “Gratitude.” And that group of crazy looking brothers took the elements of the universe and bent them to their musical will.

This is how it started, according to the street where anecdote meets myth. Maurice White saw in his astrological chart the Memphis dirt of his childhood, the wind around his musical career as a young Chicago drummer, and the fire generated by the new funk groups such as Sly and the Family Stone, and had an idea (get it – Earth, Wind and Fire). He would form a band for the new, bold generation staring into 1970; the young people who were in college and looking for a new sound. White grabbed his brother Verdine and pushed him into the new venture. Others soon followed, including a young falsetto singer named Philip Bailey.

The new group found itself thanks to a movie soundtrack—“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasss Song.” And Warner Bros. Records signed up this next big thing. But Warner Bros. didn’t know what to do with these black hippies. Fortunately Clive Davis, then of CBS, did.

White, a student of ancient Egypt as a Black nation, wanted to prove to the world that blacks alone could be a major American music power group—a super group. Davis understood, and got out of the way. A master of craft, Charles Stepney, stepped in to create order and discipline.

Suddenly, pyramids broke open, and powerful horns blew. Studios. Recordings. In stadiums, Verdine and his drum set started rotating in the air, thanks to illusionist Doug Henning. As the 1970s wore on, the EWF platinum explosion became an annual event. Suddenly, Marvin Gaye, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder and the Jacksons had to make room for these guys who, after meditating in a circle for an hour, went onstage and just produced wave after wave of orchestrated, bass-driven, Latin-tinged slick funk. EWF produced a ballad called Reasons during its heyday that will bring any lingering personal memories into the forefront, to this day.

White expanded his empire, perhaps too fast. The Emotions he produced with all this growth created all sorts of artistic and other tensions among a large group of people. It was all too much. Then, disco threatened to swallow all that had been built, so he adjusted with his own groovy interpretation in Boogie Wonderland and Let’s Groove. But it was time to take a break, to allow for solo space.

White brought the group back in 1987, after a four-year hiatus. More albums followed, but now only sporadically did the sound reconnect. Slowly deteriorating by Parkinson’s disease in the 1990s, White retreated to the studio and Philip Bailey took the lead on stage. But the vocal stamp White had practically copyrighted remained strong into the 21^st century.

In 2016, EWF struggled against becoming its own cover band. The group successfully promoted its own nostalgia while still trying to create an age-appropriate sound for graying Baby Boomers.

I once heard Arsenio Hall refer to Earth, Wind and Fire as “the Black Beatles.” Not good enough: Maurice’s creation was born from the faded echoes of Duke Ellington’s sped-up dreams. It was brothers smoking doobies with Imhotep in the land of the pharaohs, their Black Power Afro-picks squarely standing up straight in a field of formerly nappy hair. It was the race in meditation, enjoying new freedom, having new opportunities, seeing an optimistic future with its third eye.

Just listen. In a new decade of desegregated uncertainty, Maurice White took in all the visions that black people had. He spiritually reached back to pick up that Kalimba—that African thumb piano that you hear in the beginning and/or in the middle of one of their jams, the instrument that sounds like a xylophone. Then, mirroring his people in the tumult of the 1970s, he moved forward from his drum set in the rear stage, to now sing in front. Now, as our new Ancestor, he joins the celestial meditation circle he started.