Austin, Texas (June
15, 2012): The Kashmere Stage Band concert originally scheduled for The Scoot
Inn has been moved to Saturday June 30th at 9 p.m. at Antone’s, 213
West Fifth Street in Austin. Opening the show will be Austin’s Hard Proof
Afrobeat. Advance tickets are available through Ticketfly at http://ticketf.ly/M1QCov.
“We are very
excited to be working with Antone’s on this show,” says promoter Mal Thursday. “It’s
a legendary venue for a legendary band.”
The 25-piece
funk orchestra is the subject of the award-winning documentary Thunder Soul, executive produced by
Jamie Foxx, which will have a free public screening on Friday June 29th
at 7 p.m. at Orun Center for Cultural Arts, 1720 East 12th Street,
presented as part of the Black Media Council’s Liberation Film Series.
In the Fifth
Ward of Houston, Texas in the late 1960s, musician and composer Conrad O.
Johnson, known as "Prof", took a job as Music Director at the predominantly
black Kashmere High School where he would go on to transform the school's struggling
jazz band into a full-fledged funk powerhouse. The Kashmere Stage Band and
their dynamic leader would soon become legendary and world-renowned.
In the early
1970s, national High School Stage Band competitions were fiercely competitive, strictly
conservative, and almost entirely white. Not only did Prof break the color
barrier and get his kids into these competitions, he flipped the status quo by rearranging
all of his band's music into elaborate funk arrangements. He changed the band's
look, encouraging them to embrace their own inimitable style. He then
introduced the element of showmanship, with each section choreographing slick
moves with their instruments—unprecedented at the time. Finally, he unleashed
his band on the competition scene, where, against tremendous odds, they would
go on to triumph again and again.
From 1968 to
1977, the Kashmere Stage Band won a record number of titles around the nation
and was invited to perform in Europe and Japan.
Prof and the band made history when they won Most Outstanding Stage Band
in the Nation at the highly prestigious All-American High School Stage Band Festival
in Mobile, Alabama, in 1972 – the very same year that state’s segregationist
Governor George Wallace would announce a run for the presidency.
Kashmere Stage
Band released several records between 1968 and 1978, which became highly prized
among funk fans and record collectors. The band’s recordings have been
collected by Now Again Records on the essential 2-disc anthology Texas Thunder Soul.
The band’s
success reverberated throughout Kashmere High School resulting in unprecedented
student achievement in the arts, athletics and all academic disciplines. Prof and the band’s accomplishments also
helped to uplift and unite the community.
As former student Gaila Mitchell put it:
"The Kashmere Stage Band was the best thing that ever happened to
our community. Even in a time when there was so much racial bias,
everybody in the community came together to help the Kashmere Stage Band do
whatever they needed to do."
Having reunited
in 2006 to pay tribute to Johnson, Kashmere Stage Band has carried on with
their inimitable live performances. They most recently played Austin at Uncle
Billy’s Lake Travis in September 2011, and at La Zona Rosa during South by
Southwest 2010.
CONTACT:
J.M. Dobies
Industrious Media, Austin, Texas
