REVIEW: Carl Hancock Rux, Rux Revue (Sony 550)
- Chris Hill
This disc succeeds on so many levels, it should be a required musical companion for anyone who's read Richard Wright's "Native Son" or Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man." Rux Revue is complex and layered, meriting multiple listens to mine the deep wealth of Carl Hancock Rux's Afro-American perspective.
Rux treats words like communion wafers and wine, slipping them around his mouth, savoring the flavor and the experience, transmogrifying them from simple syllables into messages, explanations, revelations, and observations that elevate the listener to a higher plane. Alliteration, rhyme, repetition, allusion, meter -- all tricks of the poetic trade that Rux uses with practiced expertise.
With years of oral performances behind him, his voice carries enough cadence that the music could be left off, and the disc would still satisfy. That the music which surrounds his words varies, wandering from soul to hip-hop to Robert Johnson blues, is another reason for awe and immediate purchase.
While some prefer poetry to be unaccompanied by words or explanation, knowing details of Rux's life and surroundings add another dimension to the twelve tracks on the album. The Latin-suffused song "Miguel" pulls its subject from the godfather of downtown New York City poetry, Miguel Algarin. "Blue Candy" is Rux's true life account, from his eyes as a four-year old child, when he was a witness to his grandmother's non-violent death, her tongue stained blue with Rux's recently shared candy. The account is strengthened by the naivete in a child's perspective: "Blue men with shiny buttons bang on locked door / Blue men break locked door open.../Grandmother is asleep/...Blue men... poke and push blue grandmother.../Blue men give naked boy a t-shirt and marbles."
"No Black Male Show," a song inspired by a controversial Afro-American exhibition at the Whitney Museum several years ago, examines the schism within the black community, where money and success lead some to abandon their heritage for a corporate-designed image manufactured for inoffensive, wide-market appeal. Rux's language varies from street slang to Harvard-educated purity within the track, depending on the point he's trying to make.
Rux unflinchingly paints a portrait of his own birth on "Wasted Seed." Conceived on a rooftop by a father he never knew and a mentally-ill mother, Rux turns a spotlight on his situation, looking at himself with sharp examination and without pity. "He begot her/She belost him/They begat me...I am wasted seed." The track begins with "Do you want this baby?" said five times, a different word emphasized with each repetition, driving five different meanings, from carnal to conceptive.
"Languid Libretto (I Can't Love You Better)" pairs Rux's rich baritone against sweet female backing vocals. As close to a "traditional" song as Rux Revue possesses, it's got a honest sexiness Barry White would envy. "I'm waiting for you to come to me...I can't love you better...My song, my dance/That's all I've got/So why don't you breathe with me?" Another gem, "Asphalt Yards" trades an uplifting female sung chorus with Rux's words, spoken with alternating machine-gun speed and measured pace.
Rux holds up a circle of light on the cover photograph: a beacon of illumination, or a hand held halo. Either or both, it's light well shed on an artist already renowned in his circle and deserving of a much, much wider audience. Check out his site at http://www.carlhancockrux.com for further words.
