Marcus Miller at Granada Theater

Marcus Miller and his talented musicians.

Marcus Miller
Granada Theater
Dallas, TX
June 13, 2015

When the bass player and band leader Marcus Miller is coming to town, it does not pay to procrastinate. Buy your ticket right away, or flirt with disaster.

I had always planned on going to the Marcus Miller concert at the Grenada in Dallas, but I failed to 

pre-order a ticket. I walked up to the box office and the guy said, Sorry, it is soldout!

Disaster! Luckily a guy was in ear-shot, and said, I got an extra ticket, my wife could not make it. He said, I would sell it to you for face value $50. I did not quibble; I handed him the money and got in just as Marcus Miller was walking on stage. (And they were great seats, too, fifth row!)

Marcus Miller, who gained a name playing for Miles Davis, opened the concert with the danceable and bouncy Hylife. The name is a play on African music called Highlife, a cousin to Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat.

Listeners have as much fun between songs as during the songs because Marcus Miller is very personable and he takes the time to relay the inspiration of the songs. He said the catchy chorus line from Hylife was written by some Senegalese musicians and it means Let’s all go to town!

During this tour – they just got back from Europe – they are featuring his latest album Afrodeezia; and Hylife and Senegalese musicians is part of the theme. He brought together musicians from Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the U.S.

He went into the second song B’s River. That song opens with him playing a huge string instrument; it looks like something one would find in an African museum. It was bigger than his bass; he had to prop his foot up on a speaker in order to play it.

He makes good use of his cast of musicians. One of the musicians was percussionist Dominique ‘Nino’ Cinelu, who also played with Miles Davis. During one song Nino Cinelu made incredible music with just a triangle and a wand. Each musician was celebrated with solos here and there: Alex Han sax, Lee Hogans trumpet, Brett Williams keyboards, Adam Agati guitar, Louis Cato drums. (Brett Williams took a lot of good-natured ribbing because of his age being only 20 years old.)

He also took the listeners on an excursion to Brazil. He said he was thinking about late keys players Joe Sample and George Duke. He told the story about the time they played in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. After the show, they went into a studio to jam with some talented Brazilian musicians. American keyboard legend George Duke was also there. And he said every time there was a lull in the conversation, George Duke would say, We were there! We’re here now, but we were there! So he named the Brazilian-influenced song, We were there.

The album has an international flavor so to the surprise of many, including New York Times critic Nate Chinen, the American soul classic Papa was a rolling Stone was included on the Afrodeezia album. The mystery of why this seemingly-misplaced song was included was explained by Marcus Miller: he was following the trek of his ancestors, not only from Africa to the New World, but from the southern American cotton fields to the big American cities.

In his concert, he included Goree, a song from his Renaissance album. This one was deep. He talked about his visit to Goree Island in Senegal. He said he visited what is now a museum called the Slave House. It was where Africans were gathered for the trans-Atlantic journey to the Americas. On one side the house opens to the ocean; that doorway was called the Door of No Return.

The song Goree starts like an elegy with Marcus Miller blowing a long saxophone-like instrument. But he said he did not want it to be only about anger; he also wanted the song to be a celebration of human endurance. And what a celebration it becomes! Midway through the song, the expressive Marcus Miller is dancing around his instruments and near his bandmates in what looks like an well-choreographed African, hand-swaying dance. His dancing – some of it, though he is from New York, is from his Trinidadian heritage – was as graceful as his music!