This one is for the young or those young at heart. Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: Bobby McFerrin and Jack Nicholson. Sometime long ago, in our weird, sometimes, just so fucked up world, the joy of our world descended upon us, bringing to us this hypnotic, decidedly sublime emotional spiritual fusion (jazz?) record dubbed How The Rhinoceros Got His Skin & How The Camel Got His Hump masquerading, ostensibly, as a children’s audio storybook. For those who’ve heard it, of all ages and stages, I wager, it was more than that. You see, in its exploratory vision remains a special bit of little-known something that’s impossible to cycle away from when it’s on. The world might forever know Mr. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” as just that but this is the kind of work that (hopefully) makes you want to rethink any past assumptions, making you “dig deeper”, so to speak.
The journey for Bobby to Jack, as you can surmise, isn’t exactly linear. Growing up as a son to trailblazing operatic baritone Robert McFerrin and opera singer Sara Copper, from his home in Manhattan, he grew up on a steady diet of music from all rungs of the world. Jazz, classical, world music, rock and pop, everything that was first of all “interesting” had a place in the radio and record collection shaping his world. However, Bobby would not follow into the mold his parents had made.
As a pianist, Bobby followed various streams of music that struck his fancy. From cabaret acts to rock and jazz groups, hanging back and being a musician, that was where Bobby found himself. His a-ha moment came in Salt Lake City. One day, simply walking home, he found his “voice”. 27 years old, he listened to his inner voice. The piano simply couldn’t do what he wanted to do. The voice was what could slip through all those streams.
Originally, he followed the realms of existing jazz artists and began searching for a sound, the sound forward. His 1982 self-titled debut showed him as a wanderer, unsure whether he wanted to be a balladeer, soul man, or classic jazz vocalist. In an attempt to find his own voice, Bobby hit upon the ideas posited in his head by Keith Jarrett’s totemic The Köln Concert. Rather than sing lyrics, perhaps, there was something more powerful in the wordless voice?
Turning away from the easy vocalese of his past, Bobby developed a genuine voice, his vocal style that had elements of scat-phrasing, African chant, and pure fun, mimicking real and imagined instruments. 1984’s The Voice was his turning point, where Bobby transformed known standards like “Blackbird” and introduced original tunes that were all sculpted, mutated, by his improvisatory solo vocals.
The artist that I think we think we know came to the forefront in 1986. It was his first masterpiece, 1986’s Spontaneous Inventions that signalled just how unique his voice was. Thinking of his voice as more than just a mouth attached to a body, Bobby introduced his body to his voice, slapping, tapping and using all sorts of “body” percussion and overdubs, to create one of a kind songs that for all intents and purposes could have only lived and been brought unto this world exactly the same way, once.
It’s what made his concerts and live appearances so special. On stage, Bobby would invite the audience to participate in not theoretical concepts but laissez-faire arrangements where they could understand how their voice, much like his, was an instrument of unbridled potential. Somehow, his music had found its joy, permeating within it certain aires that were no longer insular or studied. Whether he improvised over a jean ad, sang the Cosby Show theme or appeared on jazz festivals, Bobby’s acapella rang true anywhere regardless.
American New Age label, Windham Hill, one can imagine, was as far from whatever Bobby McFerrin was venturing through at that time. Acts like Mark Isham, Shadowfax, George Winston, and others cemented a certain vibe that (wrongly or rightfully) was overwhelmingly placid, Anglo, and instrumental — all things, obviously, Bobby wasn’t.
Windham Hill had tried unsuccessfully to venture outside the market they unwittingly helped spearhead with various degrees of success. Record sublabels promoted by William Ackerman and friends like Hip Pocket, Lost Lake Arts, and Open Air released more mainstream jazz and vocal pop music — mostly forgettable, in the end. However, of the other ventures Windham Hill tried, one of their most successful and surprisingly rich outings was Rabbit Ears, a label dedicated to children’s music and audiobooks.
In Rabbit Ears, they hit upon a stupidly obvious idea: What would happen if we release records where we pair a famous actor with a musician to narrate and create a soundtrack to the most beloved children’s stories? Imagine Beatrix Potter’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” narrated by Merryl Streep and featuring music by Lyle Mays. Imagine Ryuichi Sakamoto providing the background music to the epic Japanese folk tale Momotarō, as told by Sigourney Weaver. In an era before high-priced actors moonlit in Dreamworks movies, Windham Hill was offering then-bustling retail book and record stores storybook time with your favorite actor.
The existence of the Rabbit Ears imprint would have been a flash in the pan if it wasn’t for something it had going for it. Of all the albums I’ve listened to from the label, none appear to have been phoned in. Taking the ethos of Windham Hill to its max, one can tell that this musical thought exercise masquerading as venture capitalism actually provided a degree of freedom for its makers.
In the case of Bobby, just a year removed from his Spontaneous Inventions, now he was afforded a different sandbox and a choice of what to do with it. He was tasked with providing music soundtracking the words to a few of Rudyard Kipling’s less culturally problematic selections from his Just So stories. Jack, gamefully, came ready to apply his trademark acting skills into a format that richly rewarded his laconic delivery, leaving open space for Bobby to fill in the atmosphere.
Just a year removed from his world-charting hit, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, Bobby filled studio time exploring areas he felt he had laid to the side as a jazz musician. Taking cues from repetitive, hypnotic music, Bobby simplified his newfound technique making tracks that were immediate and quite intimate, recalling the mysterious chant music of the African continent. Wherever vocals didn’t suffice, percussive or melodic instruments were conjured and multi-tracked into creation, using that great gift of his, his voice as in tracks like “The Elephant’s Child Lullaby”.
Somehow, Bobby was transforming, seemingly, simple stories into tomes imploring the youngin’s to discover music (or a culture) that was not an “other” but somehow, theirs, too. And weirdly enough, left to his own devices, Bobby the vocalist, found ways to reintroduce “Bobby the pianist”, creating wonderfully inventive musical arrangements that bespoke great percussive instruments from the same vicinity.
Although the title of this post references the second release of Bobby’s in this series, How The Rhinoceros Got His Skin & How The Camel Got His Hump, The Elephant’s Child equally enriches any listener with a certain magic that’s little heard elsewhere. At points, on songs like “Anantarivo”, one is reminded of the work of ECM indescribables like Codona and Nana Vasconcelos. Hearing a snippet of it (or of “Just So”) in the narrative doesn’t divorce either from the impressive ideas Bobby was uncovering with every breath he took. Ancient blues lines adorning songs like “And Told The Man” makes one wonder where else Bobby had ventured that we’d all someday catch up to. “When The World Was New” imagines a spirit that requires no complex machine to tool.
The album ends on “Djinn” just like it started, just so. In music made for children, there was something far more adult, just as precious, that Bobby and friends were unafraid to sing to. In these shining moments Bobby found the imperfect “perfect” voice, perhaps one within all of us.