Born on October 15: Joseph Bowie (Defunkt) or when free jazz meets funk

The American trombonist, singer and composer was born in 1953 in St. Louis, Missouri.

His father was a music teacher, while his older brothers also pursued careers in jazz. Trumpeter Lester Bowie founded the Art Ensemble of Chicago, while saxophonist Byron Bowie was a key figure in the New York free jazz scene.

Joseph Bowie began learning the trombone as a child, barely ten years old. In his youth, he joined the Black Artists Group of St. Louis, where he encountered Oliver Lake and other free jazz figures. At a very young age, he toured Europe and, like many other Black artists such as Miles Davis, occasionally spent time in Paris. He collaborated with Alan Silva, Frank Wright, and Bobby Few, among others.

In the mid-1970s, he settled in Chicago and dabbled in rhythm and blues and funk. He then set out to reconcile two musical genres considered incompatible, even contradictory. Indeed, Joseph Bowie professed both a passion for jazz improvisation, sometimes in its most experimental sense, and a love for music fueled by funk. So much so that, a few years later, the bass line of his "In the Good Times" inevitably evoked (and for good reason) Bernard Edwards of Chic. Joseph Bowie spoke of extrapolation rather than a simple cover. And we can only agree!

It was in 1978, in New York, that the trombonist founded Defunkt, his most acclaimed musical project to date. Blending funk, jazz improvisations, and even a touch of punk, the recipe continues to produce joyously apocalyptic concerts more than 45 years after a memorable eponymous album released in 1980. Its follow-up, "Thermonuclear Sweat" (1982), is particularly aptly titled.

After settling in the Netherlands in the early 2000s, he released the album "Mastervolt" in 2015 with a European band, Defunkt. While he may have lost some of his Landes roots today, he's still going strong!

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo : © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Joseph Bowie (fourth from left) with the deceased backstage at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, Belgium, in November 1981