TRANSITIONS | James Mtume, Multi-Genre Artist, Musician, Songwriter – Dead at 76

Percussionist James Mtume, the beat behind Miles Davis and later ‘Juicy, has reportedly died, his death was confirmed by his publicist, Angelo Ellerbee.

An NPR article noted that Mtume recorded with pianist and future NEA Jazz Master McCoy Tyner in 1970, but his big break came the following year, when he started playing congas with Davis’s electric group. Filling the void left by Airto Moreira, Mtume stayed on for four years, appearing on landmark LPs like 1972’s On the Corner and 1974’s Big Fun. “Ife,” from that latter album, had a title near to Mtume’s heart — it was the name of his daughter.

The esteemed Miles Davis noted Mtume’s impact on the heartbeat of his band in a 1989 autobiography where he stated… “With Mtume, Heath and Pete Cosey joining us, most of the European sensibilities were gone from the band. Now the band settled down into a deep African thing, a deep African-American groove, with a lot of emphasis on drums and rhythm, and not on individual solos.”

Three years after his departure from Davis, in 1978, Mtume traded the zig-zag sensibilities of “electric Miles” for the less zig and more zag of funk, and launched his group known simply as Mtume. But on its third album, 1983’s Juicy Fruit, the band channeled something deeper. Featuring an outfront, icy, snaking bass and a hypnotic line from a Drum machine, Mtume offered the flirty, laidback, sultry title track that carved itself into music history, grabbing the No. 1 spot on the Billboard R&B chart and placing Mtume’s as a producer and artist into the spotlight.

Mtume described his sound in a Red Bull Academy Interview… “what I got to ultimately was what I called neo-minimalism,” explained Mtume, “I was experimenting with how to take less and make it sound more. If you listen to something like ‘Juicy Fruit’ there’s only four or five instruments played. And that was a whole new thing. Also, there was no reverb on nothing. So it sounded like you could have played it in your basement.”

The sound not only stuck, it stayed fresh in oldie and recurrent play at radio, and with the introduction of sampling, the groove and infectious beat mowed over the airwaves again, a decade later, this time infused and powered by Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy.”

 “Juicy” cracked the Top 40 alongside other Biggie hits like “Hypnotize” and “Mo Money Mo Problems.”

Following his group’s final album, 1986’s Theater of the Mind, Mtume changed direction. He continued to work in music — the ’90s found him producing for D’Angelo (a cover of Eddie Kendricks’s “Girl You Need a Change of Mind”) and Mary J. Blige (“Our Love”) — but he also turned his attention to The Open Line, the long-running talk radio show he co-hosted on New York’s 98.7 Kiss FM. 

Mtume was many things, among them he was also a Muse, in the same NPR interview he stated… ” The political environment is what brings about the music. Society is a thermostat, your music is the thermometer. It tells you what the temperature is, it doesn’t set it. Right now, the thermostat for social change and seriousness is at a low level. Something will happen to make it heat up, and then the artists who will be the thermometers can tell you what the temperature is.”

James Mtume, born James Forman will live on in glory we will miss him, but we will continue to celebrate his greatness and gifts as a musician, songwriter, producer and man, R.I.P. Mtume.