Friday, October 30, 2015

Eleganza Soul

Those who grew up in the '70s have certain movies and tv shows burnt into their memories. Bruce Lee, Starsky and Hutch...and all that great music!
Smooth mutha-****!
With so much black funk running through the grooves, it was a sound we weren't familiar with here in NZ...but man, was it cool!
At the start of that decade came the Isaac Hayes' chart-topper Shaft, with shock-horror lyrics like "He's a bad mutha...shut your mouth!" Young white teens, adding new phrases to their lexicons, never had it so good.
Shaft of course was really The Theme from Shaft - one of the first blaxploitation films. It starred Richard Roundtree as the ultimate in suave black detectives. John Shaft was like the James Bond Of Da 'Hood.
The US blaxploitation scene saw numerous clothing outlets selling what today looks so naff but, back then, was top-funk clothing for the debonair black man...opps, African-American.
We saw the groovy gear in movies and wondered if it was all just prop-clothing. No, bro...if y'all wanted to strut the streets, the turned-out turkeys would check out ads like these...!

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