Still on Track: Amir talks Strata, b-boys and osmosis

The task of tracing the ties between jazz, gospel, soul, funk, disco and hip hop is not exactly a leisurely stroll through the park. It requires a level of intrigue and effort that the average self-proclaimed music lover can barely even begin to fathom. For DJs like Amir Abdullah, taking note of a track title or artist name will not do. His perception of a record is a full-blown inquisition. It’s about needing to know where it was made, who produced the track, who remixed it, and who played the trombone. And in this task, there’s no room for pussyfooting.

Years spent rifling through record bins at places like Biscuithead in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts, led Amir not only to esteemed spinning status alongside kindred spirit Christian Taylor – aka Kon – but also to the in-depth cultural awareness needed to progress in the business side of the industry. While putting together the On Track mixtape series, Amir worked as vice president of sales and A&R for Fat Beats, helping to build the profiles of Mos Def, Atmosphere and Pharoahe Monch. A year or so after signing the On Track contract with BBE, he took control of another label, Wax Poetics. Here, he helped to source the promising talent of Adrian Younge, as well as leading the effort to secure exclusive score rights for blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite. We can all dig that.

Now, at the age of 43, Amir’s focus has switched to 180 Proof, his own imprint dedicated to preserving and reissuing the music of Strata Inc., a multi-pronged 70s jazz label responsible for Detroit’s legendary Strata Concert Gallery. “By the time the opportunity to collaborate with Strata came up, I’d already ran other people’s record labels for years,” Amir explains. “With 180, I wanted to do something for myself, but it had to be something with an interesting story behind it. The main guys back in the day, Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell, initially set up the Strata Gallery as a live show kind of thing. They’d put on nights in little coffee shops, intimate clubs and arrange events within the community. If Herbie Hancock came to town he would play there, Charles Mingus, all these guys would play there. They were probably among the first people to record and broadcast these shows live on the radio, which was pretty groundbreaking too.

“The label -– Strata Inc. – came after, and 90% of what they put out was jazz,” he continues. “They veered to the left a few times; there was a Latin record, a Northern Soul record, but mostly the jazzier end of the spectrum. I met up with Barbara Cox, current head of Strata, and managed to get access to the Charles H. Wright Museum in Detroit where a lot of the old tapes are stored. They had no idea what they had so I started sifting through and was like, ‘OK, so this is what you have!’ That’s when the concept for 180 came about.

“Our next release is by Maulawi Nururdin and it’s as rare as hen’s teeth,” he enthuses. “I dug out this old tape and it’s to the point where there’s no information on it and half the tracks have no credits so you don’t even know who played on them; it’s incredible! That’ll be out next year.”

"I used to go to every hip hop show, every poetry slam, and that’s how I got the chance to meet Mos Def and Kweli before those guys were even making records" – Amir

Finding out who actually played on a record is just the start of the challenge when restoring a 40-year old recording to modern sound quality standards. Amir’s aim is to revitalise the original quality of an analogue tape – to remaster the pops and crackles, as it were. It’s a difficult process when you’re not necessarily looking to add anything to a track; but where exactly does the difficulty lie?

“A lot of it depends on when the tapes were made,” he reveals. “If it’s after 1974, then chances are the recording will be in pretty bad shape because of the chemical base they used to bind the tape. Anything before that and you might be good. If you take the Maulawi record, it was pretty badly damaged so it cost a lot of money and even more time to repair it to the point where I would feel satisfied buying it as a consumer, sound-wise.

“Aside from that,” he continues, “One of the other big challenges was research. There’s hardly any information on a lot of these guys, Maulawi in particular. There are no recorded photos of him so that’s a whole other obstacle in itself when you’re looking to put out a record.”

Amir’s interest in Strata artwork, photography and genuine passion for lost youth culture has also led him to curate an exhibit on the jazz movement in Detroit for the Scion iQ Project Museum. Ever the businessman, he openly talks about future plans for a Strata documentary where he will team up with the director of the Bill Withers film, Still Bill.

Stepping away from the entrepreneurial side of things, he is more than happy to reminisce about the On Track days, delving into his relationship with Kon to discuss how the dynamic duo are different, musically speaking. “Kon’s much more of a dance guy than me,” Amir admits. “He grew up with disco and boogie. So did I, but to a lesser extent. Growing up I was more into the jazz side, soul and sweet soul. I got into all my dad’s records first.

“Kon shares a very similar taste with me and I think that’s where hip hop comes into it. He used to be a graff writer and I tried it as a b-boy but, y’know, I wasn’t the most coordinated kid on the block. But getting into hip hop culture took us to the next level in terms of collecting because when I started off on jazz, I was mainly into bebop and straight-ahead. With hip hop, they were sampling jazz fusion, jazz rock, which just opened it up to a whole bunch of other shit. I had to say to myself,‘whoa, OK, what have I missed here?’

“I can definitely appreciate where Kon is coming from though,” he quickly affirms. “I’ll be playing a lot of disco when I come over to Manchester. Our hometown Boston was actually a huge landmark on the disco scene when all that was coming out. Tom Moulton is from Massachusetts too! Dance music owes a lot to him. If you read the back of the labels and analyse the credits then you start to realise that his hands have helped to produce so many hits. He had the right ear. And he’s from a suburb of Boston, which is just crazy for me!”

Despite an unconditional love for “Mass”, Amir acknowledges that it was his decision to move to Brooklyn in the mid 90s that allowed him to begin blazing his own trail. He started at Fat Beats as the lonely sales guy making cold calls, trying to move through the ranks. “I’d just sit there listening to the other guys and learning through osmosis, soaking everything in. I used to go to every hip hop show, every poetry slam, and that’s how I got the chance to meet Mos Def and Kweli before those guys were even making records. Nineteen years later and New York suddenly became my home.”

Amir speaks passionately about his craft, doling out pearls of wisdom on the topics of perseverance, paying attention and getting yourself into the right circles. When the first On Track came out in ’97, people didn’t get it at first and the lukewarm reception very nearly prevented the duo from bringing out a second tape. “A lot of women would argue why we didn’t let the songs play out, why we only played the break,” he recalls. “They didn’t trust that the rest of the song was shit! It was tough, man. But if it’s ever gonna be easy then you’re gonna lose easy too. God, I sound like my father now.”