The splendid 2010 documentary 'Thunder Soul' (directed by Mark Landsman) tells the story of the legendary Kashmere Stage Band, as its alumni gather to play a tribute concert for their beloved leader, Conrad ‘Prof’ Johnson.

Interviewer: Where does the feel to play come in?

Conrad Johnson: Well, I would say that the feeling comes, many times, from my demanding it.

In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Johnson, a teacher at the Kashmere High School in Houston, Texas, coached the institution’s Stage Band into an elite outfit. His success demonstrates that strict discipline, high expectations and inspirational vision can create a compelling cocktail, and that music education plays a special part in shaping young lives.

‘The focus was on moving forward. Get your education. There’s nothing that you can’t do. You’ve seen what has happened in the past. Now you take what has happened, you take it and you move forward.‘

Kashmere Stage Band member

In his youth Johnson had performed as a musician in the clubs of Houston, and had at one point played with Count Basie. He chose to pursue a career in education, and, once established at the Kashmere High School, formed its Stage Band.

‘I got the idea to start a band and build a band out of young people that was equivalent in sound and in appearance to that of the professionals.’

Conrad Johnson

Johnson was a strict disciplinarian, and he demanded high technical standards.

‘When they first come to me, regardless as to what kind of tone they have, I work to develop that tone. And that’s the first step. Learn to play the instrument. Then the music.’

Conrad Johnson

‘You came into this room with your focus, ready to play. Do not come into this room late. Do not talk. Do not interrupt. Do not this, that. I don’t care if it’s chewing gum. You cannot. And when that man says stand up, everybody stood up in synch. It was like a military sergeant.’

Kashmere Stage Band member

Conrad “Prof Johnson directing a band member

As the ‘60s drew to a close, Johnson sensed that the mood in his predominantly Black school was changing. The Civil Rights struggle had evolved into the period of Black Power. There was growing spirit of confidence, independence and resolve.

‘This was the ‘70s. We were just coming out of the Civil Rights movement. And so there was a lot of pride. There were a lot of good things going on.’

‘Our parents had fought long and hard and it was time for us to shine.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

Johnson determined to channel this new mentality into the Kashmere Stage Band.

‘Prof knew it was a time for change. He had all these kids in the band that had all this high energy. They wanted to play funk.’
Kashmere Stage Band member

‘I try to give them a chance to express themselves in the way that they are.’
Conrad Johnson

Many schools in the United States at the time had their own Stage Bands. These mostly white orchestras played sanitised, somewhat anaemic versions of pop and jazz standards. Johnson, by contrast, wrote original jazz compositions that absorbed the influence of James Brown, Sly Stone, Parliament and Funkadelic. The Kashmere sound was founded on intense rhythms and urgent harmonies, fierce beats punctuated with sharp stabs of funk.

‘At a time when they were still saying that ‘Black kids couldn’t learn, Black kids were inferior, they were violent’, the Kashmere Stage Band was our representative.’
Kashmere Stage Band member

Johnson also decided to introduce a performance element to the Band. He choreographed the guitarists to shuffle, the drummers to sway, the brass section to dip, twist and turn. The Band became a thrillingly precise, living music machine.

‘I felt like the music wasn’t enough. Because there were people listening to the band that weren’t musicians. It wasn’t enough. So I put the show into it. And no one had thought to do that.’
Conrad Johnson

The Kashmere Stage Band won a succession of state and national competitions. They toured Europe and Japan and recorded eight albums, which were subsequently extensively sampled by hip-hop artists and DJs, including DJ Shadow and the Handsome Boy Modeling School. One number featured on the soundtrack of the movie 'Baby Driver.'

‘The other bands were technically good. But they didn’t have the feel. They didn’t have the soul.’

‘Winning just gave us a sense that we were invincible when it came to competition.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

In the wake of the Stage Band’s countless victories, Kashmere High School’s football, track and basketball teams excelled. Its officer training corps, drama and debating sides won championships. And grades and scholarships rose across the board. A rising tide lifts all boats.

‘The Kashmere Stage Band gave the community part of its identity.’

‘It made everybody proud because we were kicking it.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

It’s clear that Johnson’s influence on his young students extended well beyond music and performance. He taught them life skills as well as technical skills.

‘I was kind of shy. I would basically hide behind my instrument. That’s where my power was. I didn’t have that thing that would get out and tell cats: ‘I’m here.’ I didn’t possess that. So my vehicle for that was the Band.’

‘People would make remarks like: ‘A girl on a trombone? Trombones are for boys. Girls don’t play trombone.’ They made me want to play it even more so.’

‘I grew up a straight-up thug… That man kept me alive. He moulded me into a whole different expression.’

‘He reached into our soul. He could see the future inside of us.’
Kashmere Stage Band members

Kashmere Stage Band with Conrad “Prof Johnson in pinstripe suit on left

In 1978 Johnson became dispirited by the politics, petty squabbles and jealousies that success brought with it. A new principal had withdrawn funding and, after a thirty-seven-year career, Johnson decided to retire.

‘I think that any school administrator that goes for taking music out of the system should be fired.’
Conrad Johnson

In 2008, thirty original members of the Kashmere Stage Band, all in their mid-50s, reunited for the first time in over three decades to pay tribute to their legendary leader, then 92 years old. In the documentary you can see that he was bowled over by the performance.

Conrad ‘Prof’ Johnson died a few days later.

‘I gave them pride. I gave them honour. I gave them exceptional performance. And they knew it. And they appreciated it…But we had to work to do it now. It didn’t just come natural.’
Conrad Johnson

'If you want me to stay,
I'll be around today,
To be available for you to see.
But I am about to go,
And then you'll know,
For me to stay here, I got to be me.

You'll never be in doubt,
That's what it's all about,
You can't take me for granted and smile.
Count the days I'm gone,
Forget reaching me by phone,
Because I promise I'll be gone for a while.

And when you see me again,
I hope that you have been
The kind of person that you really are now.
You got to get it straight,
How could I ever be late,
When you're my woman taking up my time?’

Sly and the Family Stone, 'If You Want Me to Stay’ (S Stone)

No. 528

David Hare, 1979. Loveridge/Evening Standard/Getty Images

‘You think attitudes are all to do with whim. You understand nothing. Attitudes are all to do with character.’
Nrovka, ‘The Bay at Nice.’

I recently saw a compelling revival of David Hare’s 1986 play ‘The Bay at Nice.’ (The Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 4 May.)

We are in Leningrad in 1956, and Valentina Nrovka, a Russian artist, has been invited to the Hermitage to offer her opinion on the authenticity of a Matisse painting.

Nrovka has had a fascinating life. She spent her youth living freely among the expatriate artists in Paris. She was taught painting by Matisse and had a daughter by a soldier who was just passing through. Then in 1921 she returned home to post-revolutionary Russia out of a sense of duty, of responsibility to the greater good. She now cuts a somewhat melancholy figure, disappointed by the flawed realities of the Soviet state.

‘Everyone here lives in the future. Or in the past. No one wants the present.’

Nrovka’s daughter Sophia meets her at the museum to seek help in arranging a divorce - a complex and expensive business within the Russian system. Nrovka, however, is sceptical of the durability of her daughter’s love for her new man, Linitsky.

‘We all have a dream of something else. For you it’s Linitsky. Linitsky’s your escape. How will it be when he becomes your reality? When he’s not your escape? When he’s your life?’

Nrovka is also more broadly critical of Sophia’s romantic talk of free will, rights and liberty.

‘’I must be myself, I must do what I want…’ I have heard these words before. On boulevards. In cafes. I used to hear them in Paris. I associate them with zinc tables and the gushing of beer. Everyone talking about their entitlements. ‘I must be allowed to realize myself.’ For me it had a different name. I never called it principle. I called it selfishness.’

Whilst Nrovka is negatively predisposed to her daughter’s divorce proposals, she is happy to discuss the principles of painting that she learned from Matisse.

‘Each colour depends on what is placed next to it. One tone is just a colour. Two tones are a chord, which is life….No line exists on its own. Only with its relation to another do you create volume.’

We realise that Nrovka has applied Matisse’s artistic beliefs to her own life: she relinquished her individual freedom in pursuit of collective good; she chose belonging over independence; she found comfort in the context of shared homeland, culture and community.

Hare’s play resonated with me because Nrovka’s core arguments seem so unfashionable today. In the modern era we concentrate so much on self-help, self-improvement and self-actualisation; on individuality, autonomy and free will. We want to achieve our own particular goals, to realise our personal potential, to be the best that we can be. We all aspire to be a star performer, a hero or a headline act. We’d all like to play a leading role in our own movies.

We talk less often nowadays about the rewards of shared success and collective accomplishment; about the benefits of belonging and participating; about team, comradeship, unity and kinship.

And yet there are compensations to be found in mutuality and togetherness at work. There are consolations in subordinating the self to the collective. Indeed you could argue that in this age of interdependence it is only in the context of the group that we can ever attain individual contentment.

When investors seek to determine an asset’s worth, they don’t just look at its intrinsic value. They also take into account the value of similar assets, thereby establishing ‘relative value’. Maybe we should apply both intrinsic and relative perspectives to our own careers.

Reflecting further on Matisse’s creative practice, Nrovka observes that the great artist worked incredibly hard, finding inspiration in everything around him. When he was tired and needed to relax, he would put his palette down and go to the mountains.

‘You can’t paint a mountain. The scale is all wrong.’

'Here's my chance to dance my way
Out of my constrictions.
Givin' you more of what you're funkin’ for,
Feet don't fail me now.
Do you promise to funk, the whole funk,
Nothin' but the funk?
One nation under a groove,
Gettin' down just for the funk of it.
One nation and we're on the move,
Nothin' can stop us now.’

Funkadelic, 'One Nation Under a Groove' (G Clinton / G Shider / W Morrison / E Krause / F Harrison / T Kendrick / C Branch / O Johnson)

No. 227

The Kashmere Stage Band: Seeing the Future Inside of Us

Relative Values: Considering Collective Good in the Workplace