Joyous. Fun. Funky. And one of Nidhi’s favourite bands of all time! Put on either Boogie Wonderland (245M views on YouTube) or September (458M views on YouTube) any time of the day, any time of the year – and you can see Nidhi bopping ???!  EWF were on the radio in Delhi a lot during the 70s and 80s for a very simple reason – they were a fantastic band making very sophisticated music. Their music has R&B and Latin grooves, Soul, Funk and Disco beats, and Jazz rhythms …with amazing, joyful, uplifting lyrics. And their list of hits  – Boogie Wonderland, September, Got to Get You Into My Life, Let’s Groove… are songs on which it is absolutely impossible to keep your feet and shoulders still. If you’ve ever seen videos of EWF live – with 16 musicians boogieing on stage, just having fun- you would know exactly why I love the band!

EWF were making hits for a long time during the ‘70s but it was ’78 when they took over the world (and the airwaves in Delhi too) with the release of ‘September’. Their plan was to release a ‘Best of earth Wind & Fire’  album but they needed a new song to boost sales of the album. Maurice White came up with this funky groove but really didn’t have any words to go with it…..He just kept walking the studio going “Ba Dee Ya, say do you remember” while the band were perfecting the tune. “Ba Dee Ya” being a filler which was to be later replaced with actual words. Of course, it didn’t happen that way?.  And so, we have a song that goes  

Hey hey hey
Ba de ya, say do you remember?
Ba de ya, dancing in September
Ba de ya, never was a cloudy day

Ba duda, ba duda, ba duda, badu
Ba duda, badu, ba duda, badu
Ba duda, badu, ba duda

Of course, the song went straight to No.1 on the R&B charts with bouncy, high energy, and a groove that that grabs your ankles and never let’s go! We played it a lot at our parties way back in the day??

A few months later, EWF topped ‘September’ with the incredible ‘Boogie Wonderland’, one of the last few disco hits before the ‘Disco sucks’ meltdown in the summer of ‘79. It is such a fun dance tune – I dare you to watch the video or even listen to it and not have a happy grin on your face! However, unlike ‘September’ this isn’t really a happy song – it’s about people who go the disco to bring a few minutes of joy into their humdrum lives, boogieing to stay emotionally alive (SNF anyone?). I bet though you’ve never really listened to the lyrics – how can you when the monster groove just makes you want to dance!

EWF was created and led by the great Maurice White, a Chicago drummer. Through the 70s and 80s they won 6 Grammys and 50 Gold & Platinum albums (yea, that’s 50!). Maurice was an amazing drummer to start with, working with the likes of Muddy Waters, Santana & Uriah Heep. But he was much more than that – he was a songwriter & producer and played the Kalimba, an African thumb piano which became part of the signature sound of EWF. Maurice’s starting point when setting up EWF was his brother Verdine White and they were the core of the band, through its changing line-up through the years.

Fun fact – Maurice was a Sagittarian, born on Dec 19 – and he named the band after the three elements in his sun-sign – Earth, Wind & Fire!