The movement of her body and the drum are one. Every sway and hit of her hips seems effortlessly in sync with beats from the drum and the notes from the piano and saxophone.

It’s a practice session for the Chipo Kandake Revue: Black Magic Woman, which promises to deliver Kandake’s dance and jazz drummer Herlin Riley’s rhythms, along with a solid dose of history at the Toulouse Theatre on Saturday night.

Kandake is determined not only to entertain her audiences but also to educate them on the roots of American music. When she created the flyer for the show, she deliberately did not put the term Black American and instead put American music on the flyer.

“Because everything we call American in music history started with the Black community,” she said. Through dance, she can help people understand that history. “I am the Black Magic Woman – a living, dancing archive guiding you through the evolution of American music,” she said. “From Blues and Jazz to Rock ‘n’ Roll and Funk, this is an ode to us — to our sound, our movement, our legacy. The very rhythms that laid the blueprint for contemporary music and dance.”

It’s especially important to her, Kandake says, to debut this revue in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, a genre whose Black roots have also been ignored at times.

The show’s two main performers didn’t know each other until last year, when Kandake walked into a jazz bar where Riley was playing. Hearing his distinct syncopations, her body was called to move in her intense dance style, which has long been riveting to New Orleans audiences because it can seem as though she’s gone into a trance or had a spirit overtake her.

“I’ve never heard nobody drum like that before and I couldn’t help myself. I just started dancing,” she said. “I posted it on social media and it gets five million views.”

“I was amazed by her, her control, the movement and the passion that she dances with,” said Riley, recalling that evening.

Highlighting the city’s ‘extraordinary talent’ and its spirit of performance
After the viral video, Riley and Kandake began talking about doing an official show together. On Saturday, their discussions will become reality at the Toulouse Theatre in the French Quarter in a show that features the two of them along with a star-studded lineup of local talent including singer Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, spoken-word star Sunni Patterson, drummer Alfred Jordan Jr., multi-instrumentalist Gladney and Cuban pianist Victor Campbell.

“With this show I wanted to highlight the extraordinary talent here in New Orleans,” said Kandake, an ethnographic dancer and the founder of FemmeFunk, who believes that no other city can match up: “We have the greatest musicians and the greatest talents in the world,” said Kandake, 30 years old, who graduated from Dillard University with a degree in film and has traveled to the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, and Egypt to study dance.

Though similar performances have been staged in the city, Kandake is determined to utilize her research and dance moves, to curate an all-around experience centered around one of her dance idols. “This time I’m highlighting American Music through dance movements, in a very Josephine Baker style,” she said, noting that she has long been inspired and influenced by the legendary dancer Josephine Baker – who became an international Black superstar during an era when the U.S. was still enforcing Jim Crow laws.

During the Jim Crow era, Black artists were shut out of top U.S. venues and often could not perform on the same stages with white counterparts in the segregated South and elsewhere. In response, Black promoters created the Chitlin Circuit, a network of entertainment venues that catered to Black artists and audiences. Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, played a key role in the tour as a cultural hub for local talent, civil rights and entertainment.

Within Louisiana, the historic (and now newly renovated) Dew Drop Inn at 2836 LaSalle St. was often the first stop for performers, while a popular club called the Sugar Bowl in Thibodaux was the next stop. Listed in the “Negro Motorist Green Book” these venues were the only places audiences could see the greatest Black performers of that time, entertainers like Aretha Franklin, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Irma Thomas and many more.
The vibrant Chitlin Circuit history – and the performers who traveled it – are often overlooked in American music, but Kandake says that she is motivated by those spaces of culture and showmanship, which brought first-class acts to first-class stages, though society had deemed them second-class.

“We are putting just in the same styles of vaudeville or the Chitlin circuit. This is a full-blown show,” said Kadake. Audience members will also have an opportunity to enjoy themselves after the show, having fun and dancing, she said.

Better understanding Black roles in American music
American history has long been selective about who gets the recognition for contributing to the threads that make up our nation. Up until recently, as Beyonce released her Cowboy Carter album, few understood the Black role in American music, more specifically country music.

Late last month, a clip of Shaboozey and Megan Moroney presenting the American Music Awards award for Best Country Duo went viral. Moroney, reading the teleprompter, said that the Carter Family “basically invented country music,” prompting a surprised look from Shaboozey, who later posted that “the real history of country music is about people coming together despite their differences, and embracing and celebrating the things that make us alike.”Still, in one minute of the AMAs, he had reignited the controversial conversation about the origin of country music and how it has since been ‘whitewashed’ over time.

Though dance has also been “white-washed,” it has been slower to join this conversation.

But Kandake has long been on a personal mission to expose the truth. She uses her social media as a tool to trace the roots of dance trends that have often not been credited to African American artists, especially Black women.

In a recent social-media video, Kandake explained that the snake-hips dance popularized by the “King of Pop” Elvis Presley was actually first performed by Nina Mae McKinney in the 1929 film Hallelujah. Though the dance is attributed to Black British jazz band leader and dancer Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson, he wasn’t given his nickname until 1934, five years after McKinney’s key performance.

After Kandake published the explanatory video about the snakehips dance, Elvis fans sought out her page, which was shut down due to overwhelming reports.

Kandake was not trying to be derogatory, she said. Instead, she believes that uncovering the truth behind art history is not to discredit the talent of others but to expound upon the Black identity in America and by the adversities endured.

‘To move forward, you need to know where you come from’
It’s important to know this Black history because of Sankofa, Kandake said, referring to the African bird symbol that looks backward, grasping at the past to inform the present and future. To move forward, you need to know where you come from,” she said. “They gave so much to culture and have opened the doors for us to do what we are doing,” she said.

A prime example of the possibilities when you are informed of where you come from is Herlin Riley, who is a part of the legendary Lastie family, New Orleans music royalty who hail largely from the Lower 9th Ward. As early as three years old, Riley learned to play the drums at the kitchen table using butter knives, taught by his grandfather Frank Lastie, a jazz drummer who also spent time with Louis Armstrong at the Colored Waifs home for boys in 1913.

What started out as a game between the two eventually transformed into drumming skills Riley would perform in church services. His mother Betty Ann Lastie, was an organist and his uncles Melvin, David and Walter “Popee” Lastie were in a band called the Lastie Brother Combo.

If you listen closely you can hear the blend of African, Reggae, Brazilian and all sorts of different styles in Riley’s drumming, which he attributes to him learning the vocabulary of drumming.

“The drums have so many different colors and so many different characters and sounds, so I try to be open and be imaginative enough that I can, I can explore those different sounds,” says Riley describing his one-of-a-kind drumming style. “…When I find a new sound, I try to find a way to incorporate it inside of the music that we are trying to create.”

What sets apart good musicians from great musicians is their ability to be emotionally naked when they perform, Riley said. “That’s the greatest attribute of true artistry.”

He plays drums in a way that feels right within him, Riley said. “You know, it is not just thinking that you’re gonna find a formula for success or a formula to be accepted,” he said. “It’s about really just being yourself and being true to yourself and true to being true to your own spirit.”

Saturday, 8 p.m.: Chipo Kandake Review at the Toulouse Theatre, 615 Toulouse St., New Orleans, LA 70130. Tickets available HERE.