America Paz - female precision bass player and 'funk'

[Bob Eisenman]

In the seventies I roomed with a co worker at the same Boston hospital research building. He played guitar and on weekends he and friends would jam at the apartment in Brighton. The friend who played bass guitar was exceptional and another guitarist-roommate was a student from Chicago at Berklee. Watching them jam and listening to the creative flow was fun.

I started following bass players on YouTube and on one video searching session came upon a street musician video poster and bass player named America Paz who plays in Chile , South America. Her hair color changes from video to video. I liked her sound on the bass guitar

Some of her early Street musician videos include these two.

 

 

This video of a solo loop set incorporates some of the sound found with the slap bass player in the first Street video in this post. It sounds great!

I wondered where this 'street' bass player would find her niche in the South American region where she is native resident. Recently I found a couple of 2016 videos of her playing with an all girl group called the 'Functastics- Chile'.

The first is a dinner engagement where the all girls group play out their hearts to a luke warm audience.

 

The last America Paz video in this post is a 'hot' medley of pop hits called 'Funktastic DanceMix' where each member of the all girls group struts their stuff  to tunes ranging from James Brown to Earth-Wind and Fire and to Bruno Mars.

 

Several other music videos and a calendar of events from Facebook show the former 'street' musician on stage holding her own with a crowd and another backup group. Good to see the success!

Funk is sort of new to me but with bass musicians like Berklee graduate Alissia Benveniste playing her original tune 'Let it Out' the appeal of funk goes academic.

 

[Chris Westland]

That's really awesome @Bob Eisenman ... If you're an amateur musician, watching these really great musicians make you feel so insecure and inadequate.   I think bass players are special breed.  In the 18th and 19th centuries the acoustic bass was just simply seen as an ungainly nuisance; But the growth of R&B and rock since the 1950s and guys like James Jamison have made it the  central foundation of a music group.  And bass players for some reason or other, like Paul McCartney, Dr. John before he played piano, or Sting go on to be the managers, stars and muses of their music groups.

[Bob Eisenman]

9 hours ago, Chris Westland said:

I think bass players are special breed

My interest in the bass sound doesn't really go back centuries. However out of necessity I've learned to use contra bass and double bass from using soundfont in synth music as 'choices' for a track.

A lot of my music memory came from my mother who, as a housewife, would play her style of music records during the day. Those were the days of Mitch Miller sing along. 

A favorite musician of hers was Tony Bennett a controversial choice by some religions. As a Protestant she loved songs like 'I left my heart in San Francisco', a possible real life experience for a young married woman whose spouse went to serve in the Pacific around 1945. I don't know where my father shipped out for real but California is high on the list.

British musician Ralph Sharon wrote the song which became famous. His piano is very talented as accompaniment for Mr. Bennett. 

As my mother grew older I became more involved in her daily affairs and her tastes in living and mine became more intertwined. At some point near the end of her life I bought a Toshiba Satellite laptop which ran Windows ME and which had a CD/DVD player. I bought 'Tony Bennett's New York (produced with music from about 1996). The DVD has strong bass tones throughout the DVD which begin almost in the first seconds of the DVD.

The stand-up bass player is Douglas Richeson who in 1996-1999 played with the more contemporary 'Phil Collins big band'. Phil Collins has a special place in a former significant other, I'm not sure if there is a bass connection.

Tony Bennett lectures on a DVD about the new era of music that started when microphones could produce 'volume-ous'(sic) sound just by speaking into the microphone. I suppose the analog and digital eras contributed to the Electric bass becoming more conveniently played (as a guitar rather than amplified stand-up) than the stand up bass.

A few years ago I started searching YouTube for both male and female bass players and came to appreciate a number of YouTube bass players including America Paz.

Alessandra Scaravilli

Tal Wilkenfeld (with Jeff Beck)

Marta Altesa

Anna Sentina

Victor Wooten

Wojtek Pilichowski

Frederico Malaman

 

 

 

 

[Chris Westland]

I'm a big fan of both Tony Bennett and Ralph Sharon; I really love their music and I think the period that they tend to sing and play is the period I like songs from (1920-40s... Kern, Arlen, etc.).   Bennett's an inspiration at 91 years old and still going strong.

[Bob Eisenman]

If music education works in a similar way to the coddled structured environment of some private schools I was associated with then one can assume that the student and the learning process goes through a period of acceptance, values criticism and instructional improvement prior to 'graduation'. The Chicago-Berklee School of music room mate I once knew said something like 'does anyone really graduate from Berklee', a kind of tip of the hat to the evolving mainstream music market into which most 'graduates' want to find a niche. A recent Berklee YouTube post brings the viewer face to face with a polished performance of young faces presenting old material (Earth, Wind and Fire) in a new way. It's hard to imagine this kind of result happening independently outside of a school managed process. Considering the cost of formal education (plus room and board) the polished result also needs to please adult parents who likely become financially involved with their kids music learning process while at the same time presenting marketable talent to the world.

 

 

[Bob Eisenman]

On 8/20/2017 at 10:47 AM, Chris Westland said:

I think bass players are special breed.

I was watching the x games and 'Flume' was the music entertainment. It turns out that Flume is an innovator in the ' future bass' realm.

 

 

 

 

[Bob Eisenman]

Humm....Walter Becker of Steely Dan (bass player) died.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/09/03/breaking-news/steely-dan-co-founder-guitarist-walter-becker-dies-at-67/

"LOS ANGELES >> Walter Becker, the guitarist, bassist and co-founder of the 1970s rock group Steely Dan, which sold more than 40 million albums and produced such hit singles as “Reelin’ In the Years,” “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” and “Deacon Blues” has died. He was 67."

 

[Mono]

I have to add Marcus Miller to the list of all-time favorite bass players, also because he is such a great composer.