Chris Barbosa
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Chris Barbosa is a producer from New York who redefined electro funk as Latin freestyle in the early 1980s with Shannon's "Let The Music Play".
Early career
In 1981 the Bronx-born Barbosa was a reporting DJ to New York's WKTU a process which involved the radio station calling up select club & mobile DJ's in their market on a weekly basis to get their top 20 playlist as a reflection of what music is being played in the streets. These reports would determine which records were added to the stations playlist. In 1982 his grandmother purchased a keyboard for him, Roland JX-3P. An executive from Emergency Records named Sergio Cossa signed Barbosa to do production work with the record label. Some of Barbosa's greatest musical influences were Arthur Baker and John Robie, the duo who invented electro funk with Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock. Later on in 1983 he teamed up with Mark Liggett to look for a singer to lay down the vocals to "Fire and Ice", which was the track to "Let The Music Play." A young African American R&B background vocalist named Brenda Shannon Greene recorded the song.
The "Fire and Ice" or Let The Music Play track invented by Barbosa was produced differently from the rest of the Electro Funk records. It had more Latin American based rhythms with a heavy syncopated drum sound than the records produced by Arthur and Robie. This style of Electro Funk was redefined as Freestyle because of the way it was produced and mixed. Barbosa is indeed the genre's founder. Baker and Robie eventually copied his sound three months later on Jenny Burton's Remember What You Like (released three months after Let The Music Play) Tina B's Honey To A Bee (1984)and the Goon Squad's Eight Arms To Hold You (1985).
In September of 1983 the 12 inch single of the song was released . Greene was then dubbed as just "Shannon." After the initial success of the song and some contract negotiations, Shannon went on to record a full-length album of the same name. The single was heavily played on radio stations nationwide, including WBLS, WKTU and WRKS. Her album, released in February 1984 was also the first Freestyle album in Dance music history, and went gold (selling over 1 million copies at the time).Both the 12" & 7" singles where also certified Gold.
During the course of 1984 Barbosa and Liggett sought out other session singers to lay down tracks on more Freestyle songs. These artists were Nolan Thomas (Jewish), Jay Novelle, Xena and Monet (who were African American).
1986-Present
Emergency Records wasn't signing anymore artists in 1986, forcing Barbosa and Liggett to launch Ligosa Records. The duo immediately signed Monet & George Lamond to their label. In addition, Ligosa Entertainment was a subsidiary of the record company and produced songs for upcoming Freestyle music acts like Judy Torres (dubbed the "Queen of Freestyle'), SaFire, Mark Kalfa, etc among others. Barbosa also found chart success in 1990 with George Lamond's Bad Of the Heart hitting the Billboard Top 100, peaking at #25.
In 1995 Barbosa and Liggett dismantled the production and record company and parted ways. Barbosa continued to contribute to the Freestyle genre he created, producing underground artists who rarely had their new material played on mainstream radio stations in the United States. A big surprise came to him in 1999 when Shannon invited him back to update her 1980s singles Let The Music Play and Give Me Tonight.
Barbosa has strong affiliations with the audio tape-editing scene.
Lists of artists produced by Chris Barbosa
- Shannon
- Judy Torres
- George Lamond
- Monet
- Jay Novelle
- Lisa Fischer
- George Lamond
- Cynthia
- SaFire
- Nolan Thomas
- Fascination
