Poetry - KRS-One & Boogie Down Productions
Gil Scott Heron speaks
Easy Come Easy Goes - Umar Bin Hassan & Ed O.G. and the Bulldogs
DJ Kool Herc speaks
Life - Jeru The Damaja
Please Don't Steal My Air Jordans - Reg E. Gaines
Qool Marv introduces Buttamilk and some of it's 1st performers Stephanie Renee, Scott & Clark (Jill Scott and then partner Tiffany Clark), Wadud, Ryva Parker, Ursula Rucker...
Black Widow Spider - Buckshot Lefonque (a/k/a Branford Marsalis)
New Breed Records Interlude - You Dig?
Rent Strike - Groove Collective
Ego Trippin - Nikki Giovanni
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Dana Bryant

"Buttamilk – It all started with you." – Jill Scott (from the liner notes of her debut LP Who Is Jill Scott?)

Essentially, buttamilk is a concept that started in Philadelphia around 1994 with three fellows named Gene, Kenny, and Marv. They all met working as interns at the classic soul station, WDAS, in Philadelphia.

Realizing that we all had a great time together and all had a love for music, especially music that was just under the commercial radio radar, we decided to band together and throw some parties. Kenny would host, Gene would get on the mic, and Marv spun the tunes.

Our first event was a house party for Kenny's birthday. We thought that it would be cool and a twist to invite some singers to sing over instrumentals as people moved and grooved...just a slight departure from the "throw your hands in the air like you just don't care," chants, you know?

Simplistic and hardly groundbreaking, but to the audience we played to, it was a thrill. People thought they were hearing new versions of tracks because they couldn't see the artists. Sometime after that party, we brainstormed on how to present what we did at that jam, but shed more light, literally, on the artists performing.

We wanted to put together a show that would showcase music, singing, and spoken word to working class Philadelphians whose taste were fairly mainstream. We wanted to bring a high level of entertainment with style and intellect to everyday people. But, we needed a name...


Buttamilk


Two records that Marv always played were Audio Two's "Top Billin" and A Tribe Called Quest "Butter." The Audio Two track had a line "Milk is chillin, what more can I do Top Billin," and the Tribe track featured Phife's hook, "It's like butta...not no parkay, not no margarine, strictly butta."

On top of that connection, being the cognitive fellows that we were, we made the correlation: Butter is what you spread to add flavor and stimulate taste, Milk is what you drink for the nourishment you need to grow…Buttamilk!


The First Show


WDAS, the station where we all worked, has an annual street festival called Unity Day. This event is huge, averaging ½ million people every summer for years. If you wanted to see your R&B/Soul idols like James Brown or the Isley Brothers or Chaka Kahn, Unity Day was it. But beyond the main stage, there were several pavilions and stages. There was a literary pavilion that was perfect for our aims. Throughout the day, the station planned to have writers and poets sign their books and meet and greet. We thought it be a good idea to have some people perform while Marv played his eclectic instrumentals and the station agreed.

(Now here’s a flashback to a couple months prior to the big day).

Kenny and I went to a friend of his backyard barbeque. Mixing and mingling, we came upon a woman named Jill. We talked about what we were up to and our aspirations and we saw that she seemed really interested. Somehow things segued into an on the spot audition as Jill effortlessly scatted jazz style, the lyrics to Onyx’s “Throw Your Guns In The Air.” Sticky Fingaz’s verse to be exact.

We couldn’t believe her voice, her ease, and the way she transformed a rough and tough Hip Hop tune into jazz. If she was down with us, we were down with her performing at our inaugural event several weeks later at the WDAS Unity Day celebration.

Unity Day with Jill Scott was where Buttamilk spread its wings into four years of parties and events that would showcase the likes of the Roots, JazzyFatNastees, Ursula Rucker, Wadud, Stephanie Renee, Rich Medina, Sarah Jones, novelist Omar Tyree, James Poyser, Jafar Barron, Dick Gregory, Sonia Sanchez, King Britt, and Nelson George.

See what that looks like: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.65870510353.147490.586515353&type=3