Kashmere Stage Band

Arguably the best high school musicians and composers of their time, the Kashmere Stage Band, from the mid 1960s through the 70s, set the bar for student music groups across the country. Kashmere High School is located in Kashmere Gardens, a predominantly black neighborhood in the north end of Houston, Texas. In an effort to sustain his music program and create opportunities for his students, bandleader and Professor Conrad O. Johnson sought to build not just the best high school stage band in Texas, but the best high school stage band in the world. The rhythmic sophistication and earthy quality of KSB’s music is evident in the reproach of the arrangements written by Johnson and his band members. Grooving onstage in platforms and crushed velvet suits to popular audiences, between 1968 and 1978 KSB recorded eight studio albums of original funk fused with jazz accompaniment. And, despite a changing roster of students, KSB came to be considered one of the best funk bands ever. I’ve always been drawn to the jazzy atmospheric chic characteristic of 1960s and 70s film scores. KSB’s music anchors the breeziness that I prefer with complex soul influences to produce smoother rhythms that transcend the party beats with which popular funk is primarily associated. The band’s unique funk idiom remains impossible to imitate and the group’s peerless sound is popular among producers and deejays today.