![]() Labelle’s musical juju brought them all the way from playing the sardine houses of the Chitlin’ Circuit to headlining New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House they were the first contemporary music act and Black female vocal group to perform at the Met. Provoked by manager Vicki Wickham, the bouffant wigs and chiffon girl-group dresses were tossed onto the pyre as Patti, Nona, and Sarah danced over the flames in space-age sartorial glam. Theirs was a banquet of Black female rebellion audiences had been waiting to feast on. Tired of trying to fit in, they chose to stand out by mixing their gospel roots with electrifying funk, rock, and sounds of New Orleans, topped with lyrics voicing truth to power. The first group to break away from the traditional girl-group matrix of the 1960s, Labelle reinvented themselves into a thrilling Other. But it was Sarah Dash’s vivacious personality and sweet soprano, Nona Hendryx’s deeply resonant voice and fiery imagination, and futurist manager Vicki Wickham’s vision that would ultimately result in the creation of the Labellian cosmology-a space-time map of sonic starlight. Patti’s miraculous voice led the way, undoubtedly. ![]() ![]() The first all-woman band of rock stars to grace our planet, Labelle were three artists and a silent fourth who, across two decades and seventeen years together, created a legacy unlike that of any other music group before or since. Say the name Labelle and most neural pathways lead straight to Patti LaBelle, diva extraordinaire-as if Labelle, the entity of three, never were. Why Labelle Matters, informed by interviews with members of the group as well as Bertei’s own experience as a groundbreaking musician, is the first cultural assessment of this transformative act. With sumptuous and galactic costumes, genre-bending lyrics, and stratospheric vocals, Labelle’s out-of-this-world performances changed the course of pop music and made them the first Black group to grace the cover of Rolling Stone. After a decade on the Chitlin Circuit, however, they were ready to write their own material, change their name, and deliver-as Labelle-an electrifyingly celestial sound and styling that reached a crescendo with a legendary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House to celebrate the release of Nightbirds and its most well-known track, “Lady Marmalade.” In Why Labelle Matters, Adele Bertei tells the story of the group that sang the opening aria of Afrofuturism and proclaimed a new theology of musical liberation for women, people of color, and LGBTQ people across the globe. Performing as the Bluebelles in the 1960s, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash wore bouffant wigs and chiffon dresses, and they harmonized vocals like many other girl groups of the era. “A smart, shrewd, joyful read, as piercing as any top C shriek from the woman who gave Labelle their name.” -Barney Hoskyns, author of Glam! Bowie, Bolan, and the Glitter Rock Revolution
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