REMEMBERING ISAAC HAYES

This week, we lost a giant in the music world. Isaac Hayes, 65, was found dead in his home Sunday. He will be remembered as a majestic, funny, and important figure in our culture.

Hayes was hailed as "Black Moses" in the 1970s for his compositions, recordings, and his crusades for Black Unity. His major accomplishments include writing and recordind the legendary Stax Label, where he penned classics such as "Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Coming" for Sam and Dave. His career took a major leap in 1971 when he accepted the Academy Award for Best Original Song for his "Theme From Shaft." This groundbreaking film shifted public images of Black Manhood from the clean-cut Sidney Poitier martyrs of the 1960s to the new Black Hero, Shaft, a strong, sexy crusader for justice. Hayes' soundtrack to the film suffuses exciting funky car-chase anthems with a social awareness. The "Shaft" soundtrack includes "Do Your Thing" and "Soulsville", a call to the oppressed Black Community to take pride in itself.

Hayes is also known to a newer generation as the voice of Chef on "South Park". This wise, smooth iconic character plays the closest thing to a role model that the young characters on the show ever have.

I was lucky enough to see Hayes in concert at a Northern Michigan casino in 2001. He was exactly as I imagined he would be: tall, slick, funny, and brilliant. His band of four keyboardists, guitars, horns, violins and percussion was in perfect sync with Hayes' subtle direction. He could take a final two notes from a crescendo of a song and hang on them for a few minutes, essentially "sampling" the riff and turning it into a piece unto itself. He used this approach throughout his career, taking a tiny piece of a song, a breakbeat, a lick, and transforming it into a song. The opening hi-hat and guitar riff of his "Theme From Shaft" are a perfect example, and it was this creative approach Isaac Hayes took that helped change music forever.

A brilliant composer, Hayes was also a great interpreter of existing material. His haunting renditions of "The Look of Love" and "Walk On By" are among his best known works, reinventing the songs and filling them with funk, intensity, and raw emotion. New fans of his music should check out his "Soundtrack from Shaft", "Hot Buttered Soul" and his stripped-down experimental late-night jam session, "Presenting Isaac Hayes."

Isaac, you will be remembered always. Bringing funk music to mainstream audiences brought with it a new social awareness. The music of change and Civil Rights never sounded more powerful.