Brooklyn nine-piece Turkuaz is a musical powerhouse that takes cues from throughout Funk’s history and mashes them together with its own personalized groove and vibe. From Parliament-Funkadelic through Fitz and the Tantrums, with stops in Electro Funk, Disco and AfroBeat, Turkuaz has all the Funk bases covered and then some.
The band was formed about eight years ago while some members were attending Boston’s Berklee College of Music. The group eventually hit the road and began building a following on the Jam Band circuit, drawing praise and earning fans for standout appearances at fests like Gathering of the Vibes and the All Good Music Festival. Turkuaz is a fully armed Funk militia, with a tight horn section, two fantastic female vocalists — Sammi Garett and Shira Elias — and a bass/drums/guitar groove that just won’t quit. Live, the band is known for creating a big, sweaty dance party (complete with flashy stage outfits and choreographed dance moves), and also for allowing space within their original songs (and tasteful covers) for extended improvisation.
Turkuaz’s latest release is its most acclaimed full-length yet, the expansive Digitonium, which delves into more experimental Electronica (“Fish Out of Water”), ’80s synth grooves (“Nightswimming”), the psychedelic G Funk of the title track and “Doktor Jazz,” which could’ve been a 1999-era Prince b-side. Digitonium made some music news headlines recently when a group of fans discovered that the album synced up near perfectly with the 1963 Disney animated movie The Sword in the Stone (à la Dark Side of the Moon/The Wizard of Oz). The fans make a pretty good case for the synchronicity being intentional (check out the full video online … fast, because when Disney finds out it’ll be gone in a flash), but Turkuaz has yet to comment on the theory (which we will take to mean it was indeed on purpose).
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This article appears in Feb 10-17, 2016.