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Photo courtesy Burma Jam
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Burma Jam at the original Village Cafe in the 1980s (Photo by Suzanne Bozarth)
After fading from memory for 30 years, Burma Jam is back. The legacy catalog of the RVA post-punk/reggae/ska/mongrel band was released in June by the archival label Richmond Relics, transporting audiences to a bygone era.
“There was a lot of incredible music on the Richmond music scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s,” says Burma Jam’s keyboardist, Alison Auth. “We were lucky to be selected.”
In May, Auth and fellow band members guitarist Tim Harriss, saxophonist Ernest von Offenheim and bassist John Q. “Hook” Booker gathered at the Cuban restaurant Kuba Kuba in the Fan and set loose a flood of memories. “We haven’t really talked that much in many years,” Auth says.
Discussions of recording sessions flowed into stories of touring everywhere from Toronto to New Orleans and daring vertiginous roads in West Virginia in their repurposed school bus. Their promotional materials are a time capsule collage of band artwork, newspaper clippings and halftone photos.
Like many post-punk bands, Burma Jam’s sound came from playing together, practicing — and sometimes learning to play — their instruments three hours a night. They opened for reggae giants, such as Burning Spear, and idiosyncratic legends, including Fishbone and Bad Brains. The group’s lyrics still apply, even after all these years.
Burma Jam blazed in the mid-1980s but fell apart in the mid-1990s on the brink of a European tour. Everyone was moving on with their lives. Drummer Melvin “Malik” Johnson, a founding member and arguably the band’s linchpin, moved away. Most of their recordings dissipated, either on CDs and cassettes that disappeared into private collections or were amateurishly digitized in obscure corners of the internet.
But, as William Faulkner wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Modern technology can dispel the haze of time, making recordings as vital and immediate as the moment they were created.
Image courtesy Burma Jam
Choosing Burma Jam for reissue was a “no-brainer,” says Jim Thomson, the founder of Richmond Relics and the drummer for Alter Natives, a seminal local band during the ’90s. “We were part of the same scene. [Burma Jam was] a singular band, danceable but with a rock edge — a perfect representation of what was happening at that time in the larger musical landscape,” Thomson explains. “You couldn’t find their stuff online, or, when you did, it was a poor digital transfer. Alison has been invaluable in getting tapes and other material together.”
The catalog drop offers musical surprises, even for the band. “There are some great songs I had completely forgotten about,” Auth says. “We would love to release the live recordings. It was always hard to capture that energy in the studio.”
Through pristine remasters, new generations can experience Burma Jam without the recording limitations of the previous era. It’s music from a vanished time, when hearing albums required material commitment: tracking down records, buying tapes and listening to them on boxy speakers vibrating in the open air rather than in private earbud isolation.
“It was a great time for music,” Harriss says. “Every band seemed to have their own sound, their own influences. You would hear a Grateful Dead cover band, a hardcore pop band, a reggae band — often all on the same bill. And you would see the same people out at all the shows.”
Burma Jam thrived in that handmade post-punk, predigital era, a youthful swarm of artists challenging the racial and political pieties of a Southern city bound by tradition. In their music, unearthed in a different world, energetic optimism still shines through.
The Richmond Relics reissue of Burma Jam’s music catalog is now available to stream on Bandcamp and other digital platforms.
