And - oh, yes - it wouldn’t be bad if the title had a sexual meaning, too. ” Crossings and Sextant both incorporated African imagery on their covers, and I definitely wanted the jungle in the title. “I wanted something primitive and earthy but with an intellectual component - a smart title that would get people thinking,” he wrote. The band recorded the songs, a brilliantly realized blend of jazz exploration and funk thrust, and Hancock used his chanting sessions to reflect on a name for the record. It was a party, and people loved the groove.” “People were dancing, laughing, and having fun, just completely letting loose as we played. “We played in dance clubs and more intimate venues, for all kinds of crowds, and everybody just flipped out!” he wrote. Testing out the material in front of audiences confirmed Hancock’s sense that he’d found his new direction. “If Mwandishi had worked with an intergalactic palette, this new band was working with an earthy one,” he wrote. As soon as the group started jamming - working on a new piece that would eventually be called “Chameleon,” along with a new arrangement of Hancock’s 1962 hit “Watermelon Man,” inspired by African Pygmy music - Hancock knew they were on to something: “a new kind of band: a jazz-funk fusion band.” He promptly disbanded Mwandishi and formed a new band, retaining only reedist Bennie Maupin, a fellow funk and soul aficionado, and recruiting drummer Harvey Mason, percussionist Bill Summers, and bassist Paul Jackson. And that’s the moment I decided to start a funk band.” I had to face my own prejudice - or as Buddhist practice says, face the negativity of my fundamental darkness - and defeat it. And funk was related to jazz, and it was related to the black experience as a whole. Then why was I feeling dismissive of the idea? I had certainly been listening to a lot of funk music, including Sly Stone. Was it somehow worse to play funk with my own band than with someone else’s? No. “I decided to ask myself a few simple questions: Was there anything wrong with funky music? No. That upset me, because my discomfort felt like an expression of jazz snobbery, where funk was somehow lower on the food chain. And I loved it!” Hancock continued.” But then the image changed, and it was my band playing that funky stuff, and Sly Stone was playing with me - and that felt strange and uncomfortable. “uddenly I saw an image of me sitting with Sly Stone’s band, playing this funky music with him. What was cycling through his head was Sly and the Family Stone’s 1969 funk landmark of the same name. And then, one day as I was chanting, I heard it. “I spent hours at my Gohonzon” - the scroll that Nichiren Buddhists look at while chanting - “seeking an answer to this question and trying to keep my mind open for some kind of direction.