Kool & the Gang perform with Amir Bayyan, top left, and Lavell Evans, bottom left, in Las Vegas. BET / Getty Images
Kool & the Gang perform with Amir Bayyan, top left, and Lavell Evans, bottom left, in Las Vegas. BET / Getty Images

Blended: Nine nuggets about Kool & the Gang – straight from the founder’s mouth



They started off playing jazz in the 1960s, switched to funk in the 1970s, with staples such as Hollywood Swinging and Jungle Boogie (which was memorably featured on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino's movie Pulp Fiction), and filled dance floors in the 1980s with massive disco-­pop hits including Fresh, Celebration, Ladies' Night and Get Down on It. We look back on five decades of groove with Kool & the Gang bassist Robert "Kool" Bell.

1 Last year marked the 50th anniversary of Kool & the Gang

“I didn’t expect to be together 50 days – let alone 50 years. We’re really happy about that. We still have four of the original eight members from when we started in 1964 – we lost four. There’s been some trying times, some hills and valleys, but we’ve been able to do it.”

2 It might be Kool’s gang, but the band is run as a democracy

“I have three other partners. Kool was my nickname, so I kind of became the one in charge out front, but there’s still four equal partners, and if I get voted out on something, the majority rules.”

3 Jazz legend Thelonious Monk was Kool’s godfather

“My father was a boxer, Bobby Bell, top five in the world. We lived in New York City. Before they built [the arts complex] Lincoln Center, there used to be apartments over there [on Manhattan’s Upper West Side], and my father and Thelonious Monk stayed in the same building. When I was born, he just asked.”

4 ... and Miles Davis used to hang out

“Miles Davis wanted to be a boxer, he used to come over to the gym and he wanted to get into the ring with my father, to spar a little bit. But my father wouldn’t do it. He said: ‘Miles, I respect you as a musician, I don’t want to hit you in the lip and mess up your career’.”

5 The band taped a song in the UAE last year with the Syrian singer Asala

Kool & the Gang's last public gig in the UAE was in 2006, but they were in town last year to tape a show for Coke Studios, where they performed She's Fresh with the Syrian singer Asala. "She sang in Arabic, we did it in English – she's got a wonderful voice. I was told the record was No 1 in the UAE for six or seven weeks and we got three million hits on that."

6 Kool was given some advice by his idol, James Brown

“He was like: ‘You guys are number two to me, man, I got the funkiest band in the land – you sound good, but I’m the godfather here. Make sure you take care of your publishing, man, or some guy’s gonna rip you off for your music.’ ”

7 The band recently toured the United States as co-headliners with hair-metal behemoths Van Halen

"People said: 'How the hell is that going to work? The rock bad boys of the 1980s and Kool & the Gang?' We surprised them all. David Lee Roth, he had a vision – he came to me and said: 'We were hot in the 80s with Jump when you had Ladies' Night. Our fan base is 60 per cent ladies – come on Kool, let's go have a party'. And that's what we did, and we shocked everybody."

8 There are some big names being lined up for the band’s next record

“We reached out to will.i.am and Pharrell – they’re busy, and you know the bureaucracy of record companies, but I think we’ll make something happen before the year is out. We might do something with Nile Rodgers – we already did one song. We reached out to Kid Rock and Van Halen – we’ll see.”

9 In another world, Kool could have been a mechanic

“My grandfather was a mechanic and at 1 or 2 years old I used to get under the car with him. Very young, I was attracted­ to that – I made my first motor­bike from a lawnmower, putting it on a bicycle frame. If I hadn’t gotten into music, maybe I would have nailed a job with Mercedes or something. There wouldn’t be no Kool & the Gang then.”

• Kool & the Gang perform on Friday at 9.45pm

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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