Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys won the Grammy in 1999 for Best Long Form Music Video. The documentary has been reissued on DVD with retooled stereo and other bonuses. Regardless of enhancements, the documentary is an interesting look at Hendrix's trajectory as an artist with emphasis on the period after he disbanded the original Experience trio and moved toward a funkier sound. Band of Gypsys doesn't shy away from presenting conflicting views from the eyewitnesses.
The arguments are mostly over Hendrix's blackness. Was he edging closer to the Panthers and other African-American nationalists or was he beyond race, as some of his white associates maintain? There are also differing accounts of how the Band of Gypsys ended and where Hendrix was headed before his death in the fall of 1970. The portrait that emerges through the memories of colleagues and his interview on Dick Cavett is of a spiritual, creative mind able and willing to continually reinvent himself in a time period when reinvention was encouraged. The concert footage varies visually but there is no denying the music.
In conjunction with the DVD, the 1997 CD South Saturn Delta has also been reissued. The track listing is unchanged but the new package contains an interesting booklet with photos and descriptions of its previously unissued recordings from 1967-1970, the years when Hendrix took rock, the blues and the electric guitar to places it had never been.
