Back to School

*** VARIOUS ARTISTS. “School Daze” sound track. EMI-Manhattan. Like the movie, this album covers a lot of ground within the black idiom, and some of its ideas work just as audaciously. In the spirit of healthy nepotism, “School Daze” producer Spike Lee has his father, jazz musician/composer Bill Lee, write and produce several tracks. One of the best is “Be One,” a sultry ballad sung by Phyllis Hyman. It’s the type of music that the Philadelphia-born chanteuse should record more often. Given the proper vehicle, Hyman is a superlative jazz vocalist, and she rides Lee’s composition in grand fashion.

Lee also offers the big-band swing of “Straight and Nappy,” the sophisticated, high-tech wordplay of “Perfect Match” and the stately gospel of “I’m Building Me a Home.” While some of the artists who appear here are not nationally known, some deserve to be. Singer Keith John, for one. He delivers “I Can Only Be Me,” a pragmatically stated love song by Stevie Wonder, with warm, richly shaded phrasing that is a mixture of Wonder and the late Donny Hathaway.

The most commercially direct cut is “Da Butt” by E.U., a popular Washington-based band. Funny and funky, this go-go track is punched up with such a hard drums/percussion sound that it dares you not to dance.

It would be shortsighted to suggest that this album--like the movie--has limited appeal. Conceived with the black audience in mind, it still should appeal to anyone open-minded enough to appreciate risk-taking.