How Maze’s “Joy and Pain” Earned a Permanent Spot in the Black American Songbook

Our Classic Songs series highlights tracks from across music history that resonate loudly today.

Frankie Beverly holds his opening note on “Joy and Pain” for more than two time-stopping measures, levitating like an angel above the hard Earth. His voice is exultant and melancholic, not quite a funkster’s randy howl, or a loverman’s saccharine plea. There’s a touch of gospel and blues in his weary rasp, but he doesn’t sound anguished. He’s relieved, appreciative. Misery has delivered him, and perhaps it can save you too.

“It seems to me,” Beverly goes on to sing, “Joy and pain/Are like sunshine and rain.” It seems. That cautious optimism is the beating heart of “Joy and Pain,” funk and R&B band Maze’s signature song. Beverly, who died last year, spends much of the track’s seven minutes wavering before he’s convinced of the necessity of hurt and happiness. How could we even distinguish them without experiencing both? Are they even different?

That ambivalence, and the song’s rich and gentle rhythms, have earned it a permanent spot in the Black American songbook. “Joy and Pain” soundtracks and fosters Black sanctuary. It wafts through cookouts, kickbacks, and family reunions. It incites city blocks and nursing homes into electric slides. It’s not just a paean or floor-filler though. I most often listen to it alone or with my wife. It transports me to cherished spaces and experiences: the aromatic and cousin-filled kitchen of my grandmother’s home on a holiday, the fusty skating rinks where I learned to flirt, the sweltering Fort Greene Park dance party where New York City once briefly melted into my Southern hometown. It’s a sonic summoning circle.

Maze had established itself as a formidable live act by the time they recorded “Joy and Pain,” the title track of their fourth studio album. They’d cut their teeth “playing five sets, five nights a week” in San Francisco, as Beverly once put it. Founded in Philadelphia, the group migrated west in the 1970s to distinguish itself from the dominance of the harmonic Philly sound. Then named Raw Soul, they caught a break when a relative of Marvin Gaye introduced them to the soul star after seeing one of their gigs. Citing the smoothness of their funk, Gaye encouraged them to change their name, and helped them secure a record deal.

From there they began to regularly tour and record, and built a reputation for polished marathon sets that sometimes outshone the headliners they supported. That rep stretched into the 21st century, during which they released no new records but toured extensively. Shows are so central to their mythology that they have been called the “Black Grateful Dead” since at least the 1990s. Although they were a global band and enjoyed a large following in England, Black Americans often speak of them possessively. Talk show host Tavis Smiley once said the group “belonged” to the Black community.

“Joy and Pain” is central to that longstanding intimacy. Beverly got the idea for the song while reading Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 poetry collection The Prophet, which includes a canto called “Joy and Sorrow.” “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain,” the Lebanese poet wrote, likening misery to a blade and delight to the flesh that learns to sheathe it. Maze turned that cutting, almost sadomasochistic sentiment into a soft wonderland. “Joy and Pain” isn’t explicitly political, but the track’s spirit of uplift fits into the long canon of Black odes to overcoming strife. It is the anti-Sunken Place.

The song opens with a patter of drums and keyboard taps that build into a slinky bass riff from Robin Duhe. From there, the instruments and textures pour in: swinging licks from Ron Smith and rhythm guitar from Beverly; dewy synth lines and twinkly keyboard melodies from Sam Porter, pillowy hums from background vocalists. They groove for a minute-and-a-half, as unrushed as fly fishers idling in a stream. The song could easily become a jam session in the vein of War or Weather Report, but Beverly’s striking, clarion note escalates the stakes.

The singer is not content with just vibing. He’s got stories to tell, wounds to dress and, hopefully, heal. His lyrics swing between conversational and pleading. “Remember when you first found love?/How you felt so good?/Kind that last forever more?/So you thought it would,” he warbles, talking to himself as much as the listener. He sings from deep into the shock of a heartbreak, barely able to access the warmth of the relationship’s early days or discern where pain ends and joy begins.

But the confusion becomes instructive. Beverly finds comfort in nature, whose volatile duality is illustrated on the album’s cover: On one side lies an idyllic mountain abutted by a waterfall, and on the other there’s a hellish peak straight out of Mordor. And he’s not alone. As the instruments sway and swell, more voices support him, pushing his voice higher. It turns out the song isn’t as polarized as the artwork suggests: Sunshine and rain are more complements than opposing forces.

Criticizing that lack of contrast, The Boston Globe, in a concert review headlined “Maze: too much joy, too much sunshine,” once called the band “captains of a smooth pleasure cruise.” While it’s true that Maze don’t tend to rock the boat—a quality they share with Sade, it should be noted—the groundedness of their songs is a feature, not a bug. “Joy and Pain” is not an anthem of deliverance or transcendence. It’s about the tension of survival, the small and fragile pleasures of enduring.

It’s not a coincidence that so many of the spaces the song is associated with are temporary: weddings, block parties, festivals. These precious slivers of time must be seized and maybe even stolen from capitalism, which relentlessly distances us from our communities, our loved ones, ourselves. There’s no cookout without someone washing collards and marinating meats, no block parties without a committee sending out calendar invites and a tech wiz wiring speakers—tasks people do between jobs and caregiving and working through their own pains. Maze doesn’t romanticize that refusal to yield, which is thankless, nor do they encourage escape. They just nudge us toward one another. Love’s somewhere around.