a timeline<\/a> on his website, after his sister got a guitar to play \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind\u201d and he had the \u201cidea to play it louder,\u201d the timeline said. He studied music theory and composition at Webster University in St. Louis and joined an R&B band called the New Direction; after college he moved to San Francisco and immersed himself in jazz.<\/p>\nIn 1982 he returned to New York, where he took \u201cevery gig imaginable,\u201d he wrote in the timeline, including jobs scoring commercials, making \u201cbad dance records\u201d and playing \u201cmafia weddings in Bensonhurst for $75.\u201d In 1984, the owner of New York\u2019s Calliope Studios asked Power to fill in for a vacationing engineer; he ended up working on a record by the group Stetsasonic, which included Prince Paul, who would go on to produce much of De La Soul\u2019s music.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my theories about record-making in general is that if the track is rhythmically buoyant, or sort of interesting enough, then you don\u2019t have to sell the song so hard,\u201d Power said in a 2007 interview<\/a> with the recording magazine Tape Op. \u201cOne of the problems with badly produced music and demos that come in is the time is not compelling. Even if it is somebody playing an acoustic guitar and singing, it\u2019s got to have this thing to it.\u201d<\/p>\nPower, whose many other recording credits include projects by Ozomatli, Angie Stone<\/a>, David Byrne and Brockhampton<\/a>, began teaching at NYU in 2006 and retired last year. Among his survivors is his sister, Robin.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n