Getting your boss a card on their birthday is one thing, but what’s one to do when their boss is funk legend George Clinton?
If you’re Toledo native Constance Hauman, you just sing your heart out and do a good job onstage. It’s the best gift.
“We’ve been celebrating George’s birthday all week,” Hauman said over the phone on July 22, which fell on Clinton’s 81st birthday. “It’s best to celebrate it with the crowds.”
Hauman is the lead singer of the funk band Blu Eye Extinction, which is touring this summer with Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic. The tour is being billed as his last. They performed at Promenade Park as part of the ProMedica Live summer concert series on July 8.
Hauman traces a varied musical career, including early days performing with the Toledo Opera and a stint in Austria for an operatic adaptation of David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
She was born in Ann Arbor, but grew up in Toledo. Her mother, Judy Hauman Dye, is a classically trained singer, and her late father Dr. Robert Hauman was one of the developers of Fort Industry Square.
“As I was a kid of the ‘70s, my basement was all about Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Parliament-Funkadelic,” Hauman said. “But my mom was a classical singer who sang with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, and my dad was really into Motown and R&B, so I really straddled both worlds when I was growing up.”
Hauman attended Ottawa Hills High School, where she described an amazing choir education by the late Eugene B. Jefferson. She credited that education with preparing her for a life onstage.
Hauman’s career has taken her all over the world, and she’s performed with opera companies in the United Kingdom, France, and Canada, just to name a few. She also had a film role in Frédéric Mitterrand’s film adaptation of Madame Butterfly.
In addition to performing with Blu Eye Extinction, which arose from the ashes of the now-defunct band Miss Velvet and the Blue Wolf, Hauman has released several projects on her own record label Isotopia Records, including the solo albums Falling Into Now and High Tides. Her most recent album, Tropical Thunderstorm, was featured on the NPR program “Play It Forward” in May, 2022.
Hauman closed out 2021 by releasing the single “Rare Christmas.”
She connected with Clinton after recording at the fabled United Sound Systems studios in Detroit, where much of Parliament-Funkadelic’s original music was recorded.
“It’s so bizarre but it really makes sense that I would have an amazing relationship with George,” she said. “He incorporates so many styles; Parliament was so ahead of their time, and it’s some of the best music ever written. There would be no hip-hop or rap without him.”
Hauman is executive producer for the first live full-length Parliament-Funkadelic album in more than 40 years, which Isotopia is set to release in October as part of a coffee table book celebrating 50 years of Clinton’s career. The inaugural Blu Eye Extinction album is scheduled to drop in September, once the tour with Clinton ends.
Archie Ivy, Clinton’s manager, offered high praise for Hauman.
“George appreciates that Constance is such an incredible talent. He was just amazed at how she could put together so many good musicians in her group and then he got to see her perform as an opera singer, which completely blew his mind,” Ivy said.
When she’s not performing all over the world, Hauman resides in Manhattan, but gets back to Toledo about once a year.
“I’ve been so fortunate to have a really amazing career.”
First Published August 3, 2022, 12:00 p.m.
