Weather Report song title "Dara Factor One" – What is “Dara Factor”?

Question

What does the music title "Dara Factor" means of the song "Dara Factor One" by Weather Report ?

I would like to know the meaning of the song title "Dara Factor".

URL for this music:

Answer 1

This detailed website Weather Report: the annotated discography describes the two Dara songs like this - both quotes are from Brian Glasser's "In a Silent Way" (shortened to IASW below), Sanctuary Publishing Limited, 2001.

" Erskine explained the genesis of “Dara Factor One” and “Dara Factor Two” to Brian Glasser: “The Dara Factors–that was one long jam. I remember they got this extra-large reel of tape, and when we were doing it they even ran a speaker out into the lounge so all the people working in the studio could hear it. We wanted to do a jam, and at one point I said, ‘Joe, how about something like this? This would be fun,’ and I played a kind of pocket groove. I thought it was cool. And Joe waved me to stop. He’s standing in the center of the room, I’m in my drum booth, and he says through the microphones, ‘What’s fun about that? I don’t hear anything fun in that.’ So that’s why Dara had that kind of ass-backwards beat, because he was always looking for something out of the ordinary.” [IASW, p. 226]

Brian Risner told Glasser, “Dara Factor was basically, ‘Hey, we got an hour left. What are we gonna do?’ And I was so efficient with the production on that record–we had two days booked, and we’d gone in and gotten two takes on everything, maybe three, and we’d gotten everything we wanted. So he had an interesting sequence pattern, probably on the Oberheim, and they jammed on that. There was a lot of work on post [-production] on it, because basically it was a groove and a basic melody, so we cut it and added a lot of the accents and stuff to make it work.” [IASW, p. 226]"

I can find no references to "Dara" as a fictional character or film, or brand name, other than references to the Weather report tunes, or folk with the first name "Dara". So, in keeping with the song's origin as a way to fill up a recording tape, I'd say the title is equally ad-hoc and has no particular meaning.

"Dara factor" sounds to me like the kind of thing (effect, product, sinister organisation) that would belong in some sci-fi or comic book/cartoon universe : so maybe there was the intention to give the track a mysterious name, in keeping with the band's avant-garde image and status, but that is really just my own opinion, based on no hard evidence. Compare with their other quirky titles "Mysterious traveller" etc.

Answer 2

Great News --- Obtained the answer from (Weather Report drummer) Peter Erskine himself ----

“Dara” was a made-up word for something in the band, I don’t remember what exactly … Jaco, and then Joe, liked to add the word “factor” to another word, as if to explain a phenomenon or event … so, the “Dara Factor” is an inside joke, linguistically, without any real meaning. That’s my best recounting
-Peter Erskine