This Friday 11th June, fans of real black music are going to feel nice. The OKRA project has teamed up with Adesose Wallace’s Ibile and Dalston’s Passing Clouds venue to bring the people a night of tone, taste and texture spanning Africa, the Caribbean and South America.
Representing Africa, 11-strong outfit Ibile hit the stage with a serious blend of Afrobeat, Highlife and raw West African drums. For better or worse, there has been an exponential rise in the number of Afrobeat/Afro-Funk/Highlife bands in the capital over the last few years but be warned, Ibile is the real deal. If you read the excerpt from our interview with him, you’ll know that Adesose Wallace is as authentic as they come. He’s played with Geraldo Pino, the James Brown of Afro-funk, and the inspiration for Fela Kuti to transform his Hi-Life Jazz sound into Afrobeat. Ade has also worked with Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and a host of other African music legends and to this day, teaches West African rhythm and song to students countrywide – basically, he’s real.
Representing the Caribbean, OKRA presents Ras Happa and the Harambe Drummers throwing down a live set of pounding Jamaican roots drums and dance. Long before reggae music warmed its first amplifier and rumbled it’s first speaker cone, the island of Jamaica danced to the beat of Nyabinghi, Kumina and Revival drums. Rhythms and dances which are so powerful, they still emerge in the beats and sequenced movements of the freshest bashment dancehalls. Unfortunately, the dancehall didn’t assimilate the spirit of the culture with quite the same vigour…..that’s where we come in. To compliment proceedings Duke Etienne and Suga Kan’n keep it raw, roots and occasionally, savage with a DJ selection linking the past with the buzz of the afro-future.
Representing South America, Otto Nascarella takes a pause from the rootical, tropical funk of his Saravah Soul project to throw down a scorching selection infused with his Brazillian roots.
GB is something special. In a musical omniverse drowning in the throwaway output of countless copies of Ableton Live, his music speaks differently. Listen to his recent Xpander EP for his own GIFTEDandBLESSED imprint or his production on All City’s fifth installment of their Los Angeles 10″ series and you’ll know.
Our generation, to our detriment, has all but forgotten the true power of sound. GB has not. After studying the seemingly Salvia inspired sleeve of his latest release, I decided I had to make the link and dig deeper. This is what I found…
HH: So, I recently picked up the Xpander 12″ and was blown away by what it hid in it’s grooves. I looked you up and then realized that i’d been hearing your music for almost 10 years and just never made the connection! For those people who are in that position, who is GB?
GB: I write, produce and play music. GB is a moniker under which I’ve released much of my music. I’m an informal student of what I call “technoindigenous studies.”
HH: You’ve collaborated with Flora Purim, Airto Moreira, J*DaVeY, Steve Spacek, Baatin and a whole host of others. Listening back over your discography, your sound is diverse to say the least. Can you explain a little about your musical pedigree and the kind of sounds that have shaped your evolution?
GB: I enjoy music from around the world. I’m interested in exploring lots of musical territory. I enjoy drawing from many sources of inspiration, not to replicate a vibe someone’s already achieved by instead to see how I may be able to transmute, reconfigure, or add to that. At the moment, when working with others, I’m most interested in going places with them in which none of us have spent much time.
HH: Are you resident in LA? I once saw an interview with SaRa in which they talk about the energies and vibrations affecting the city and it’s inhabitants, creatively and otherwise. Is this a concept you can relate to?
GB: Yes I am currently a resident of L.A., so I suppose I relate to that in the sense that living here I’m subjected to the earth energies and social energies that are dominant. L.A. is the communication center of the world, something like Earth’s throat chakra. It adds up that there’s so much sound being transmitted out of L.A. But on the flip side, for my taste, all of my favorite music comes from throughout the world, from both likely and unlikely places.
HH: You record under a few other aliases too. Could you tell me a little more about them?
GB: I’ve released music as Julian Abelar, Frankie Reyes and the Reflektor. Keep in mind that GB is more of a “character” than anything. There is a sound that has come to be associated with GB. Julian Abelar, though related in vibration to GB, is a very different thing, more focused and intentional. Julian Abelar is an ode to the nagual Carlos Castaneda and his shamanic initiation with the nagual don Juan Matus as documented in his series of books. The name Julian Abelar is a name that comes from their lineage of sorcerers. So again, that project was intentional, and releasing it as Julian Abelar gave me the space to let it be what is was. Had I released it as GB, it might have been considered a disappointment to some who were expecting what they got out of Soundtrack for Sunrise. The Reflektor is a similar thing. And Frankie Reyes is a derivative of my actual name, emphasizing and paying homage to my Puerto Rican ancestry. If you spend time with the music, you’ll get a sense of the subtle variations.
HH: You seem to have a particular affection for analogue electronic equipment. What inspired you to evolve in that direction?
GB: I am most interested in a hybrid sound. My earlier releases were mainly sequenced digitally via computer software with a combination of samples and live instruments (I’ve never used software synths). I’ve played analog synths on most of my releases, but in recent years I’ve spent lots of time learning about the connectivity of these machines and how to use them in a configuration that allows the machines to speak to one another and keep in time with each other, like a band. And of course, this allows me to operate the entire band by myself in real time. Plus the sonic quality of analog synthesis is special. You can hear it immediately. There are many studies you can find out there on the compromises with digital vs analog. But that’s not to say that you can’t do interesting things with digital sound that you can’t do with analog. It’s only a matter of taste and understanding. But having said that, electronic music in general has a definite limit for me.
HH: Talking of inspiration, looking at the artwork on your most recent Xpander release and reading some of the copy on your site, there is a definite spiritual thread running though your art. Is this intentional, and if so, how do you relate art to spirit?
GB: Art for me is an attempt to make matters of spirit tangible. I use art to translate inspiration from spirit into a three-dimensional density-based experience. Art affects its audience, one way or another. My aim is to affect my audience positively, to inspire others to be inspired.
HH: To quote directly from your site you are‘an active advocate and practitioner of therapeutic sound healing techniques’. Could you expand on this please? What role do you think music has in the human healing process?
GB: Sound health is a very real thing. You can input sensory data into any of the senses and have a healing effect, and just the same you can have a detrimental effect. Without being conscious of it (for most people, anyway), you’re either helping or hurting your body by what you give it. So in my Healing Tones: Inverted Listening release, I emphasized specific colors and frequencies using analog synthesis again with the intention of activating the body’s innate self-healing capabilities. I’ve used these principles in several yoga studios here in L.A. as well as university lecture halls and alternative healing spaces.
HH: The most recent offering i’ve heard from you is the Raices Africanas sound collage under the Frankie Reyes moniker. It features a lot of traditional african drum music. What are your thoughts on the traditional music of the African diaspora and what relation have these rhythms got to your electronic output? Do raw organic drum music and programmed electronic music share any common ground?
GB: African music is inextricably a part of who I am. My rhythms, be they human-generated or machine-generated, are very African in essence. The drum is the most primal universal mode of communication and vehicle for achieving higher mind states. I don’t think we’ll ever stray too far from the drum because it basically equates to our life force itself. And in our technological age, in this transitional moment in human history, electronics are in many ways as organic as hand drums.
HH: What projects are you working on at the moment? Anything we should look out for in the near future?
I will be putting forth more live electronic offerings, as well as more earthy human music. I am still a student of music in the end, so as I continue to learn and expand, the breadth of my output will continue to do the same.
What is Gifted and Blessed? What are it’s aims and objectives?
Gifted and Blessed is the outlet for my music. Nothing more than that.
The last time I saw Meshell Ndgeocello live, she was involved in a project known as ‘Spirit Music Sextet’ collaborating with Mos Def Big Band in one of New York’s more intimate settings.
As the crowd anticipated a run-of-the-mill set with re-inventions of her handful of hits, Ndgeocello flipped the script beyond recognition. What was apparently going to be a standard jazz/soul/funk/rock live performance turned into a live jammin’ session-cum-experimentation of various psychedelic sounds reminiscent of the cosmic interludes on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
Once I stopped trying to make sense of what was going on, I could sit back and enjoy the band’s hypnotic super-sonic journey.
“Meshell Ndegeocello is so underrated it’s ridiculous. Her shows are some of the best shows that I have ever seen. She is just this beautiful soul. She ain’t pulling no punches. She is telling it like it is.”
—Lenny Kravitz, VH1 Neo-Soul Special, October 25, 2001
She went on for no less than 3 hours to which, at most of the time was with her eyes closed as the accompanying musicians (including an SFX DJ) injected free jazz riffs and electronic AV effects to the performance.
At the abrupt end, which none could have anticipated, she opened her eyes, thanked the crowd for “participating in her journey” and jumped off the stage and out the fire exit for a “smoke.”
Everyone was left stunned and solidly divided on whether what had just been seen was a big con or the work of a genius. I decided to hunt her down and quiz her for myself. I can vividly recall the experience as she spoke about many issues, from not exploiting the medium of music, to being honest with what one’s shares as an artist, to Fela and Miles, the Jazz Cafe’s sound system, London’s record shops and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
In all fairness, despite her intense sense of presence, I could have comfortably been having this casual chat with anyone from the ends. In fact, it was only when the venue manager interrupted us to remind her of her second performance sound check, did she snap out of the convo and get back into professional mode.
In professional mode, she has given birth to 7 top quality, highly diverse studio albums, an uncountable amount of collaborations and side-projects and has earned herself 10 Grammy nominations plus other accolades. In short, Meshell is the envy of her industry peers. As Jill Scott puts it, she really “… is in a realm of her own.”
—Jill Scott, VIBe Magazine, May 2002
Being nurtured in the midst of Washington DC’s Go-Go (funk) scene, this bisexual female has never been afraid to do what she wants, regardless. Never wanting to be pigeon-holed, her sounds have ranged from pure beat poetry – as can be heard on ‘The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel’ and ‘Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape,’ to bass guitar-driven funky jazz vibes (on most of her work) to the folksy, soulful styles she displays on ‘Bitter‘ or more complex hypnotic sounds like in ‘The World has made me the Man of my Dreams.’ She will offend you, if necessary and has no intentions for mass appeal. Meshell strives only to be herself (and Miles Davis reincarnated).
Her realness has even been admired by those who have ‘played the game’ – so to speak. Madonna once told a British paper that:
“Meshell is an incredible talent who never plays by the rules. That’s her strength—and weakness.”
—Madonna, The Sunday Telegraph, August 29, 1999
Whilst Talib Kweli goes as far as to label her with the uttermost kudos stating simply that:
“She is music.”
—Talib Kweli, VIBe Magazine, May 2002
So after a mini hiatus, we gladly welcome her 8th studio effort “Devil’s Halo.” The album will be released on October 6th on ‘Mercer Street‘, a label that she has just joined. Her press release tells us…
“Devil’s Halo harkens back to the way records used to be made: no click track or electronic synthetics, with a focus on musicianship and live band energy. Devil’s Halo represents a return to a place that she truly appreciates, music that is created and performed by people’s hands. It’s said to be influenced by a wide breadth of sounds – from The Human League to Wu Tang to Yes.
The album will be produced by Meshell and guitarist Chris Bruce. Additional musicians on the album are Deantoni Parks (drums), Keefus Ciancia (keys), Lisa Germano (cello), Oren Bloedow and Mark Kelly (background vocals).”
I’ll be damned if I don’t get my hands on this.
1. Slaughter
2. Tie One On
3. Lola
4. Hair Of The Dog
5. Mass Transit
6. White Girl
7. Love You Down
8. Devil’s Halo
9. Bright Shiny Morning
10. Blood On The Curb
11. Die Young
12. Crying In Your Beer
Ancient Africa has given us more than we know. sciences, principles, processes and most of all knowledge. Egyptians defined the Ka as the life force of an individual, which although it was an ethereal projection, required food and drink for sustenance. I’m not going to extend myself further and try to decipher the full meaning of Shafiq Husayn’s new offering – i’ll leave that to you. What I can tell you is ‘Shafiq En’ A Free Ka‘ is a heavy journey into the psychadelic, tripped out reaches of a spiritually focussed master of the boom-bap. Composed entirely using outboard equipment and packed with collaborations from the likes Rozzi Daime, Bilal, Fatima, Count Bass D and Om’Mas Keith, Shafiq En’ A Free Ka is an eagerly anticipated project from 1/3 of the Sa Ra Creative Partners.
As a follow on from the SaRa interview I posted a couple of days back, we thought we’d drop this preview mix of some LP tracks lovingly cut and pasted by Brownswood’s DJ Lefo to free up your life forces….
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