If you’re a frequent visitor of jazz-not-jazz, you may recall my rave review for Jangbalajugbu by ‘Segun Akinlolu aka Beautiful Nubia and the interview on this website.
Released independently, Jangbalajugbu was very successful, selling over 250,000 copies in Nigeria. And regarding Beautiful Nubia’s political conscious lyrics this makes his success even better than just judging the sheer number of copies sold. Since this proves that there is obvious are market for music that not only moves your body but offers you food for thought as well.
It’s good, that Beautiful Nubia still continues his mission of addressing drawbacks in everyday life and in the political life with his new album Awilele. The musical world really needs a conscious voice like his.
Like his previous albums Awilele was recorded full analogue giving it a rough, pristine feeling.
In these trying times the song Awilele has a real global approach. Beautiful Nubia says “This is a call to people to awake from their lethargy and speak out against bad leadership and the ills in their society.” With neocons in power in most western society and politicians, who are more interested to fill their own pockets and fulfill lobbyist’s desires instead of their voters’ wishes, bad leadership isn’t happening in Africa only.
Matters Arising is, again, a song with a universal meaning, warning us against “greed, selfishness and religious extremism/…/ And you, now you are in a position of power, you’ve forgotten your history and responsibility/ living the wasteful life of the affluent while children of the poor root in garbage for their daily bread/ True friendship and love is hard to find here, there is so much bigotry, so much hatred, how can there be progress in the midst of all this?”

So is there any hope in Beutiful Nubia’s music that things get better you may ask? There is, most songs have a more uptempo vibe giving the afore-mentioned Awilele for example a positive musical background. And then there are songs in which ‘Segun tells us how important a well-working community can be, a community, that respects the elderly (Awon Agba), to whom you can turn when you need insight and advise. A community, where you’re not afraid to ask your mother when you’re in trouble (Ominira). Preserving and evolving such a community wouldn’t work if you don’t teach your children their roots (E Ko’mo L’ede “Please teach the children our language/ Please teach the children our culture/ Please tell them our stories/ Please clothe them in our native dress“). Listening to Oke Bola, an homage to Beautiful Nubia’s past, it sounds like he had had this great and peaceful community then.

There’s much more food for thought here like O Ya O!, which again is a call to people not to let politicians run one’s life but to take a stand for their desires, or Come Warrior, that plays on a Yoruban metaphor that life is war. And there’s also happy-go-lucky dance song (S’o wa Pa?).

Beautiful Nubia has also released three volumes of poetry, a novel, writes and arranges his songs, speaks English and Yoruba, and plays acoustic guitar and percussions, which makes him a modern Renaissance man in some ways.

Awilele is another fine example of Beautiful Nubia’s creative powers and of modern African music with a meaning.

Tracklisting of Awilele: 1. Intro - Iba F’Olojo/ 2. Awilele/ 3. S’o Wa Pa?/ 4. Ominira/ 5. E K’omo L’ede/ 6. Ma Fo’ya/ 7. Come, Warrior/ 8. Awon Agba/ 9. Matters Arising/ 10. Oke Bola/ 11. Each Time You Turn/ 12. Oruko Rere/ 13. Lekeleke/ 14. O Ya O! | released 2004 on EniObanke Music

For more infos visit beautifulnubia.com and cdbaby.com. You can also read an interview with Beautiful Nubia here.

[If you want to discuss Beautiful Nubia’s music, you can leave your comment below and also use the forum]

Joey Negro In The House is available these days from Defected Records. With three CDs this is somewhere inbetween value for money and music overkill. There are two mixed CDs offering 33 songs between disco, deep house/garage and funk with Notenshun Feat. Sandy Mill, The Two Tons, Blaze Presents Underground Dance Artists For Life feat. Barbara Tucker, Sydenham & Ferrer, Kings Of Tomorrow, Imagination, Fred West & The J.B.’s, or Martin Solveig to name but a few. The third CD includes bonus material (like a discography, biography, interview) and some special re-edits by Joey Negro. If you ever wanted to have a Joey Negro version of Roxy Music’s Angel Eyes, you’ll need this record. Other re-edits include the Kings Of Tomorrow’s Finally, Don Carlos’ Alone and The O’Jays’ Put Your Hands Together. By the way, the original version of the O’Jays song appears on their Ship Ahoi album that is a must-have for any soulboy with its dramatic title song and the famous For The Love Of Money.
So all in all Joey Negro did a good job with the songs he selected and mixed…as if we had expected something else :-)

Why not let Joey Negro explain his motivation behind this compilation?

Here’s an interview Toni Tambourine (Defected Records) did with him.

Q: How did your career start?

Joey Negro: I’ve been DJ’ing since the late 80’s but what really started me off was making music. I’d always been a big music fan. I managed to get a job in a record shop in London in 1986. I moved from Clacton on Sea in Essex down to London and got a job in just around the time house music was really kicking in. It was the time when tracks like Jack Your Body and Fingers Inc had come in but hip-hop and rare groove was really strong too. It was a really exiting time to be in London and I met a lot of people like Jonathan Moore (Coldcut) and Trevor Nelson, who was working on one of the vans that sold us records, it really seemed like there was a new school of people coming through. I stayed in the record shop for about 9 months before getting a job with a record distributor (Rough Trade), which taught me a lot about the business. I then started my own label called Republic, we put out a lot of early New York garage - things like Blaze and The Turntable Orchestra. At the same time I started making my own music, something I’d always wanted to do. My first release was a track I’d done with a friend called MDM - Get Busy on Republic. I started Z records in 1992 which was set-up to release my own records or stuff that I really liked. Out of our 75 releases, I’d say around 65 are me or tracks that I’ve remixed. Things like Must Be the Music, Can’t Get High Without You, Saturday.
>>>continue

Olatunji Olugbenga Omotayo Olanrewaju Adetokunbo Abdul Majeed Onabule, better known as Onabule did it again and that is, surpassing himself. Just like it’s predecessor Ambitions For Deeper Breadth In Emergency, Brake Silence is another great soul album that has everything we love about Ola’s music, original, self-written songs, a warm, organic musical background, meaningful lyrics and of course Ola’s great voice.
The opener Soul Town is a great piece of midtempo soul that finds Ola lamenting over the fact that the dreams and hopes we had in the past are unfulfilled today (”Somebody tell me what happened to all those dreams of peace/ And understanding and harmony and brotherhood and love/ Being together for ever and ever/ Don’t it seem like Soul Town, Soul Town is gone“).
Heart Of Lead is story telling soul about an former lover, who wants to re-activate the bonds of love but to Ola this just doesn’t make sense.
A priceless, excellent ballad comes with Love Affair, thanks to spare instrumentation this is the perfect vehicle to show Ola’s vocal capability. Of equal class is the album’s closing ballad Forgiven. I think it would be very interesting and musical satisfying to hear Ola with a classical jazz trio (piano, bass, drums).
Funky midtempo songs like Savoir Faire or Need To Know round things nicely while Going Away might surprise you with its rock-influenced guitars. But after all this is all pure Ola and the music he wants to make or like he said in an interview with Echoes “But I won’t be doing this with a major label. Those days have gone. I’ve seen people who have built something special the independent route and then fell for the big cash offer, and all their uniqueness goes. I won’t trade that.”
To sum it up this is the perfect album for those who are into pure, unaltered soul music that comes from the very heart of a man. Ola gives us the very essence of soul.

For more infos visit ola-onabule.co.uk.
[edit: In Emergency, Break Silence will be released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg on April 18th 2005 ZYX Music. (I hope you will have more luck opening the zyx site, neither my Firefox, nor my Opera could load this site…it just keeps loading and loading without showing anything. And if you disable JavaScript you get a site telling you that you should acctivate it :-/ ]
[second edit: you can also read an interwiew with Ola here.]

Better late than never…I have this album for some time now but due to my state of hibernation (guess I’ve mentioned it now often enough…lol), I review it but now…since this is classical big band jazz, that’s timeless anyway it really doesn’t matter that the review wasn’t written soon after the album’s release. And after listening to the album the fourth time now, I really wonder why I haven’t listened to it before…it’s that good.

George Gee has founded his own label GJazz Records and Settin’ The Pace is its debut release. And what a fine record it is. It just has written class and quality all over it. George and his 17 piece band bring us the right combination of jazz standards, original compostions (by producer/music director Frank Foster), instrumentals and vocal tracks. Featured vocalists are the impressive Carla Cook as singer on three songs (Lover Come Back, The Very Thought Of You and Autumn Leaves) and Lance Bryant on I Don’t Want To Learn To Sing The Blues.

Of course George gets some extra points for including my favourite latin jazz instrumental Mambo Inn here. It’s a real pleasure to hear this in a big band arrangement with lots of percussion by Renato Thoms.
Songs like Bass In Yo’ Face or the title track Settin’ The Pace really show that there’s nothing that can beat real musicians with real instruments. If they come together and have some fun on the recording session and it’s captured on record than you have an album like this that is an enjoyment to listen to. Furthermore Settin’ The Pace prooves that big band jazz still can sound as good as it did in its heyday.

For more infos visit gjazzrecords.com.

Since the nice folks at Heads Up kept sending some records during jazz-not-jazz hibernation it’s more than fair to review the new album No Boundaries by Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Touted as Zulu Goes Classical on Heads Up’s website No Boundaries is indeed an interesting concept that combines South Africa’s a cappella band par excellence Ladysmith Black Mambazo with the strings of the English Chamber Orchestra. Having recently discovered the magic of strings on Alice Coltrane’s World Galaxy and Lord Of Lords albums, I must admit that I really like the idea and - what’s even more important - the result.

I especially like the original compositions here like the opener Jabulani, an update from their early album Thandani, or Ngingenwe Emoyeni (Wind Of The Spirit Of God), that’s maybe the song on the album that sounds the most one might expect a Zulu band to sound like.

Dona Nobis Pacem, which is taken from the Missa Brevis for Youth Choir by Isak Roux is one of the stand-out songs for me with it’s gospel-inspired handclapping.

The only thing that’s not working in my ears is the inclusion of the tenor Robert Brooks on two songs (J.S. Bach’s Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring and F. Schubert’s Sanctus (Heilig, Heilig, Heilig). First of all this won’t work for me because I’m not into classical music and on the other hand it just sounds to forced to me to marry classical European music and Zulu music. Whereas on songs like Walil’ Umtwana (The Child Is Crying) or Amazing Grace/Nearer My God To Thee it’s just done with ease and great credibility.

All in all an ispiring album that’s worth to check out if you’re musically open-minded.

For more infos visit headsup.com and mambazo.com.

While the Fertile Ground album was certainly “old news” this is a real news. The Yellowjackets will release their new album Altered State on March 25, 2005 on Heads Up

Although Yellowjackets have released numerous albums, their Time Squared release was my first Yellowjackets album. This was certainly because I was more into vocals all the years and I only recently discovered my love for instrumental jazz (and then I’ve gone to the other extreme with discovering the opus of Alice Coltrane - but more about that in another post soon).

Altered State brings us eleven original compositions amongst them a full vocal track in the shape of The Hope, that features Jean Baylor on vocals and has a nice gospel influence with the Perri sisters on background vocals (although Sharon, Lori, Carolyn and Darlene are renamed Perry here).

The ten instrumentals Bob Mintzer, Russell Ferrante, Jimmy Haslip, and Marcus Baylor have created are all fine and flawlwess and perfect for a lazy day at home although some songs could’ve been improved with adding a little more depth to them in my opinion. Especially the inclusion of the bass clarinet here and there reminds me of smooth jazz’ icon Kenny G. but maybe it’s just that this particular instrument is forever spoiled for my ears :-)

For more infos visit headsup.com and yellowjackets.com.

Of course there were some great albums released during jazz-not-jazz’ hiatus. One of them is Fertile Ground’s Black Is… album released on Blackout Studios/Counterpoint Records.

Who owns Fertile Ground’s Spiritual War or Sesaons Change album will know that they are one of the best bands out there that offer a great melange of soul, jazz, poetry, reagge and dub. In their music you find echos of soul’s music icons like Stevie, Marvin, Donny, or Roberta.

All songs are lovingly sung by vocalist extraordinaire Navasha Daya adding even more depth and spirituality to the music. Listen for Spiritual World with its Yoruban prayer for example (”Cause down here is something different/ Adding experiences to my soul/ It may be viewed just like a prison/ But it’s necessary for my growth/ In this schoolplace world we’re living/ Our personality we must control/ We must keep a higher vision/ Remembering our purpose and our role“)

Live In The Light, the first single, offers what we all loved about 70s soul music. A funky upbeat groove and lyrics that dare to voice an opinion (”So let’s stop the war, stop poor, stop for peace/ Stop the bomb, stop the bush, stop the beast/ Stop for love, stop the lies, stop the fights/ Stop the deaths, stop the hate, live the light“).

And the good things continue with songs like Another Day, the spoken words entry An Artist Prayer or one of my favourites Yellow Daisies, although I could virtually name every song on Black Is… as favourite song. They are all great and if you’ve missed this album on its release in autumn 2004 make sure to get it now.

For more infos visit blackoutstudios.com and counterpointrecords.co.uk.