Radio LBB: Roots Vol.34

Now into its seventh year and the 34th edition. For the uninitiated, the Roots playlist showcases an eclectic range of music from across the globe of unfamiliar, forgotten, or recently discovered, to the most upfront sounds of now, all with the common theme of being rooted in Africa.

Some of the highlights this time round include:

Margie Day - Wine In The Wind

Margie Day, born Margaret Hoeffler of Norfolk, Virginia, was a prolific R&B singer in the late 40s and through the 50s, recording with the Griffin Brothers Orchestra and later Floyd Dixon & His Combo, before going on to sign a solo recording deal with Decca. After remaining dormant for much of the sixties she returned for two wonderful albums, in a more modern and polished vocal jazz style. Wine In The Wind has all the smooth and seductive elegance and big band drama of the James Bond themes by Shirley Bassey and Nancy Sinatra. A restrained rhythm section of jazz drums, with backbeat accompanied by some orchestral cymbals flourishes, electric guitar and upright bass, is met by a soaring and gliding string arrangement that provides a blue and gently dissonant contrast to Day’s sultry and powerful vocal.

Sly Dunbar - Inner City Blues

Wheel this up! Sly Dunbar, the LEGENDARY Jamaican drummer and producer, was the backbone of sound system heavies, Channel One, as drummer for their in-house session band, The Revolutionaries - behind immortal dubs like the Kunta Kinte and Earthquake Dub - before going on to build the dancehall sound from behind the scenes in the production duo Sly & Robbie. Sly appears here covering one of the biggest tunes from one of all time’s biggest albums, Inner City Blues, the finale to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, released in 1971 at that pivotal moment following the assassinations of Malcolm X and Dr King, when funk and soul music became the vital mouthpiece of the American civil rights movement. Fronted by Delroy Wilson on vocals and infused with Dunbar’s reggae genius as drummer, arranger and producer, this version translates Gaye’s classic seamlessly into a Jamaican idiom, speaking to the unity of black Atlantic resistance.

1999 Write The Future, Ghostface Killah - SPIKY BOiz

For those unaware, 1999 Write The Future appeared on the scene late last year, quickly turning heads with their retro-futuristic vision for hip hop. The brainchild of 88Rising, the music production company that’s launched the likes of Joji, Keith Ape, Rich Brian, and Niki, 1999 Write The Future is unique in its ephemerally shifting constellation of recording artists. Blurring the distinctions between core members and guests, 1999 have tapped the likes of Amaarae, BadBadNotGood, and Smino, along with mainstays Rich Brian and Warren Hue, from De La Soul. The standout, SPIKY BOiz, builds layers of low-slung breakbeat with reggae rhodes chords, and a stacked line up of vocalists, including Rich Brain, Smino, Surprise Chef, and Wu-Tang legend Ghostface Killah.

Nikki Giovanni - Ego Tripping 

This one’s really special. Nikki Giovanni is one of the great Black American poets that emerged from the civil rights movement in the 60s and 70s, along with the likes of Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Gil Scott Heron, and novelists like Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin, who she was filmed in conversation with on Soul! in 1971, speaking equally and mutually admiringly with the literary legend, twenty years her senior. In the same year, she released Truth Is On The Way, an album recorded with the New York Community Choir, which featured Giovanni reading poems from her collection ‘Black Feelings, Black Talk, Black Judgment’. This sort of oral poetry was a pivotal bridge between the oratory of civil rights leaders and the popular music culture that carried the flame for civil rights when its direct activists were being routinely silenced or assassinated, paralleling the development of dub poetry in Jamaica and London, as well as laying the groundwork for rap and hip hop, which has become a totalising force in popular culture. The incredible Ego Tripping is a clarion call of black power, evoking the ancient glories of the Egyptian empire, and must be considered a pivotal text in our growing understanding of the roots of Afrofuturism.

K. Frimpong - Kyenkyen Bi Adi M’awu

Alhaji Kwabena Frimpong was a legendary Ghanaian highlife singer, who performed with two bands across the 70s, the Kumasi-based Vis-A-Vis band in the early part of the decade and the Cubano Fiestas from 1975 through to the mid '80s. Kyenyen Bi Adi M’awu is perhaps his best known song, for good reason. A prime example of the richly fertile musical conversation made between luminaries in Pan-African popular music and the jazz musicians of communist Cuba that also gave us incredible albums by the likes of Amara Touré - something that often gets overlooked in the standard narratives of the fusion of traditional African forms with American disco and funk, through, for example Fela Kuti’s time as a jazz musician in London. It’s got a gorgeous tone to it, full of contradictions - at the same time driving and languid, sweet and wistful, catchy and rhythmically disorientating.

Lord Kitchener - Get Up and Get

Another highly underrated and insanely important artist! Born in Arima, Trinidad & Tobago, Aldwyn Roberts (aka Lord Kitchener) has been called, along with the great Mighty Sparrow, ‘the greatest Calypsonian of the post-war period’. He won his first title in the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, just after the close of the war in 1946. He adopted the title Lord Kitchener, following the humorous fashion of his contemporaries and fellow Calypsonians like Lord Beginner (Egbert Moore) and Lord Woodbine (Harold Phillips), who he would sail to England with, on board the Empire Windrush, in 1948. Once in London, he won Britain’s hearts and minds, performing London Is The Place For Me, which was televised live once the Windrush docked. He’d go on to perform regularly on BBC radio, open a nightclub in Manchester, and immortalise the iconic moment the West Indies cricket team beat England in the Second Test at Lord's, in June 1950, with Victory Calypso. Get Up and Get captures him at the height of his powers on the 1966 album, Kitch 67.

These are just some of the highlights in what I hope is an enjoyable musical journey that spans across continents, generations and genres…

A huge thanks go out to labels such as Now Again, Light In The Attic, Numero Uno and Luv N’ Haight, Analog Africa, Music From Memory, Africa Seven, Far Out Recordings, Strut, Mr Bongo and Soundway, who continue to unearth some of the most unique and amazing music that may have otherwise never seen the light of day.