Deep Cult and Roots Music

‘Synchro Sound System & Power’ features the music of Nigeria Fuji Machine, which includes some of Nigeria's finest ‘Fuji’ master drummers and singers, and is newly recorded by Soul Jazz Records in Lagos.

Fuji is the heavily percussive and improvisational style of Nigerian popular music, at once modern and yet deeply rooted in the traditional Islamic Yoruba culture of Nigeria.

Here on this album Nigeria Fuji Machine’s striking and powerful lead vocalist Taofik Yemi Fagbenro soars above a wild and energetic backdrop of polyrhythms played on traditional talking drums, trap drums, electronic and street percussion to create a powerful wall of intense sound.

Fuji is hi-energy street music, heavily percussive which evolved out of the Islamic celebration of Ramadan, which became a major event in mid-20th century Lagos. Groups of young men walked through Muslim neighbourhoods at night singing improvised ‘wéré’ music to the accompaniment of pots, pans, drums, bells and anything else available, waking believers for the early morning prayer. By the early 1970s this music had crossed-over into popular Nigerian culture where it came to be known as Fuji, first made popular by the artist Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, as the music began to be performed commonly at parties and social events.

In the 1970s and 1980s three Nigerian artists – King Sunny Adé, Chief Ebonezer Obey and Fela Kuti – all secured international major record deals bringing popularity to the Nigerian musical styles of Juju (Adé and Obey) and Afro-Beat (Fela Kuti’s unique mixture of highlife, funk and jazz) abroad, but in the process ignoring much of Nigeria’s rich musical landscape. Fuji is, alongside Highlife, Juju, Afro-Beat, Sakara, Afro-Reggae, Waka, Igbo rap, Apala and numerous others – one of these central styles of Nigerian music.

The singer Barrister described the music as follows: ‘Fuji music is a combination of music consisting of Sakara, Apala, Juju, Aro, Afro, Gudugudu, and possibly Highlife.’ Juju performer King Sunny Adé described the difference between the two styles of Fuji and Juju somewhat competitively thus: ‘Fuji music is more or less like my music without guitars. It’s like I’m singing in a major key and they are singing in a minor. The music itself is the music of Juju music.’

Today Fuji remains a powerful popular music with deep and powerful Islamic roots which continues to modernise and attract new generations of young Nigerians and Nigeria Fuji Machine’s ‘Syncho Sound System & Power’ is a powerful and intense musical experience.

This album is released as a limited-edition heavyweight vinyl edition (+free download code), deluxe CD and digital format.

Soul Jazz Records’ latest album ‘Yoruba! Songs and Rhythms for the Yoruba Gods in Nigeria’ is newly recorded in Lagos, Nigeria.

The album is co-produced by Laolu Akins, founding member of the legendary 1970s Nigerian Afro-Funk/Rock group Blo, and Soul Jazz Records label head Stuart Baker.

This album features songs honouring the Nigerian gods of the Yoruba traditional religion – Yemoja, Obatala, Ogun, Sango and others – as well as a selection of instrumental cuts focussing on the Bata and Dundun drums. The album comes complete with extensive text and photography (40-page outsize booklet in CD/ full text in gatefold double vinyl + inners) showing the influence of Yoruba culture throughout the world and the social and historical context for the music contained here.

The enormous impact of Yoruba and West African music and culture is worldwide – from the first Afro-centric explorations of African-American jazz musicians in the 1950s such as Art Blakey, Randy Weston and Dizzy Gillespie, the explosion of Nu Yorican Latin music in New York City starting in the 1960s – Mambo, Boogaloo, Latin funk and soul - through to the sacred and powerful Afro-derived music of the religions of Santería in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil and Voodoo in Haiti, which all came in to existence on account the Atlantic slave trade which began over 400 years ago. On a wider scale West African music remains the primary root of all African-American musical forms – from New Orleans jazz to Bronx rap, gospel, soul and more.

Yoruba! features an array of local master drummers led by Olatunji Samson Sotimirin and singers (featuring the lead vocals of Janet Olufanmilayo Abe) performing heavyweight Afro-rhythms, with talking drums, Bata and Dundun drums and a mass of percussion in these deep spiritual and sacred songs used to honour and worship the traditional and ancient Yoruba gods in Nigeria, West Africa.

'Hypnotic, spiritual rhythms' FACT Magazine

Soul Jazz Records’ new album features the truly intense, hypnotic and fascinating Vodou drums of Haiti, a stunning collection of trance-like rhythms and beats traditionally used to induce spirit possession in the Vodou religion.

Soul Jazz Records first journeyed to Haiti in 1996 to record a series of three albums about Haitian Vodou music and culture. One of these, ‘Voodoo Drums’, featuring the drum rhythms used to bring about spirit possession struck a striking chord with listeners, and amazingly went on to become one of their best-selling albums.

"I haven't heard anything quite like this; the rhythms are very deeply orchestrated yet it also sounds like improvisation. There are tonalities and textures coming from this album like I've never heard. A great album by Soul Jazz, very well recorded. Some of the sounds I have no idea how they are getting them! This album is bending my ear and setting off the dancing devils in my soul!! Unreal!" Guardian

In 2016 Soul Jazz Records returned to Haiti once more to record a new second volume of the same intense Vodou drumming. Recorded in the capital of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, some 20 years after their first visit, this album also features the very same musicians, the Drummers of the Société Absolument Guinin.

"This record, which consists entirely of recordings of vodou drumming made in Port-Au-Prince, is one of a series of Soul Jazz releases exploring Haitian music, all of which are worth your attention. Nonetheless there's something about the intensity and virtuosity of this particular drums-based album that's particularly transportive. It captures the extraordinary complexity and sophistication of these ceremonial rhythms, which shift, interlock and switch angle of attack with a logic that's near-indecipherable as a listener unable to see visually how they unfold.

These drum rituals are central to Haitian vodou, their power to awe and mesmerise isn't dimmed through being relatively unfamiliar with the traditions that underlie them; these recordings are dynamic and riveting in their intricacy and power." Quietus

Like the first album, these new recordings somehow manage to walk the line between serious ethnological authenticity and a connection with the energy and intensity of the dance rhythms of techno and house music that make them quite unique:

"Soul Jazz yet again come correct with the roots and culture. This amazing set of ritual breakbeats Haitian style has to be the most phenomenal, left field battle breaks album you could imagine. The rhythms used cause spirits to manifest themselves in the physical world, all powerful, some benevolent, others less so. Enjoyable and really quite mind expanding, this is recommended to anyone who thinks traditional music is not for them. Really unparallelled, both in terms of quality and the competition." Boomkat

This album is released worldwide on heavyweight double LP + download code, deluxe CD and digital album.

Soul Jazz Records’ new album 90 Degrees of Shade features the music of the Caribbean – Mambo, Calypso, Mento, Merengue, Latin Jazz and much more. The music of Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and more all feature in this lightning journey through the many island sounds.

This is the sound of independence, righteous and hot jump-up sounds from the 1950s and 60s, an exciting period of endless new musical styles that would travel across the world – Mento, the Jamaican precursor to reggae; mambos and descargas from Cuba, Dominican merengue, Haitian compas – and more.

This album coincides with the release of Soul Jazz Records’ massive new deluxe large format hardback book 90 Degrees of Shade: 100 Years of Photography In The Caribbean (with foreward by Paul Gilroy) featuring hundreds of fascinating and unique photographs spanning one hundred years of Caribbean history.

The new album comes as a deluxe two-CD pack complete with large outsize booklet, packed full of info and original artwork. There are also two limited edition separate heavyweight double LP vinyl editions, each one housed in gatefold sleeves complete with insert, full text and free download code. Also comes as a worldwide digital release.

Soul Jazz Records continues its journey into the world of Afro-Caribbean roots music with this album of newly recorded music of Gwo Ka music recorded and produced by Soul Jazz Records on the island of Guadeloupe, French West Indies.

Gwo Ka music is a fantastic fusion of  African-­derived musical form ( call and response), with vocal styles that draw upon the equally powerful French chanson singers to create a truly unique combination.

Tradition Ka, made up of some of the island’s finest singers and master drummers, is part of a powerful network of politicised Gwo Ka groups on the island – upholding the traditions and cultural importance of Gwo Ka as part of a larger process of defining the identity of Guadeloupe and its culture.

This album is newly studio recorded in Pointe-­A-­Pitre, Guadeloupe by Soul Jazz Records. Like   the cult music of Haiti’s Vodou and Cuba’s Santeria or the roots music of Belize’s Garifuna (all of which Soul Jazz have also released), Gwo Ka is the musical and cultural product of the region’s African ancestry, forcibly brought to the Caribbean through slavery.

Gwo Ka exists only in Guadeloupe, a very different island from much of the Caribbean, in that it remains a ‘department’ of its original colonial master, France. Here, the currency is the Euro and   the baker sells croissant and café au lait.

This constant ‘European-­ising’ of the island means that Gwo Ka plays a fundamental and important role in the defining of Guadeloupean identity. As an African-­derived music, its position    as a counter-­balance to French influence means that the definition of how and what Gwo Ka represents is also in a constant state of flux. 

These new recordings show how Gwo Ka is both a modern Caribbean music form and one firmly rooted in ancestral history.

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Over the last 20 years Soul Jazz Records have been documenting and presenting the often hidden histories and deep musical worlds of Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Belize, Trinidad, the Bahamas and more. This documentation encompasses reissuing lost recordings, such as the mighty Studio One catalogue of reggae, producing films/dvds (such as the 3-­hour documentary  Mirror To The Soul in conjunction with British Pathé, and Dub Echoes), books (check the forthcoming photography book on the Caribbean 90 Degrees of Shade, with text by Paul Gilroy, and Kanaval) as well as travelling to the region to produce new recordings.

Unique collection containing authentic rhythms of Haitian Voodoo drumming. Recorded in Port-au-Prince, Haiti by Soul Jazz Records, this album features The Drummers of the Societe Absolument Guinen.

Voodoo is the African religion at the heart of Haitian life. The complex rhythms of the drums are used to bring down African spirits in Voodoo ceremonies. These drums are the link between the music of Africa and the Caribbean. With links to Cuban Santeria, Jamaican and Trinidadian Afro-religions, Voodoo rhythms are the heaviest, most intense of all. Soul Jazz Records.

REVIEWS

"Soul Jazz yet again come correct with the roots and culture. This amazing set of ritual breakbeats Haitian style has to be the most phenomenal, left field battle breaks album you could imagine. The rhythms used cause spirits to manifest themselves in the physical world, all powerful, some benevolent, others less so. Enjoyable and really quite mind expanding, this is recommended to anyone who thinks traditional music is not for them. Really unparallelled, both in terms of quality and the competition." Boomkat

"Haitian Voodoo is a religion of the new world that came about during the 16th century African slave trade. During their rituals they use drums to bring spirits down to the earth, faccilitating a possession of a worshipper by a specific spirit. Soul Jazz released these pristine recordings and I think it’s one of the best recordings of a drum ensemble I’ve ever heard. It documents the broad tonal range of these drums. I had to check the liner notes to make sure there wasn’t a bass guitar or synthesizer in the mix!" Type

"This record, which consists entirely of recordings of voudou drumming made in Port-Au-Prince, is one of a series of Soul Jazz releases exploring Haitian music, all of which are worth your attention. Nonetheless there's something about the intensity and virtuosity of this particular drums-based album that's particularly transportive. Beautifully recorded so each strike of each drum punches with all the force of an electronic dance music kickdrum, it captures the extraordinary complexity and sophistication of these ceremonial rhythms, which shift, interlock and switch angle of attack with a logic that's near-indecipherable as a listener unable to see visually how they unfold. These drum rituals are central to Haitian voudou, whose roots lie in closely related religions on the West Coast of Africa, and which originated in the 18th century when Haiti was a French slave colony. Their roles in ceremonies seem as complex and detailed as the rhythms themselves, involved in drawing participants together through the shared pulse of the beat and inciting spiritual possession. Yet their power to awe and mesmerise isn't dimmed through being relatively unfamiliar with the traditions that underlie them; these recordings are dynamic and riveting in their intricacy and power." Quietus

"I haven't heard anything quite like this; the rhythms are very deeply orchestrated yet it also sounds like improvisation. There are tonalities and textures coming from this album like I've never heard. A great album by Soul Jazz, it's very well recorded, the drums sound so warm and nuanced, a great representation of each drum in the mix. Some of the sounds I have no idea how they are getting them. I would love to see this group play! As a drummer, this album is bending my ear and setting off the dancing devils in my soul!! Unreal!" Guardian Guide

Anarchic carnival street music from Haiti. Traces of New Orleans' Second Line jazz meets Cuban carnival Comparsas and Brazilian afro blocs and the ancient to modern spirit of Kinshasa's Konono no.1 meets the Art Ensemble of Chicago!

To coincide with the release of the new Kanaval book on Soul Jazz Publishing, Soul Jazz Records are releasing this new CD, "Rara in Haiti: Street music of Haiti".

Rara is the music played throughout Kanaval, an anarchic folk-meets-punk collision of drums, voices and bamboo sticks which all creates an exciting, energising soundtrack to Kanaval in Haiti. Rara bands tour the countryside for days at a time accosting people, car drivers and anyone in their way, demanding payment before they move on and the crowd of musicians and singers gets bigger all the time.

This music was recorded by Soul Jazz Records in Port-au-Prince. CD comes with sleenotes by Richard Fleming (author of 'Walking to Guantanamo"), and stunning photography on the cover by Leah Gordon.

Guardian Review:

"Recorded in Port-au-Prince, featuring musicians who literally stop traffic in Haiti with their edgy, rousing and hypnotic dance music. Rara is both a distinctive style, with its roots in Africa's slavery days, and the name give to parades in which crowds dance through the streets following bands, in events that can be political or religious.

This is DIY music at its best, with percussion instruments made from bottles, sticks or old car parts; konet horns, made from the flattened tin of food cans, and vaksins, constructed from lengths of bamboo or even plastic water pipes.

The result is a furious noise that sounds at times as if football fans were attempting psychedelic marching tunes on vuvuzelas, with lengthy passages of repeated riffs against drumming and chanting vocals. There are similarities with bands in present-day Kinshasa that use homemade instruments to create trance music." (Robin Denslow)

CONGA DE LOS HOYOS, founded in 1902, is one of the oldest and best-known carnival groups in Santiago, Cuba today. Group members are exclusively from the Los Hoyos neighbourhood of Santiago and feature over 50 percussionists and singers who play everything from car brake drums, hubcaps and frying pans to the distinctive Chinese trumpet – a sound unique to eastern Cuba’s carnival groups. This CD comes with accompanying text, booklet and exclusive photography.

New album of heavyweight Afro-Cuban rhythms recorded in Havana, Cuba by Soul Jazz Records.

Comes with extensive sleeve-notes. This album features the many Afro-Cuban rhythms associated with the various religious cults existing in Cuba today. These drums are used to bring spirits and gods (Orishas) into the body of worshippers who are then possessed.

The music originally came from Africa and spread into the new world through the movement of slaves; Soul Jazz Records have recorded and released similar projects in Haiti (Voodoo Drums, Spirits of Life) and Brazil and these new recordings from Cuba feature heavyweight complex rhythms played by some of Cuba’s finest master drummers, all of whom are initiated in the cults including members of the secret Masonic-type Abakua faith.

Featuring an array of instrumentation – Bata Drums, Conga drums, Bongo, Eribo – many of which are sacred in themselves and only used for religious ceremonies. The music and dance of the Abakuá (or ñáñigo) secret societies are considered by many the most original not least because the history of the societies themselves, the most complex and impassioned of all the organizations of African origin established in Cuba and linked to key political and social events. For anyone interested in Latin music this is a fascinating guide into the roots of Afro-Cuban music and features extensive sleeve-notes giving the music a cultural and social context.

Recorded at the Cuban state-owned ICAIC studios, these are high quality recordings and the vinyl comes on super-loud heavyweight vinyl for all DJs!

Tumba Francesa la Caridad de Oriente is a 140-year old institution in Cuba.

The music of Tumba Francesa is a unique combination of African drums and French patois vocals alive in Cuba today.

This is the first in a series of albums reflecting Afro-Cuban culture newly recorded by Soul Jazz Records in Cuba. The Tumba Francesa La Caridad de Oriente won Cuba’s National Award for Community Culture and, in 2003, the title of UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, the first such award to be bestowed on Cuba. This music was recorded in EGREM studios, the state owned studio in Santiago, eastern Cuba.

Tumba Francesa la Caridad de Oriente is situated in the economically poor Los Hoyos district of the city, a vibrant epi-centre of Afro-Cuban culture. In the 19th century there were hundreds of Tumba Francesa throughout Cuba. Now only two remain; Tumba Francesa of Santiago de Oriente and nearby Tumba Francesa de Guantanamo.

Originally mutual aid societies for the ex-slaves who fled the neighbouring Haitian Revolution, Tumba Francesas would put on elaborate shows during carnival dressed in ballroom costumes of 18th century France playing purely African music. Tumba Francesa La Caridad de Oriente continue this tradition today. The music of Tumba Francesa la Caridad de Oriente is at once both modern and traditional, both an important aspect of contemporary Cuba and coming with a vast cultural legacy.

The CD / LP comes complete with extensive sleevenotes and spoken introduction by the Afro-Cuban poet and writer Pedro Perez-Sarduy and photography by the New York writer, musician and broadcaster Ned Sublette (author of Cuba and It's Music).

This album was recorded by Soul Jazz Records in Port au Prince, Haiti and features the music and songs of Vodou (or Voodoo), the African derived religion that slaves brought to the country. The music has an intensity that reflects the history and isolation of Haiti from the outside world. Heavyweight drumming accompanies the vocals of the priest and choir of the Societe Absolument Guinin. With it’s roots in West Africa, Vodou also has links with the music of Cuba, Brasil, Jamaica and New Orleans (where many Haitian slaves went after the Haitian Slave Revolution – the only succesful slave revolt in the West which led to the first Black Republic). In New Orleans the religion took hold and musically influenced many New Orleans musicians such as Doctor John and Professor Longhair. Haitian Vodou has strong roots and continues to thrive today. The religion was illegal for many years and consequently continues to hold an element of secrecy. As well as Haiti, Vodou is now also widely practised in New York and Miami by the many Haitians who have emigrated to USA from the continual troubles of the poorest country in the West. For more info on Haiti visit the Haiti Support Group website: www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org