SEPTEMBER 2024 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the September 2024 issue – OUT NOW!
SOLA AKINGBOLA
When percussionist Sola Akingbola was put forward to join Jamiroquai back in 1994, he played a tape of his rhythm mastery to Jay Kay that made the cat in the hat think about tricks on his mind.
“He was like, ‘How many people are on there?’ He thought that it sounded like four people,” Akingbola says with a smile. “I said, ‘No, that’s just me’.”
They signed him up. And then they threw him in at the deep end. Akingbola’s debut gig with the west Londoners that star-jumped from specialist black music circles to mainstream charts with songs like Space Cowboy was a high stress affair, insofar as it involved a delayed flight to Paris for a broadcast performance in a television studio – sans rehearsal time and prior knowledge of the setlist. It was as live as live could be.
“I listened to Derrick McKenzie, the drummer, very carefully, and then listened to Jay singing very carefully, and got a sense of, ‘OK, I can feel that the chord change is coming’,” recalls Akingbola, on a zoom call from Canada. “So, every time I heard the chord change, I would change my instrumentation. And that was it. Jay came up to me after the gig and said, ‘What’s the deal? Have you and Derek been playing together? Have you played together before?’ We said, ‘No, it’s the first time’… and that was that. He said to management, ‘I need this guy in the band’.”
MORTIMER
It was in May of this year that Mortimer – headlining a bill that also included Samory I and Zion I Kings’ Tippy I – graced Camden’s Jazz Café with a performance that had the capacity crowd in raptures. There was a heavy Rasta presence that night and clouds of ganja smoke hung in the air as he walked on stage, his dreadlocks partly obscuring his face and making it look as if he was peering through dense foliage. His locks are a force of nature [to put it mildly] and have been granted freedom to grow as they wish, something that Mortimer himself was denied by members of his family – ardent Seventh Day Adventists who cast him out after he’d embraced Rastafari. Needless to say, the singer of hits like Lightning and Careful, whose breakthrough owed much to guest slots on albums by Protoje, was seriously affected by this, and he’s worn a cloak of vulnerability ever since.
To describe Mortimer’s current album From Within as having been eagerly awaited is an understatement, and it more than lives up to expectation. Released on Easy Star Records, it’s a uniquely personal testimony, delivered in that now familiar, near whisper of a voice over rhythms that embody all that’s best and most intriguing about reggae music of today.
LADY BLACKBIRD
Lady Blackbird’s Black Acid Soul is the only collection of songs to have merited the accolade of Soul Album Of The Month in this magazine twice over. That’s because there was a Deluxe Versionwhich – would you believe it? – actually gave us more than the original. So, you see, it was only fair.
It’s safe to say that Black Acid Soul also transformed Marley Munroe’s life. She’d been singing since she was a little girl, of course. And, as we chronicled during our previous Echoesencounter, when, as Lady Blackbird, she graced our cover back in February 2021, Marley had several times been in situations that had almost led to music biz stardom over the years. Turned out it was a stripped down, jazz-inclined soul album, one which focussed on Marley’s wonderful voice, that propelled her to become the international success that she now is. There really was no Lady Blackbird before Black Acid Soul.
It would be reasonable to assume, then – I put it to her at the start of our latest conversation – that said album represented something of a turning point in her life and career. She laughs and goes one further:
“Oh, I’d say you could call it a starting point! I mean, look, I’ve always sang: that’s all the only thing I’ve ever done. It’s the only thing I’ve ever liked to do. Hell, it’s the only thing I’ve actually really been good at. I’m basically a saloon singer. Meeting up with Chris [Siegfried]and creating this music, creating this part of the story… it’s not that I hadn’t been working so hard before, but this is definitely the first time that it’s actually been truly recognized.”
ALLYSHA JOY
20 Questions with Allysha Joy
IS YOUR SOLO THING THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE IN THE CAREER JIGSAW NOW – OR ARE YOU ABLE TO KEEP ALL THE PLATES ON THE OTHER PROJECTS SPINNING TOO?
I think it’s all seasonal. You have to do the weeding, plant the seeds, water the garden, then harvest. Art takes time and it’s such a beautiful thing to learn how to tend to the different projects in their different seasons and let things take shape in their own time. So right now my solo project is in full bloom and offering, but I love working on all these different projects because it allows me space to dip in and out and practice moving with my own fluctuating energy.
WHAT DEFINES ONE FROM THE OTHER FOR YOU WHEN IT COMES TO THE BAND VERSUS SOLO VENTURES
30/70 is a collaborative super group of four big energies coming together – we are all commanding our own sound and production and it allows the project to be super edgy because we all push each other in various ways to get the most out of our instrument. It’s heavily improvised and I would say more leaning towards the dancefloor. Whereas my sound is more leaning towards the bedroom hahah it’s solo introspection and self reflection and maybe more intimate because it’s just me writing the music on Fender Rhodes.
