JULY 2025 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the July 2025 issue – OUT NOW!
THE MIGHTY ROOTSMEN
“My intention was to try to do something that hadn’t been done in reggae before by putting these giants of the genre together to make a record that leaves you with good feelings,” says producer Ralph Sall, architect of the Mighty Rootsmen project that’s currently causing excitement among fans of traditional sounding reggae music.
“It’s not just about honouring musical legends – it’s about bringing people together through the universal language of rhythm and soul. Each track is shaped by the distinctive voices of the featured singers and the organic, collaborative energy of the band… like a Travelling Wilburys of reggae.”
Although he’s lived in Los Angeles for many years, Ralph originally hails from Miami’s South Beach, where he first fell under the spell of Jamaican reggae.
“When I was a kid, the release of a new Bob Marley record like Catch A Fire or Natty Dread was a big deal,” he recalls. “Me and my older brother had those records, as well as Toots’ Funky Kingstonand Bunny Wailer’s Blackheart Man…
DENNIS BOVELL
It’s been 45 years since reggae producer Dennis Bovell took Dub Band stalwarts Nick Straker and John Kpiaye, together with Aswad’s rhythm section, into Gooseberry studios to record the classic I Wah Dub. That album sealed Dennis’ reputation as the UK’s foremost dub master, but the genial 72-year-old has barely stopped to draw breath since. Driven by restless creativity and a musical curiosity so far-ranging that words like “diverse” and “eclectic” simply cannot do them justice, he’s carved himself an incomparable niche in the annals of world music.
Reggae fans love him for his hits with Matumbi, Janet Kay and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and so too punks and new wavers because of his exploits with The Slits, Thompson Twins, The Pop Group and Madness. Dig a little deeper and you’ll also find the likes of Fela Kuti, Alpha Blondy, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hawaiian surfers on his remarkable CV – which is brought bang up to date with the release of Wise Music In Dub.
JOHNNY BURGOS
Brooklyn born and bred Johnny Burgos made one of the best soul albums of last year.
Who says so? Well, we did actually: we put it in our top 10 for 2024.
And that’s all the more amazing when you consider Johnny didn’t start out as any kind of vocalist – let alone a sweet soul singer – when he first began flexing his musical muscles. No indeed: teenage Johnny Burgos was all about the hip-hop he grew up on, the beats and rhymes all around him in his Brownsville neighbourhood – known locally [and unflatteringly] as The Beast. And his aim was to be an engineer and a beatmaker, making use of the available technology to sample his way into the game. So how did he end up as a soul guy – one whose predilection is for organic sounding late sixties and early seventies ballads and grooves?
PLUNKY BRANCH
One generation does tunes, another beats. If there is a gap between the two then it can be bridged. Saxophonist Plunky Branch, founder of the legendary Afro-centric jazz combo Oneness Of Juju, and his Jamiah prove so in an imaginative way on the former’s fine new album Made Through Ritual. Their thinking is left of centre.
“I received tracks from him, [and also Jamal, son of Jimmy Gray, who ran the Black Fire label that released Plunky’s early records] made of samples. I wrote melodies and in some instances words to those tracks. And then I had the band replay those tracks so that we wouldn’t be using any samples. But it creates an entirely different kind of process. It’s almost the reverse of what people normally do. It is fairly unusual for some musicians to take those sampled tracks and make organic music from the samples. So, that’s the process I’m describing and that’s what I’m using.”
Regardless of how it was conceived and constructed, the new work shows that at the age of 78 Plunky has lost none of his creative verve…
