First release on Homegrown records in form of transparent 10″ vinyl now on pre-sale. Featuring Murray Man vocal cut and Vanja O melodica cut followed by dubs.
All profits from physical 10″ release will be donated towards organisations and solidarity actions for human and animal rights!
McPullish outta Texas releases 2015 “Journey” recording of late and great Judah Eskender Tafari featuring steppers anthem cut and fitting “niyacoustic” mix meditation mix in limited color sleeve 300 7″ vinyl.
From press release:
Judah Eskender Tafari’s musical journey began at Studio One (Jamaica) in 1978, voicing now-classic songs such as “Danger in Your Eyes,” “Rastafari Tell You,” “Jah Light,” “Always Trying” and many others. He worked with many producers and musicians over the course of his impressive music career.
In 2015 Judah traveled to Austin, TX to perform and work with McPullish at his Dubhaus studio. “Journey” is a co-production between these two friends that has stood the test of time and become a favorite, beginning or ending almost every McPullish live dub set in recent years. Judah was not only a great singer but a genuine and caring person who mentored McPullish and many others, always willing to share his musical knowledge and kind spirit with whoever he met. Judah Eskender Tafari passed away in 2020 and is greatly missed, celebrated by his many friends, family and fans.
In 2022 McPullish reached out to Dan I Locks (musician, producer and operator of Deng Deng Hi Fi in Sweden) to record Niyabinghi drums and percussion for a more acoustic version of the song which is featured as the B side.
King Dubmatix coming in with brand new album out on Echo Beach label. 11 vocal tracks with plethora of riddim riders in all kinds of styles and shapes. Including lovely Blue Monday rendition by none other than Barry Ashworth outta Dub Pistols institution, alongside 3 closing dubwise instrumental tracks. This musical delivery sounds groovy, phat, bouncing and flowing in perfect blend of fresh forward roots and solid foundation future classics.
Marshall Neeko opening up 2023 with already two riddim albums with various artists. This time reworking Swing Easy riddim and General Penitentiary riddim bringing back that late 90’s sound.
Tiny desk concerts from NPR music are tiny concerts in small rooms. This time it’s Adrian Sherwood’s living room jamming with legendary Andy Horace supported by drums, cello, guitar, bass, keys, trumpet, guitar and cello while dubbing FXs are preformed by maestro himself. Fulljoy!
Dominant and subversive versions of Africa and African history reproduced the dynamic outlined above but on an international scale. In Britain in the 1980s imperial relations were being re-imagined in the context of humanitarian aid. Black youths in Britain wielded their African heritage as a tool to build their communities and give voice to their analysis. Meanwhile the mainstream press, and charitable structures,were also building a version of Africa; one of helpless victims of natural disasters.
Given such a context, the ‘performance’ that is being considered here contains dialogues that traverse the African diaspora and are based on the acquisition of‘oral skills’ in Creolised language, which acted as a mode of response to the imposition of European culture on non-European peoples. Resistance became most evident in the contested spaces constructed around specific types of language-use that expressed an alternative black subjectivity that bridged intergenerational gaps within black communities.
The use of particular linguistic forms, both oral and scribal, continued the type of ‘pan Caribbean consciousness‘ that was necessary for the Windrush Generation’s survival and was passed down to the generations born in Britain thereafter. For many deejays, therefore, the world view expressed through the usage of Standard English reduced them to the voiceless, passive victims of a Eurocentric historical bias. By blending several aspects of Jamaican oral culture with their own local argot, deejays verbally presented critiques of certain entrenched ideas, for instance, poetry as an exclusively white domain.
This type of engagement was exemplifed in a lyric performed on Diamonds Sound System by the British deejay Papa Benji, which suggested that ‘poetry me better than Shakespeare, and me voice gone clear everywhere’.
The deejay thus became the veritable keeper of memories, for once the word was performed, recorded and disseminated, it became an artefact; a historical document. It also enabled the performers to present their own arguments, in their own words and on their own terms in a ‘commonly agreed language’ that countered their ‘social problem’ status.
William ‘Lez’ Henry (2012) Reggae, Rasta and the Role of the Deejay in the Black British Experience, Contemporary British History, 26:3, 355-373, DOI:10.1080/13619462.2012.703024
Original Ras Jammy selection on My Analog Journal with just under 50 minutes of finest roots rock reggae and dubwise. 100% vinyl with crackle, hum and nuff warmth.
Privileged to listen to some early mixes in the making of this master piece, Jah Billah confirms this album opens up a new chapter for Balkan regggae.
Mr. Pilton says:
After two years brand new reggae album is here.
HARIS PILTON meets legendary JOSEPH COTTON aka JAH WALTON on an album called MR CLASSIC. The album includes 14 songs in an old fashion reggae style.
Enjoy
From press release:
MR CLASSIC is the latest album from Joseph Cotton in collaboration with producer Haris Pilton.
Legend Joseph Cotton aka Jah Walton (born Silbert Walton, 1957, St. Ann, Jamaica) is a reggae deejay and singer active since the mid-1970s. He recorded his first song named “Gourmandizer” with Joe Gibbs in 1976, under the name Jah Walton. He then moved to Harry Mudie owner of Moodisc label, recording popular tracks such as “Stay A Yard And Praise God” and “Touch Her Where She Want It Most” (the title track from his debut album).
In the mid-1980s he began recording under the name Joseph Cotton, immediately having success. He reached No.1 in the UK charts with “No Touch The Style”, leading to a television appearance on Channel 4’s Club Mixprogramme in 1987. Several more reggae chart hits followed in the form of “Things Running Slow”, “Pat Ha Fe Cook”, “Tutoring”, “Judge Cotton”, and “What Is This”.
Cotton continued to perform and record into the 1990s, 2000s and the present day. He now lives in France where he performs at venues throughout the country and elsewhere in Europe both solo and in collaboration with other reggae artists
How have the protest anthems of the classic era of reggae been transformed into support for Jamaica’s tourist industry? Stephen King tackles such general questions of co-optation in his monograph a revision of his dissertation that at times suffers from an overly academic presentation, particularly when he attempts to fit data to the categories of his particular social movement theory.
The study attempts to “comprehensively trace how Jamaica’s protest music has changed both lyrically and musically over a twenty-one year period, and how the Jamaican government has attempted to silence or co-opt these voices of protest”. King concludes with a look at how Rastafari claims for social justice in reggae have been co-opted first in the service of the island’s emergent nationalism and then to assist Jamaican tourism.
King locates the roots of reggae in ska (1959-65) and rocksteady (1966-67), the two musical forms that preceded it. It was ska, a music that blended mento , the indigenous Jamaican version of calypso, with American jazz and rhythm and blues, that reflected the optimistic mood of the country during the run-up to Jamaican independence. As economic conditions worsened for the majority of Jamaica’s blacks during the mid-1960s, the more aggressive lyrics of rocksteady gave voice to the frustrations and alienation of the island’s under- and unemployed ghetto dwellers. And then there was the advent of reggae in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, the period that is remembered as the high- water mark of Rastafari influence on an emergent Jamaican nationalism. Reggae, of course, began as a Rasta-inspired music that not only articulated the pan- African vision of the movement and its demands for social justice, but that celebrated the cultural practices and symbols of Rastafari.
King does a credible job in mapping the general contours and themes of these musical developments against the backdrop of a changing Jamaican society. In the course of this he shows how the roots of Rastafari musical protest are organically intertwined with the development of both preceding forms. While this is hardly newsworthy to many aficionados of Jamaican music, King provides some interesting examples that illustrate how critical commentary and protest themes, however restrained, existed within ska lyrics from the outset. The occasional presence of Rastafari drumming, biblical references (e.g., River Jordan, Mount Zion), and allusions to repatriation through the idiom of the “promised land” were all important resonances in this music that portended the development of popular music as an important communicative medium for the Rasta movement.
King describes rocksteady as a music that is more aggressive, that speaks more directly to the collective frustrations and suffering experienced by the island’s lower classes. Frequently, this music celebrates the “Rude Boy” or new male ghetto rebel as he has been memorialized in popular discourse. Prince Buster’s “Too Hot” and Derrick Morgan’s “Tougher Than Tough” are both examples of this figure, an individual who sought social and political justice with a ratchet (knife) or a gun. King points out that rocksteady lyrics tended to condone more aggressive protest against the oppression of the “sufferah” class, while in specific cases evoking linkages with the general Rastafari critique of the “Babylonian” neocolonial system.
Of critical importance to the dissemination and popularization of this music, King notes, were “sound systems” developed to carry high-fidelity playback equipment to rural and urban dances throughout the island. This portable technology, he argues, enabled the development of a community of dissent by transporting music to sites where “the voice of the poor could be heard without interference by local authorities”, a development that continued from the era of ska through reggae to the present. It is certainly true that sound systems served to strengthen an already extant discourse of protest, but King fails to recognize that long before sound systems, the Rasta movement itself was about creating alternative spaces for face-to-face communication in which counter-hegemonic discourse was reproduced and disseminated.
Text from:
Review: UNDERSTANDING A MODERN ANTIQUE: CHALLENGES TO REPRESENTING RASTAFARI IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Author: John P. Homiak Source: NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, Vol. 79, No. 1/2 (2005)