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CD Review
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Urban Network, CD Review >>
Melvin Gibbs’ Elevated Entity
Ancients Speak
(LiveWired Music)
“Being in Brooklyn, growing up in New York, you essentially do ‘world music’ without the name.” So says bassist, band leader and musicologist Melvin Gibbs, a long time member of the Black Rock Coalition and a major progenitor of music that is inclusive of the pan global essences of the entire black diasporas. Where some of us remember him in the `90s trying something a little more ‘inside’ with the black rock band Eye & I, he is now exploring a mind-melding world fusion collective revealingly dubbed Elevated Entity. In a heady musical celebration that attempts to reconnect the family of folk that arrived in America from Africa, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, etc., he has crafted an album that sounds like a string of sacred ceremonies spanning the ancient to the astral. In it, rap, rock guitars, heavy percussion, sparsely atmospheric synths and fervent chants blend into an intoxicating and powerful musical brew. Highlights include “Canto por Odudua,” featuring blistering sacrificial guitar from the Chicago legend Pete Cosey, the horn-spiked groove of “Mojuba,” the afro-psychedelic trance tune “Sun of Shango” featuring more electrifying guitar by P-Funk great Blackbird McKnight, and the transcendent closer “Os Aguas (The Waters).” 07/07/09 >> go there
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