Music
Root Source - Roots Sound
Breaking Through From Underground
Spinning The Groove At 1RPH:
One Revolution Per Heartbeat
Historical Mission
Music Is A Key To Social Change:
Music is the soundtrack to human history. It sets the dance of the world’s heartbeat …
Remi D
Turns The Key
Watching the Greats at play lets any small child know the gods are real. Errol Garner on piano in the living room. Milt Jackson on vibes. Victor Feldman. Sal Nistico, Dizzy, Tubby, Paul Gonsalves, Bobby Wellins… “Yawn. I’d rather have had hot cocoa and a clean bed,” Remi half-jokes.
A drummer from 9, gigging from 14, Remi grew up among some of the immortal Greats of Jazz. As a child Remi found it humbling to the point of crushing seeing with his own eyes what stars like Buddy and Klook and Elvin could do. Plus the music business is fickle and brings crazy lifestyles. That’s why he’s never committed to music till now.
Teens and 20s brought Remi closer to the African and Caribbean side, from Rico and Bob Marley at Island to Ginger Johnson, Rebop Kwaku Baah and Spartacus R elsewhere, too many to say. That was just Remi’s world, sometimes he’d have a play, sometimes just reasoning or whatever.
Now the age of an elder to most of the African Heritage musical Greats he encountered through his youth, Remi is old enough to appreciate not playing or living like any of them. Dodging the pitfalls he saw them all fall into, he has made it through to where he could value and express his own heart’s part in the one great symphony of life. Hear that key turn now.
Remi’s music is not original. There’s traces of a thousand voices there, John Coltrane to Erykah Badu, Jackie Mittoo to Yabby You.
There is nothing else like Remi’s music: it is unique. A product of deep immersion from infancy in the colours, textures, voices and aromas of the music cultures of African Heritage peoples in the West. But not just the music, the spirit, the feel of the life that it comes from. And the sense of mission: blazing torches in the darkness lighting the golden path to spiritual freedom.
Next Generation
The old timers always talked about ‘passing it on’, that torch that lights our way to mental liberation.
Enter a brand new star of the next generation: Max Ayinde is an exciting next-generation pianist with a lot of feel in his playing. Plus he’s a first rate sound engineer too.
When Max Ayinde heard that Remi wanted to record some tunes for his novel he volunteered and the ‘TreeSongs’ album emerged.
It was no surprise that Max and Remi shared a musical understanding and communicated so well despite never having played together seriously before. They are a father and son team.
Next Level
As soon as London St Vincent gospelist and guitar supremo Day Levale heard what was happening he wanted in!
A stringman of exceptional melodic and harmonic understanding and sensitivity, Day brings another huge weight of knowledge and experience to the band.
The moment Day Levale and Max Ayinde crossed over together into Abracadia it took Remi’s music to the next level: ready for you!
Music Reveal it
TreeSongs: Feel it
Picking up where Mittoo, Ranglin and Hibbert left off, the debut album ‘Treesongs: A Windrush Breeze’ brings you the mellow Jazzy side of Reggae with the deepest African roots and a hint of Latin vibe.
Produced in Uganda, Jamaica and London, ‘TreeSongs’ is the real thing: improvised musical conversations between players with something meaningful to say, full of truthful statements (‘for the record’) on the experience of being human.
Sample Track
Soon Come
No peeking till the launch :)
Meet
The Tonic Roots
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Sticks and Wind.As a child in London’s 60s/70s jazz scene, Remi was taught drums by whoever was around: Victor Feldman, Michael Silva and Phil Seamen mostly, plus snips and tips from Art Blakey’s lips and more.
Remi’s come far since listening to Tubby Hayes practising cycles of 5ths on vibraphone half the night in the old basement behind Harrods.
20 years later Remi taught himself to play those same cycles from memory, on marimba. That led to recording with the likes of Mad Professor, Johnny Clarke and Barry Isaac and supporting such names as Joseph Hill’s Culture and Freddie McGreggor live through the 80s and 90s.
Windwise, melodica is a new self-taught avenue too. His main wind influences from early childhood: Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Late teens led to Augustus Pablo.
Now Remi puts it all together with his own unique sound, matured for 50 years like a decent rum.
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Buttons, Bass And Keys.On piano, Max Ayinde carries the swing every time. With the drum-motor running, his bass and keys drive the groove of every song on the album.
As an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, Max Ayinde can jump in on a guitar or hand drum to add that crucial something extra here and there. As an artist he know when to.
Composer, arranger, pianist, bassist and guitarist, as Count Kujo, Max Ayinde led his own successful band on the Brighton music scene for some years before hitting London as a freelancer.
Not only is Max Ayinde a super-talented multi-instrumentalist and composer, he is also a first class sound engineer and recording studio technician with a fine ear for the elements and facets of sound. He really understands the sound that we’re aiming for and can deliver it.
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StringmanAn easy natural as comfortable in a village hall as the Albert Hall, Day is one of London’s leading senior gospelists.
A top flight chorister, Day is also a gold star multi-instrumentalist who brings so much more than just knowledge, experience and competence in guitar, vocals, bass and keys.
Day brings more than just a sympathetic ear and responsive reflexes too. His playing is of a kindred spirit deep In the groove.
Day really makes the trio complete like a single instrument. Whatever both or either of the other two start Day will complete, and vice versa, as if they’re all parts of a single continuous instrument.
Ultimately it is the feel in Day’s playing that is so at home on this album. And the rare fluency to play exactly what the music makes him feel in the moment.