On November the 24th, 2014, Amai Kuda and Y Josephine will launch their first album as a duo with a special show at The Gladstone Art Hotel. AfroSoul Volume II: MaZai is the much anticipated follow-up to Amai Kuda’s first release, Sand from the Sea, which was described as “one of the year’s most exciting new discoveries” by Nicholas Jennings in 2011 (one of Canada’s foremost music journalists and historians).
Like Amai Kuda’s debut, MaZai seamlessly brings together elements of soul, folk, jazz, gospel, blues, rap, R&B, reggae and African continental musical styles, while introducing a new element of Afro-Latin rhythms.
With a continued focus on the voice and percussion, this new offering is all the richer for having the involvement of experienced and innovative percussionist Y Josephine. On this album she plays cajon, bongo, djembe, congas, ngoma, guiro, shakers and even creates a sound remnant of the West African ‘talking drum’ by playing on a jar filled with liquid.
With over two decades experience as a working musician, Y Josephine has performed and recorded with a host of bands in Venezuela, Aruba, Spain, the UK and now Canada. As Edinburgh’s The Skinny (magazine) said, “Y Josephine plays guitar, somehow gets a whole drum kit out of a Peruvian fruit box, and sings in a sweet, smoky, untouchably cool voice. ” In MaZai her sound is combined in lush vocal arrangements with Amai’s clear yet “powerful, soulful” voice (Benjamine Boles, Now Magazine).
For Amai Kuda’s part, MaZai is clearly the work of a more confident, artistically mature and focused songwriter/producer. With the same “infectious, dynamic” (the late Billy Bryans – music producer formerly of the Parachute Club) and unique sound that prompted her to create her own genre, the new album offers consistently poetic lyrics, addressing subjects ranging from ancestors, relationship with the natural world, and colonization, to unrequited love.
Set to unfailingly driving rhythms, this is music that is likely to move you emotionally, spiritually and physically, often all at the same time.
When the couple are not recording, performing or busking on the streets of Toronto, they live in a caravan in the country and are working as part of The Seven Directions collective towards creating a centre dedicated to decolonization. Essentially activist-artists, these women put their faith in the power of music and grassroots organizing to change the world.
The CD jacket is filled with the artwork of Amai and Y Josephine, who makes designer books and is establishing herself as someone to watch in the world of visual art, much as she has in music.
Monday November 24, 2014
7pm doors, 8pm showtime
The Gladstone Hotel
$10 entrance / $20 with CD
Featuring:
Komi Olaf
Victoria Mata
Chellz Gemmaria
Amai Kuda and Y Josephine with full band
MARIA JACKSON 27 MAGAZINE 