(Funk) Keziah Jones - Discography (1992 - 2008), MP3 (tracks), 192 - 320 kbps

Born in 1968 in Yaba, Central Lagos, Keziah Jones aka Captain Rugged aka Olufemi Sanyaolu grew up in a large middle class family. On his way to school, the young Femi would pass by the Kalakuta Republic, the great bandleader Fela Kuti's legendary commune, home to his Afrika 70 musicians, wives and hangers-on. 'I would look through the car window; I could sometimes see him in the yard. I remember hearing about a family member who had ran off and joined him. Every Lagos family's got someone who ran off to join Fela.'
In 1977, he was dispatched to the UK where he's been based ever since. He went to prep school in Gloucestershire followed by 4 years at Millfield, the international public school. Here, amidst the children of the business class and the political elite,16 year old Femi began to develop the persona that what would become Keziah Jones.
'I had it all planned out at that age. I saw the name in a magazine, some old woman called Keziah, added Jones on the end of it. Thought "Keziah Jones" yeah, that's just a whole new me. Olufemi Sanyaolu is from a certain place, he's a known thing. Keziah Jones is an unknown side of myself that I can explore through music.'
In 1989, Femi began to busk in Covent Garden and Leicester Square. Eager for new experiences, he decamped to Paris where he met entrepreneur Philippe Cohen-Salal who recorded his demo tape. Back in London, his unique thrash-guitar style caught the ear of songwriter turned manager Phil Pickett.
Pickett videoed him in concert supporting Hugh Masekela at Subterrania in 1990. The video triggered a bidding war; Jones chose Emmanuel de Buretel, then head of the brand new Parisian record label Delabel/Virgin France, now head of EMI/Virgin Europe.
Jones had made a wise choice. As the first, and for a while only, signing to Delabel, the label built itself around him. Instead of forcing him towards hiphop as a British label might have done, Delabel supported Jones' vision of the new sound he called 'Blufunk'.
'I taught myself a very percussive way of playing guitar to support my words. I called it Blufunk.' With it's cryptic lyrics and harshly struck chords, 1991's Blufunk Is A Fact was a startling breakthrough debut that sold 500,000 copies throughout Europe & Japan.
Now a star in Europe and Japan, Keziah was a cult in London, a figure outside and beyond the dance, hiphop and guitar scenes that dominated the UK. Not suprising, perhaps, since his albums only ever appeared as expensive French imports. As Keziah says, 'Within the context of British music or black music, my music is always sticking out a little bit to the side because I just don't belong or play to those mentalities. I think I'm the only International Yoruba solo singer songwriter. I'm the first Yoruba funk guitarist. I'm definitely the first Yoruba solo songwriter that's taken his music out and toured all over the world.'
Four years later came the follow up album: African Space Craft. 'I wanted it to be more explicit and bolder about race,' he says. 'Lyrically, it's very hard sounding.' Confrontational yet wounded songs like Colorful World, Dear Mr Cooper and Never Gonna Let You Go shocked audiences expecting another Lenny Kravitz.
'I got a lot of flak for African Space Craft. The label did not get it. They were very shocked that I would do that.'
Several major life changes occurred in the mid 90s. Jones' father died just before African Space Craft was released. He also married Anglo-Nigerian singer songwriter Akure Wall. It wasn't until 1999 that the third album, the brilliant and largely self produced Liquid Sunshine emerged. Initially titled Uncle Fem's Long Grain Funk, it was conceived as a concept album, hosted by a Lagos based radio dj, complete with weather reports and traffic jam news spots. On the eve of it's release however, Jones retitled and abandoned the entire concept.
Named after the 1978 Parliament track, Liquid Sunshine, nonetheless, is Jones' most luxuriant album. Songs like God's Glory and Sunshineshapedbulletholes belie his sombre mood by offering a tenderness far removed from his previous harsh sound. Looking back, Keziah says that recording Liquid Sunshine 'healed my mind. It forced me to get out and tour again. I'd been lying about for 2 years getting high.'
But there was more crisis to come. On the 1999 European tour, his bass player 'started freaking out.' The group split. The tour collapsed. Keziah left for the States, then Nigeria. 'I realised I had no inner strength,' he now says of this bleak time. Slowly he regrouped, dismissing his old manager, breaking up the band, assembling a new team and crucially forcing himself to practice every day.
For the next 3 years, Jones recommitted himself to music. He discovered music theory and developed a personal means of notating his now vast range of guitar techniques. 'Before I didn't even know what I was doing. Now I have a way to notate my guitar styles. In my notebooks I have different ways of showing a guitar sound, whether it's a right hand form or a left hand form,hitting or strumming, the edge of thumb or the tip of thumb.'
To write Black Orpheus, Jones moved to Denia, a little town near Valencia, Spain to 'wash my head of London.' He fasted and painstakingly recorded demos that were then rerecorded in London with a 9 piece group. The album was produced by Kevin Armstrong who worked with Keziah a decade previously on Blufunk.
Black Orpheus' serene mood, evoked by the recurrent sound of ocean tides was conjured by the celebrated engineer Russell Elevado, famous for his work with D'Angelo, Alicia Keyes and Erykah Badu. Elevado picked up on the contemplative mood of the Yoruba-ambient epic Orin O' Lomi (Liquid Music) and threaded it throughout the album.
Black Orpheus is Jones' most lyrically personal, musically detailed and satisfyingly sequenced album to date. It ranges from ambiguous ballads such as Neptune, intricately composed suites like All Praises and Autumn Moon to lithe funk tracks like Kpafuca and 72 Kilos, hook-filled Prince inspired pop smashes like Afrosurrealism for the Ladies and Femiliarize to infectiously open hearted guitar-picked songs like Sadness Is and Beautiful Emilie.
Black Orpheus' title references Marcel Camus' famous 1958 movie which relocates the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to 50's Rio de Janeiro. Struck by the movie's depiction 'of love between two black people', Black Orpheus evokes 'the dangerous, mythical' form of African relationships within a fantasia of 21st Century Lagos.
Lyrically Jones breaks new ground in his quest for a West African 'English that is not quite English.' The propulsively funky instructions and orders of the track Kpafuca (meaning 'something is broken/ confused') for example, are Keziah's linguistic riffs on the slang term invented by Fela Kuti in Go Slow, his early 1970s anthem to Lagos notorious traffic jams.
Kpafuca exemplifies Keziahs mission to create a slang that is uniquely Lagosian, but which, like Kingston's dancehall chat, appeals to the French and English alike. 72 Kilos draws vivid images of 'how surreal Nigeria is, how contradictory it is. You know, something like a Nigerian 419 scam letter, which I think is pretty funny.'
These days, the musical legacy of Fela Kuti and Yoruba-avant music shines brighter than ever. Artists like Common, Erykah Badu and The Roots are, Jones notes, 'all trying to get to West Africa.' On their way, they will surely meet Keziah Jones, whose journeys between Paris, Lagos, London, New York and Valencia have resulted in his most intimate, immediate, insightful and impactful album so far.
'I'm much more aware of where the music is' Jones states calmly. 'It has it's own system. I've found the score that can take me through the next 10 to 15 years.
(c) biglobe