"It's an African-proud, drum-conscious hip-rap-reggae type of sound"
- The Noise - Rock Around Boston
What would you get if Bob Marley were jammin' with The Fugees on a street corner in West Africa?
Afro-Diasporic Groovalicious Funkadociousness!!!
Fusing a unique blend of Hip Hop, Reggae, Funk & West African Highlife, critically-acclaimed Afropolitan fusion band Soulfege has electrified and inspired audiences with driving rhythms, tight harmonies, powerful lyrics and authentic musicianship. The Harvard-educated trio are the founders of "Take Back the Mic(tm)," a movement to put meaning back into today's music and to challenge a new generation of youth to speak for themselves.
Proving that positive can still be powerful, the video for "Sweet Remix," the lead single from their self-released title "Heavy Structured (Plus)," aired in more than 50 countries across Africa, the Caribbean & Europe, topping charts on both sides of the Atlantic. The music and the movement have been featured in such major media as MTV Africa, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, MNet Africa, ABC Chronicle and BBC Worldservice, reaching 146 million listeners worldwide.
With a Billboard Songwriting Contest Award for Best Hip-Hop song of 2007, mainstage showcases at both the 2008 NACA Nat'l Convention in St. Louis and Northern Plains Convention in St. Paul, multiple Boston Music Award nominations, nominations for the Independent Music Awards, Boston Urban Music Awards and a finalist slot in the 2005 John Lennon Songwriting Contest, Soulfege has left its mark on the Boston and Indie music communities. In September of 2007 the band officially relocated to Los Angeles, where they have been working with multi-platinum pop legend Dave Stewart and his new venture “Weapons of Mass Entertainment.” The band recently signed to cutting-edge and artist-friendly independent label Left Turn Music, launched in 2007 by multi-platinum producer/engineer & executive Elliot Mazer and Brian Cullinan, a 16-year veteran and former Digital VP of Columbia Records.
Led by musician, activist and entrepreneur DNA (Derrick N Ashong) -- recently dubbed a "YouTube phenom" by the New York Times -- and backed by a team of experienced and visionary industry leaders, and with a distinctive groove and a message that has spawned a growing, global movement, Soulfège is poised to redefine the sound and image of Urban Music as they challenge a generation to literally “Take Back the Mic.”
"Its [Soulfège's] members realized they had the platform to reach ears not only with their music - a fusion of thumping African music and rhythms, sweet reggae breezes, funk, and hip-hop - but also with their message." - The Boston Globe, June 2007
"...the band is an exuberant, sinuous mix of highlife, hip-hop, funk and reggae...Soulfège's message of uplift and the interconnectedness of cultures is easy to attach to, especially since it goes down so smoothly and funkily." - The Providence Journal, January 2007
"[Soulfège] is truly a global band, and global doesn’t just mean “other foreign places” as it usually does; in this case it means “across the planet.” - Northeast Performer Magazine, January 2006
On Jan. 31, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year-old musician, dropped off his pal, Shaunelle Curry, at the Democratic primary debate taking place at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. After shrugging off her suggestion that he join her in carrying a sign for Barack Obama outside the theater — his band was leaving on tour the next day — he reconsidered and walked back to join her.
Carrying a sign saying “¡Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!), he joined a throng that was milling around in the background of the live CNN shot focused on the anchor Wolf Blitzer. Then a guy named Mike carrying a video camera came walking by and began peppering Mr. Ashong with a series of skeptical and very pointed questions.
Jonathan M. Gramling, Kelley Nicole Johnson, and Derrick N. Ashong of Soulfege. (Azadeh Khoshnam )
A band's plan to change the world
By Daniel T. Swann, Globe Correspondent | June 8, 2007
Six years ago, while visiting Ghana, musician Derrick N. Ashong heard a Ghanaian man use the n-word.
"The American hip-hop scene had not only made it acceptable but had also made it cool," says Ashong, who is a member of the Boston-bred band Soulfege. "[That man's] whole experience of African-America was its MTV and BET videos, music, artists, and movies, so how would he know about racism? How would he know about [US] poverty? How would he know about unemployment?"
The encounter planted a seed in Ashong's mind. Hip-hop, he felt, was teaching Africans that African-Americans were rich and violent; the US media, conversely, was teaching Americans that Africans were poor and helpless. His band was in a position to help change misperceptions on both sides.
Yo YO! It's been a long-time comin' but we had to let you know that your Favorite Funkadocious Force is now available on iTunes!
Check it out, cop a track, write a review and SPREAD THE WORD!
Guess what y'all! Now you can BUY digital downloads of Soulfège tracks.
Support the band and the world's first Free Trade Music company at Calabash
Music
Call them Afropolitan. Call their sound ReggHopFunk Fusion, by way of Ghana and Harvard Yard. Call this team of beaming musicians (with not one, but three soaring vocalists) P-Funk progeny, channeling Manu Dibango and Sly Stone and Rage Against the Machine.
Whatever you want to dub them, this weekend’s performance by Soulfege at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory was a rare treat in these way-ironic days: a full-on groove group powering out songs with upbeat melodies to match their message—one of global community and connectedness, conveyed with such energy, assuredness, and good will that they transcended the ironic, transformed the conversation, and transported the listener beyond the otherwise dismal and downbeat world around them.
Soulfege (a term for the diatonic “do-re-mi” music scale) is led by Derrick Ashong, a West African-raised, Harvard-educated, L.A.-based singer-songwriter (his moniker: D.N.A.), actor (Steven Spielberg’s Amistad), lecturer, and political activist. (In February, I blogged about his viral YouTube video, on his passion for Barak Obama.) On Saturday, with his fellow choirmates from his college days, Jonathan Gramling and Keely Nicole Johnson, Ashong and company echoed and built on one another’s buoyancy, backed by thick, sick basslines and drum-and-bongo beats. (They just won Billboard’s Best Hip Hop Songwriting contest.)
Get the scoop on What DNA has been doing, thinking, seeing and so on...
Take Back The Mic: Open Mic - Politics/Week 2 Posted on: 22 Mar 2008 at 5:12 pm
Hi y’all. What a week. Don’t even know where to begin. In addition to all the things that many of you have heard about, there’s a gang of craziness going on behind the scenes that seems to get more and more interesting w/ every passing week. There is truly something special [...]
Take Back The Mic: Open Mic - Politics Posted on: 28 Feb 2008 at 2:03 pm
Hi y’all. So the response to this YouTube thing has been really incredible. I’ve got to give a lot of love and appreciation to all the people who have sent positive and inspiring words my way. It’s been a whirlwind so my apologies to anyone who has reached out directly and not [...]
Why I Support Obama - The Emotional Response Posted on: 12 Feb 2008 at 2:36 am
So we got a ton of positive feedback about that YouTube Interview and it raised a bunch of questions as well. Some folks were pissed at the interviewer, some wanted to know if it was a “staged” encounter, others were wondering if the Obama campaign might have been behind it. All in all [...]
For Obama?s Sake Posted on: 7 Feb 2008 at 10:07 am
So my boy Baratunde just posted this video on his blog. It’s from an interview outside the Clinton/Obama debate last week. The interviewer was a little rude at the beginning, but we made friends by the end. Check it out:
My Candidate - Barack Obama Posted on: 1 Feb 2008 at 8:58 pm
Friends,
I have never made a contribution to a political campaign in my life. I was born in a country where for the first 20+ years of my life no one could vote. I grew up under monarchic Middle Eastern regimes where the word “democracy” did not exist in our political lexicon. It [...]
