At long last! Just A Band come to perform in Europe, more specifically Berlin, as part of the NRBLN – BLNRB cultural exchange program initiated by the Goethe Institute. At the infamously awesome Haus der Kulturen der Welt on December 1, do not miss it!!
BLNRB | Berlin Show | HKW | 01 •12• 2010 from NRBLN_BLNRB on Vimeo.
Have you heard of Africa Unsigned? Since you’re here on our site then you’ll probably really dig what they are up to: Africa Unsigned has been identifying up and coming artists throughout Africa, and funding recordings with the help of fans all over the world. Among others, Africa Unsigned worked with Just A Band shortly after they completed their album 82, to help them put together a decent live show, as well as a better studio for their next recording.
Check out how the whole thing works here. But in a nutshell: you contribute any dollar amount, and when the band reaches the target – $10,000 – it is ready to cash in the dough and record songs. And you are oh-so-special my dear Akwaaba fan: Africa Unsigned is letting you register and contribute $5 for free, simply go and register here and use the code ‘akwaaba’. Just by registering you will automatically be contributing $5, which we encourage you to contribute to Just A Band’s page ;-p And of course we all hope you feel compelled to contribute some more!
While we’re at it, here’s a bit of behind the scenes action on Just A Band’s shoot for Ha-He – courtesy of Africa Unsigned.
Our friend Gervase de Wilde writes for the Guardian, and we’ve been secretly hoping he’d get Just A Band a feature in the paper… but as it turns out the band shows up in the travel section as a fine example of Nairobi’s lively music scene. No need to paraphrase, just click on the image!
Marc of Afrobeat Blog has been very supportive of our work in the past. But his latest review of Just A Band‘s album 82 is the best so far… we’re happy he dug JAB’s music, in his own words:
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nobody is doing more to expose the best underground music in Africa to increasingly wider audiences than Akwaaba. The fair trade record label started by Benjamin Lebrave has given the world possibly their best album yet, 82 from Kenyan pop outfit Just a Band.
You may know Just a Band from their incredibly popular youtube video for Ha-He, but Just a Band has much more to offer than imitations of Chuck Norris. This album covers many bases, mixing bumping club tracks with cooler hip-hop and heartfelt down-tempo tracks. The three artists that make up Just a Band, Blinky, Dan and Jim, bring out different elements of their personality to collaboratively create a style all their own.
Just a Band accomplishes something truly impressive: they manage to create music that has widespread mainstream appeal without totally foregoing their integrity as artists. Many African musicians struggling to find their way often go for easy cop outs and cheesy effects, but Just a Band creates a production style that sounds contemporary and clean. They also know how to mesh hip-hop style lyrics in English or Swahili with R&B style vocals and electronic beats. The end result is something new and interesting you probably wouldn’t expect to come out of Africa.
This album is something new and different. If you were to listen to it blindly, you might think it came from a house producer in Miami. That’s what I like about it though, it’s maintains its African identity while simultaneously being obviously affected by European and American electronic musical styles. While it’s not easy to cross over as a Kenyan pop star, these guys have as good a shot as anybody.”
Not sure why you would CHOOSE to make a youtube video non-embeddable… hopefully this won’t scare you away, and you’ll make the daring decision to click here and watch the video – you won’t regret it!
Who knew… the Kenyan viral craze reaches the pages of the almighty Wall Street Journal – clash of the titans! Read the piece here, and enjoy some of the recent magazine coverage below:
