Mike Ladd
Negrophilia: The Album

Negrophilia, that is, love, passion, a renewed interest for blacks, I would say for Black Africa, for everything that brings us back to our origins. A rejection of an ethnocentric, Eurocentric vision that is not even too covertly colonial. A return to the past, a backward journey in search of our roots, to the tribal rhythm, to the primitive beat that flows in our veins.

All this happened in the early years of the last century, first in France, then in Europe. It was a spasmodic interest that captured ethnographers, like Michel Leiris, who conducted very important field studies, think of the famous Dakar-Gibuti expedition, and avant-garde artists, like Picasso, who were fascinated and literally dazzled by the artifacts and objects that came from the remotest places in Africa and beyond.

But also musicians, who fell under the charm of instruments considered crude and primitive but that brought back the essence of music or photographers, who for the first time had the opportunity to capture landscapes and characters that until then had only been protagonists in the stories of some adventurous explorer. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since those years, but fortunately, there is someone who wanted to embark on a very personal reinterpretation of the fascination with black culture that struck Europe in the early 1900s. This is the idea behind the immense concept album by Mike Ladd, an intelligent and gifted hip hop producer and MC based in New York.

Retracing the path of black music in search of the origins of pure and vital sound. The references to free jazz are all too obvious, 'The Art Ensemble of Chicago', 'Sun Ra', and 'Ornette Coleman', and permeate the entire album, but there is also room for those to funk, as in “The French Dig Latinos, Too” or “Back At Ya”, and to avant-garde electronics and the most delirious experimentation, interspersed with whimsical spoken word on Mother Africa.
He is accompanied on the journey by first-rate musicians like the pianist, Vijay Iyer, with whom he had already collaborated in “In What Language?”, and Guillermo E. Brown, a young and ambitious percussionist, recently seen alongside Matthew Shipp at La Palma, Rome, truly a rhythmic prodigy. What else to say, truly an excellent genre record and a must for those who want to hear something different in the congested world of hip hop-jazz.

Among other things, I think he will be in concert in mid-May at the Auditorium in Rome during a festival dedicated to African music. Enjoy Listening.