Advertisement

Music

Georgia Anne Muldrow

GEORGIA ANNE MULDROW & DUDLEY PERKINS aka DECLAIME with SEAN SAX, SAIDAH BABA TALIBAH, MYMANHENRI and IAM KAMAU at Wrongbar (1279 Queen West) as part of CMW, Sunday (March 25), 9 pm. $15, festival pass $35-$150. cmw.net. See listing.


Just home in Las Vegas from annual music industry schmoozefest SXSW, Georgia Anne Muldrow is quite content to remain outside the in-crowd.

“The showcase we just played, it’s like everybody was on a different tip,” she says. “They was on a youthful tip. Then we coming up talking about straight-up love and peace on earth and no war. That’s what we’re on.

“But my whole thing is, it’s worth [talking about] because I know the things we’re speaking about are of value.”

Only 27, the singer/producer has amassed a discography that includes six solo albums plus production credits for Erykah Badu, Mos Def and Sa-Ra. In 2007, she founded the label SomeOthaShip with her partner, Dudley Perkins (aka Declaime), with the goal of cultivating artists who share the pair’s love of music with a heightened level of consciousness – music she describes as “a snapshot of what blackness really feels like. How ugly it is, how beautiful it is.”

The daughter of late jazz guitarist Ronald Muldrow and gospel singer/choral director Rickie Byars-Beckwith, Muldrow pairs the cyclical, free-form structures of jazz and funk with hip-hop beats. Next week she’ll release Seeds (SomeOthaShip), a collaboration with hip-hop producer Madlib and her first album to feature music by someone other than herself.

“I wanted to hear a little bit deeper than a beat being dope,” she says of the collab, which Perkins suggested. “What I like about Madlib’s production is that he’s not only the garden, but he’s also doing microscopic pieces about the insects that live in that garden and about the way the garden smells. Some of it yields a great harvest and some of the yield is rotten. It’s all of it at the same time, like a big collage.”

The album aims to transcend time and genre, she says, not to entrance with pop-rap fantasy.

“Each piece of music that we put out is a seed that grows in the consciousness of the people that hear it, whether they like it or hate it. We’re a little greenhouse nursery – that’s what SomeOthaShip is. We have a vested interest in the health of our people and of all living things.”

music@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/nowtorontomusic

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted