People of the Sun Anthony Joseph

• 1 Milligan (The Ocean) 08:26
• 2 Sans souci (Totem) 05:45
• 3 Bandit School 04:09
• 4 Suffering 06:45
• 5 Dealings 07:16
• 6 Dig out Your Eye 07:36
• 7 He Was Trying 09:13
• 8 On the Move 05:48
• 9 Incense Taxi 02:32
• 10 Jungle 07:31
• 11 People of the Sun 05:54
• Total Runtime 01:10:55

Info for People of the Sun

“People of the Sun”. This is the title of Anthony Joseph’s new album. This latest opus highlights the famous carnival of Port-of-Spain, its ramifications as much musical, poetic as political. Produced by Anthony Yarde, Anthony Joseph’s henchman, in Trinidad, this album brings Caribbean music to shine for us.

Trinidad. 4,768 km2 of land surrounded by turquoise waters, a unique piece of the Caribbean puzzle where musical vibrations arrive on the waves from the neighbouring islands.

For ten years or so Anthony Joseph has traveled the world, recording and performing music in a somewhat makeshift manor. Visits to Trinidad until recently had been limited to only a few weeks or a month, but yet from wherever Anthony may have found himself, he never felt for a moment that his island was far from him. This bind is so strong that even the distance of thousands of kilometers couldn’t weaken its grasp. A force evident in the rhythms, poems and books and now honored even further in the recordings for his new album. ‘People Of The Sun’

And so, by uniting local musicians, the aptly named Caribbean Roots, they began recording in the very heart of Trinidad’s capital, Port of Spain. The idea was to soak up the intense effervescence of its local music — from both past and present — and to finally bring into existence, an album that had long lurked inside Anthony’s mind.

With his inimitable talent for blending elements of Caribbean soul, funk and jazz while showcasing his uncanny storytelling ability, this wise wordsmith has presented himself as someone who can link two generations of Trinidad together. Thanks to him, the older generation, steeped in local musical tradition and the new young generation, who are more open to current trends, have now joined forces. So here you have practitioners of the steelpan, soca, and rapso right alongside lovers of more contemporary R&B, soul and rock flavours. Creating something far from being an old-fashioned rendition of the past, nor a digital reckoning of the present, what we have is a tasteful fusion that wholeheartedly points toward the coming times.

Musicians Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, Brother Resistance, Modupe Folasade Onilu, Mikhail Salcedo, John John Francis, 3 Canal and his daughter Meena have all tagged on along the way to lend their musical mastery. Be it steel drums, militant poetics, percussive witchcraft or vocal prowess alongside the Ibis String Ensemble, who have injected string arrangements to give the album a melancholic dimension reminiscent of early Blaxploitation soundtracks.

All the above musicians found themselves locked away in a house that had been turned into a studio on the north of the island earlier this year. With only the ocean as their neighbor they began to work, riding waves of creativity and putting down the right recordings. Aided by melodies and arrangements from Anthony Joseph’s right-hand men; bassist Andrew John and saxophonist/producer/arranger

Jason Yarde, along with drummer David Bitan the project’s compositional core have handed themselves over as, “People Of The Sun’.

The steelpan’s metallic overtones are the album’s guiding musical thread throughout, constantly present, helping to highlight Anthony’s political lyrics, social commentary and conscience black identity. The grooves are so strong they bring both the players and listeners together in a collective trance…

‘People of the Sun’ will put Trinidadian music to new listeners far beyond its sandy shores. Currently, it may enjoy slightly less visibility than its Jamaican and Cuban counterparts. However, its musical motto remains, “Together we aspire”, and never before have these words resonated more intensely.

Anthony Joseph will play a headline show at London’s Barbican Centre as part of WIndrush: A Celebration. Forming part of London Jazz Festival. A show that will include amongst others, Manu Chao’s recent favourite songstress Calypso Rose.

Anthony Joseph
is a Trinidad-born poet, novelist, musician and lecturer. He began writing as a young child, and cites his main influences as calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the rhythms of Caribbean speech. He has lived in the UK since 1989.

Joseph is the author of four poetry collections: Desafinado (1994), Teragaton (1998), Bird Head Son (2009), Rubber Orchestras (2011), and a novel, The African Origins of UFOs (2006). Described as an “afro-psychedelic-noir, a poetic work of metafiction, mythology and afro-futurism”, the book was endorsed by Kamau Brathwaite, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Lauri Ramey, who hailed it in her introduction as “a future fiction classic.” Ali Alizadeh of the book remarked that “contemporary literature doesn’t come a lot more sophisticated and intriguing than this.”

Joseph has taught poetry and fiction at Goldsmiths University, London Metropolitan University, and currently lectures in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College. He was chosen in 2004 by Decibel and the Arts Council of England as one of fifty Black and Asian writers who have influenced contemporary British literature. In 2005 he served as the British Council’s first poet in residence at California State University, Los Angeles. He also performs internationally as the lead vocalist for his band, The Spasm Band, with which he has released three critically acclaimed albums, all timed to coincide with book publications.

The two long poems presented here by the Poetry Archive are the perfect introduction to Joseph’s distinctive and compound style – incorporating the insistent rhythms and reasoning that seem to emerge from his childhood among Baptist preachers; an agile density of phrasing that places him in the lineage of Caribbean poetry; as well as an eye for techniques of fragmentation and collage more recognisable from the Modernist tradition. His poems are perhaps most remarkable for their use of strongly descriptive and melodious aspects, which in Joseph’s reading of ‘Michael X (Narcissus)’ escalate through the meeting and departure of recurring sounds into a mournful and striking litany about a semi-folkloric figure of recent Caribbean history. It is the Joseph’s sense of restraint in the treatment of his subject that proves so consistently effective, as if a stake in the powers of quietness, control and patience has allowed his poems able to discover the memorably visceral moments at their hearts. One is made aware, too, of Joseph’s unusual ability to create a sense of serious listening in his poems, a genuine response to, rather than urge to command, his subjects and surroundings. That he is not content to simply continue within established poetic traditions, but at once complicates, agitates and renovates them from within, has caused Ali Alizadeh to describe Joseph as “both a faithful heir and an agnostic rebel; a Black poet haunted by Africa’s past as well as a bilingual post-modernist amused by the possibilities of the future.”

Eska Mtungwazi
(born 1971), known professionally as ESKA, is a London-born British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Following her inaugural release as a solo artist with her 2013 Gatekeeper EP, her eponymous debut album, ESKA, was released on 27 April 2015.

After gaining a BSc in Mathematics from the London School of Economics, Mtungwazi became a teacher of Maths and Music. During this time she spent many years as a backing singer on other musicians' projects, and steadily built a reputation in the UK for her featured work with an eclectic range of established British artists and bands, including Grace Jones and Bobby McFerrin.

Following vocal credits on many independent releases throughout the 2000s, in 2013 she released her debut solo project titled Gatekeeper EP on her own Earthling Recordings label, which featured five original tracks and was co-produced by acclaimed producers Matthew Herbert and David Okumu. The EP attracted worldwide critical acclaim, including BBC Radio 6 tastemaker Gilles Peterson, who called her "one of the most important singers in the UK right now", and Jamie Cullum, who declared the EP's title song to be "an unbelievable track that will be hard to beat in 2013". The title track from the EP was also selected by Peterson for his Brownswood Bubblers 10 compilation, which was released on Brownswood Recordings.

Mtungwazi released her eponymous debut album ESKA on 26 April 2015. ESKA was well received by critics, and was nominated for the 2015 Mercury Music Prize.

On 18 August 2016 it was announced via Billboard that ESKA would be one of 18 emerging artists to receive #Momentum funding from the PRS Foundation Speaking on her selection, PRSF said "ESKA’s restless inventiveness will continue to be explored further on her sophomore album and in her live performances which have become legendary showcases for this inimitable artist.

This album contains no booklet.