ROCKY DAWUNI / “Wake The Town”

I first heard “Wake The Town” a couple of years ago on Garth Trinidad’s Chocolate City radio program. (You can hear Garth’s show over the air in the Greater Los Angeles area or online at www.kcrw.org.) I immediately wanted to know more about the artist. Who was this singer with his strange mix of reggae, pop, Afrobeat and punk? What about that strange name? Where was he from? America? Somewhere in the Caribbean? Europe?

Rocky Dawuni is a twenty-something-year-old musician from Ghana, West Africa. In his home country, Dawuni is so popular that he has his own music festival, ‘Rocky Dawuni’s Independence Splash,’ which celebrates Ghana’s Independence Day and attracts upwards of 20,000 fans each year. Here in the U.S., however, although he’s been gaining a bit of press lately, Dawuni is virtually unknown. His new self-released album, Book Of Changes, is his fourth. I haven’t heard Dawuni’s previous three albums, but Book Of Changes is a solid and consistent release that is well worth the money for any fan of roots reggae or African pop.

I like nearly the entire album, but several tracks standout. “Africa For Learn” is a sprawling, mid-tempo Afrobeat tune that showcases Dawuni’s persuasive, almost indolent confidence. The lyrics discuss the ongoing struggle for freedom from various perspectives—personal, national, international—but Dawuni tempers the weight of the topic with both humor and sarcasm. Several times, he nearly stops the proceedings to ask, “You wan’ hear more?” “More!” answers the chorus, “More!”

His usual style is a bit off-kilter to begin with, but “Someone To Blame” sounds strange even for Dawuni. The accompaniment is so loose and unpretentious that it sounds as if he and his band mates made up the entire thing on the spot. Over a reggae backbeat, conga drums and a wandering horn line, Dawuni sings in that strange falsetto of his, telling a young lady that she can find someone else to blame for her troubles. He’s not having it.

“Wake The Town” is the showcase tune, the best song of the album. Despite being one of the funkiest songs I’ve heard in quite a while, there is something muted and easy about the groove. The music simmers in place, hot to the core, but like a good pot of gumbo, too thick to actually boil over. Dawuni boasts, “No one will sleep in this town tonight.” His groove is so hot you actually believe him.

—Mtume ya Salaam

Rocky Dawuni’s new album Book Of Changes is available at http://www.rockydawuni.com.

          The man saying something         

Good looking out, Mtume. I had not heard Rocky before. You right to highlight him. The man saying something. Need to be heard in these here times. As you know, roots reggae still big up in Africa; I suspect partly because of the message. The music continue to carry forward social concerns, and though we all like to get our groove on, life is more than celebrating procreative pleasure. Rocky music be about the fullness of life and not the reification and commodification of a small sliver of sex.

Another thing I hear in Rocky is a folk approach to vocalizations that is not at all aligned with pop smoothness or western tempered scales. To describe his voice simply as rough and/or raw does a disservice to the roots sound, a sound which incorporates the ups and downs, the toughs and tenders, the peaks and valleys, all in oneness and is therefore both strong and potent because in its fullness roots carries all of the elements that make up our sound spectrum rather than solely the easy listening ones.

So, yes, “Wake The Town” and let them hear this man.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 20th, 2005 at 12:58 am and is filed under Contemporary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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