Categories

Archives

A sample text widget

Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.

Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan. Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem, suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.

home » releases » Anthony Joseph – Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back
Anthony Joseph – Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back

Anthony Joseph – Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back

 

Constellation of Sounds
by Ivy Wilson:
While often atmospheric in its thematic registers, ranging from spaces of the subterranean underground to the intergalactic, and equally so with its sonic registers, ranging from doubly articulated vocals to the reverb echo, there is indeed something like a core to Rowing Up River to Get Our Names Back. Taken as a suite, the three tracks that make up the middle, if not heart and soul, of the album—“Tony,” “A Juba for Janet,” and “Churches of Sound (The Benítez Rojo)”—put on display how the cultures and histories of the Black diaspora always constitute both the downbeat and backbeat for Anthony, not just his music but perhaps even his very consciousness. We can hear it in the deep pain when “Churches of Sound” moves into a poetic ode when Anthony notes that Lord Kitchener’s Calypso “croon reached Ghana / just in time for Independence,” and in “A Juba for Janet” with its dub soundscape, and yet again with the Afrobeat undertones of “Tony.” If “Churches of Sound” is closer to an ode, “Tony” might be a paean; significant no less because it contains the lyrics from which the album gets its name. It is here that Anthony uses the conceit of seeing Tony Oladipo Allen perform in France to proclaim his admiration of Allen’s virtuosity as a drummer (“He was duplicitous / a conjure man / with seven hands.”), arguably as significant as any of his counterparts including Art Blakey and Max Roach.
If Rowing Up River to Get Our Names Back has an anthem it might well be “An Afrofuturist Poem.” The penultimate track on album, and the shortest at 4:41, Anthony opens the song with the line “I am my mother’s son …,” seemingly in reference to Toni Morrison’s famous lines about sons in her novel Beloved, before announcing numerous other sources that constitute his personal and artistic genealogy including his father, I & I, and oil. But in the middle of the song, the bass subsides and for a full 30 seconds Anthony waxes “We must arrive new mythologies / and syntax / and modes of expression / which are fixed beyond comparison / to alien transmission.”

The resonances of Afrofuturism are everywhere on this album as both Anthony’s lyrics and Dave Okumu’s production try to “ride through space.” There are mentions of “anti-matter propulsion” and “Afronauts” elsewhere, but the song that emblematizes Afrofuturism as more than merely spatial temporality is the album’s lead track. “Satellite” is a reminder and encomium that, facing the conditions of modernity, Black folks across space and time have always been curious, if not compelled, by a yearning for the beyond, a beyond outside of the here and now, and sometimes back into the past to press into the future. In this sense, “Satellite” shares a sonic accord and political vision with the Soulquarians’ “Heaven Somewhere,” on a version that featured Omar. In an album where Anthony plays with order, sequence, and boundaries, such as when he inverts “alpha and omega” to “omega and alpha” or rearranges the postcolonial model of “core and periphery,” he concludes that there is, or at least can be, a center: “Moving through / the center / connected to everything (yeah, yeah) / spun out of galaxies / and diasporas / and still at the center / of all that is.”

STREAM / DOWNLOAD

released February 7, 2025

Produced and Arranged by Dave Okumu
All lyrics by Anthony Joseph
Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Mixed by Dan Parry
Mastered by Shawn Joseph @ Optimum Mastering
photos: Mirabelwhite & Bunny Bread @icreatenotdestroy
Artwork by @icreatenotdestroy
Design by Jean Louis Duralek

SATELLITE feat. ESKA

Dan See drums
Dave Okumu bass, guitars, synthesisers, programming, percussion, background vocals
Nick Ramm Rhodes, synthesiser
Aviram Barath synthesiser
Anthony Joseph vocals
Eska Mtungwazi vocals
Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Recorded at Unit 9

CHURCHES OF SOUND (The Benitez-Rojo)

Dan See drums, percussion
Dave Okumu bass, guitar, synthesiser, piano, programming
Nick Ramm piano
Aviram Barath Rhodes, synthesisers
Anthony Joseph vocals
Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Recorded at Unit 9

TONY

Richard Spaven drums
Dave Okumu guitars, bass, programming, percussion, Fender Rhodes, background vocals
Aviram Barath Fender Rhodes, Moog
Eska Mtungwazi background vocals, vocal arrangement
Byron Wallen trumpet
James Wade Sired trombone
Colin Webster saxophone

Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Recorded at Unit 9

A JUBA FOR JANET

Dan See drums
Dave Okumu bass, guitars, synthesisers, programming
James Wade Sired trombone
Colin Webster saxophone
Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Recorded at Unit 9

BLACK HISTORY

Dan See drums
Dave Okumu bass, guitars, keyboards, programming, percussion, background vocals
Nick Ramm Fender Rhodes
Aviram Barath synthesiser
Colin Websters saxophones
James Wade Sired trombones
Eska Mtungwazi vocals, vocal arrangement
Anthony Joseph vocals
Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Recorded at Unit 9

AN AFROFUTURIST POEM
Dave Okumu guitars, kalimba, piano, programming, percussion, Moog
Colin Webster saxophone
Anthony Joseph vocals

MILWAUKEE & ASHLAND
Dan See drums
Dave Okumu guitars, bass, programming
Aviram Barath synthesiser
Nick Ramm Fender Rhodes, synthesiser
Byron Wallen trumpet
Colin Webster saxophones
Anthony Joseph vocals
Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu
Recorded at Unit 9

Anthony’s thanks:
To Louise, Keiko & Meena, for love above and beyond, to Franck Descollonges, Gaspard Rojo and the whole Heavenly Sweetness team, to all the musicians who lent their artistry to this project, to Andrew John, Thibaut Remy, Rod Youngs, Jason Yarde, Colin Webster, Denys Baptise, Renatto Paris, Oyinkro ‘Junior’ Ngboufa & David Bitan, to Ivy Wilson, Kameryn Carter & The Black Arts Coalition at Northwestern University, Chicago, to my sangha at The London Buddhist Center in Brixton, my booking agent Claire Henault and the team at Caramba, Paris, to Jean-Louis Duralek, as always, for his art and graphic design, thank you Bunny Bread for art which is always right the first time, to Sandrine/Mirabelwhite for her photographs, Shawn Joseph @Optimum Mastering, and some major gratitudes to Dave Okumu for the love and generosity of his spirit, for his patience and swag in piloting this trip with such natural accurance. Onwards.

Dave’s thanks:
Eternal praise and thanks to the heavenlies, gratitude to the soil from whence we blossom, to the rocks from which we’re hewn. Thank you to the burgeoning family who contain and nurture the dreams, allowing them to take flight. Thank you to the musicians, to the team, the enablers and custodians of this process. Thank you to these gargantuan souls: Eska, Aviram, Pickles, Seezus, Ramm, Byron, James, Colin, Dan Parry, Giacomo… Kazimkazimkazim: endless love, Okumu family worldwide. Thank you AJ for trusting me with your voice and creativity. And most of all, thankyou to my magnificent 7 year old executive producer, Django.

MEDIAS