Taj Weekes, the freshest voice in contemporary roots reggae, returns with his long-awaited second CD, DEIDEM. With DEIDEM, Taj follows the critical success of 2006’s Hope & Doubt with another triumph, a mixture of message and music with a timeless groove and an eye to the world.
The global consciousness of DEIDEM resulted from a spiritual epiphany following personal tragedy. Weekes lost both of his parents within a year and wrote an album’s worth of songs expressing his grief before completely reversing his direction. Weekes says:
Over hypnotic rhythms, Weekes sings about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in "Louisiana" and warns of climate change in "Dark Clouds." The album’s key cut, "Orphans Cry," is about the genocide in Darfur, and Weekes & Adowa are donating the proceeds from "Orphans Cry" to aid the children of this war-torn region of Sudan.
Born on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, Weekes grew up listening to a wide variety of music. R&B helped shaped his soulful vocal style, calypso stoked his interest in the power of topical lyrics, and classical music and C&W stimulated his love for diverse sounds. His lilting tenor voice is itself a remarkable instrument - soaring one moment, whispering delicately the next, or aching with a wisdom and world-weariness beyond his years.
Weekes’ group, Adowa, is an international collective of New York and island musicians. The band features Shelton Garner and Adoni Xavier on guitar, Radss Desiree on bass, and Delroy "Delly" Golding on percussion. The group is a reflection of Weekes’ own broad musical and cultural sensibility: Garner cites Jimi Hendrix as an inflence, Golding has toured with Burning Spear and Third World’s Bunny Rugs, and Desiree is the son of Dominica’s Calypso King, Lord Tokyo. Adoni performed with Dennis Brown and Eek-A-Mouse.
Released nationally on Jatta Records, DEIDEM has already caused a stir. The song "Orphan’s Cry" spent three months in the reggae Top 10 at GlobalRhythm.net and OurStage.com, and Download.com, in reviewing selections from DEIDEM, wrote that "Weekes sings assuredly and soulfully for the voiceless and the oppressed, taking his music to a new level of commitment and universal appeal."
Ian Comacho, writing for Collected Sounds, called Weekes’ 2005 debut album, Hope & Doubt, "an inspired work of uncommon verve. Audacious and original, it shines like a beacon among the gray of contemporary reggae." Now DEIDEM reaffirms Taj Weekes & Adowa as one of the most exciting and authentic voices in modern roots reggae.
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The global consciousness of DEIDEM resulted from a spiritual epiphany following personal tragedy. Weekes lost both of his parents within a year and wrote an album’s worth of songs expressing his grief before completely reversing his direction. Weekes says:
I realized that it’s not about me.
Sure, I lost two people, but there are millions of people dying every day.
So right then I scrapped all the songs I had and wrote 12 new ones.
I wrote about the world instead of myself.
Over hypnotic rhythms, Weekes sings about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in "Louisiana" and warns of climate change in "Dark Clouds." The album’s key cut, "Orphans Cry," is about the genocide in Darfur, and Weekes & Adowa are donating the proceeds from "Orphans Cry" to aid the children of this war-torn region of Sudan.
Born on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, Weekes grew up listening to a wide variety of music. R&B helped shaped his soulful vocal style, calypso stoked his interest in the power of topical lyrics, and classical music and C&W stimulated his love for diverse sounds. His lilting tenor voice is itself a remarkable instrument - soaring one moment, whispering delicately the next, or aching with a wisdom and world-weariness beyond his years.
Weekes’ group, Adowa, is an international collective of New York and island musicians. The band features Shelton Garner and Adoni Xavier on guitar, Radss Desiree on bass, and Delroy "Delly" Golding on percussion. The group is a reflection of Weekes’ own broad musical and cultural sensibility: Garner cites Jimi Hendrix as an inflence, Golding has toured with Burning Spear and Third World’s Bunny Rugs, and Desiree is the son of Dominica’s Calypso King, Lord Tokyo. Adoni performed with Dennis Brown and Eek-A-Mouse.
Released nationally on Jatta Records, DEIDEM has already caused a stir. The song "Orphan’s Cry" spent three months in the reggae Top 10 at GlobalRhythm.net and OurStage.com, and Download.com, in reviewing selections from DEIDEM, wrote that "Weekes sings assuredly and soulfully for the voiceless and the oppressed, taking his music to a new level of commitment and universal appeal."
Ian Comacho, writing for Collected Sounds, called Weekes’ 2005 debut album, Hope & Doubt, "an inspired work of uncommon verve. Audacious and original, it shines like a beacon among the gray of contemporary reggae." Now DEIDEM reaffirms Taj Weekes & Adowa as one of the most exciting and authentic voices in modern roots reggae.
<- Back to Projects
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