INFO: BOL - Charles Mingus, All Lovin Soul, ayentee featuring Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), Common, and Black Thought

Massive bassist/composer Charles Mingus starts us off kicking up our heels. A French soul music ensemble, All LovinSoul, offers us exquisite selections from their debut and so far only recording. We conclude with an innovative mash-up by producer Ayentee featuring Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), Common, and Black Thought. A wide array of music to welcome in spring.

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ALS features a trio of female voices like a front line of flutes, light and lyrical. Song lyrics that run far, far deeper than simple "moon/June, I love you/do you love me" re-treads. A wonderful mix of pop and jazz: rich harmonies, floating melodies, enticing rhythms. They are a full band with horns and keys, percussion, guitar, bass and drums. I know it was impossible to keep this unit together without major support from a patron or an enthusiastic public.

Actually they are a throwback to an earlier era of music, fit right into the middle of late seventies soul/jazz hybrids, sort of like when Earth, Wind & ire’s leader Maurice

White was producing The Emotions, or maybe some Denice Williams kind of vibe with a touch of new age spirituality. An overall warm, ethereal, laid-back groove with filaments of steel resolve and social consciousness running through. Unfortunately, this sound is not in sync with what is popping in the hip hop dominated new millennium.

—kalamu ya salaam