Once again we are gathered here to be one-on-one with our artistes. I am your girl Shani and this column is all about Richie Loop today. Although not a stranger to the music industry, Richie Loop is a new performing artiste who has seemingly over taken Jamaica overnight with his hit single MY CUPP. My Cupp has been a blasting the radio waves and has been enjoying success on both local and international charts. OutARoad had to get up close and personal with him to see how he feels about his current success as well as his plans for the future.
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CHESTER MILLER TALKS ABOUT DENNIS BROWN AND SINGS LIVE
IT'S dusk on Keith Richards's verandah in the hills outside Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The grizzled face is half-hidden in the shadows. From inside the villa wafts the steady nyahbingi drumming of the Wingless Angels, five Rastafarians whose debut album has been produced by the off-duty Rolling Stone.
"To me there was such an incredible power of expression in the music," says Richards. "It hasn't been done for commercial enterprise; it's just what this lot of people do when they've finished whatever hustle they do to survive."
The collaboration recalls Brian Jones's jaunt to Morocco in the mid-Sixties when Richards's old sparring partner in the Stones recorded with the master musicians of Joujouka. There are similarities, Richards concedes, between the "two little hill villages, in Morocco and Jamaica, each with its own separate culture and drumming". That said, this is not simply a vanity project.
The multi-millionaire has owned property in Jamaica since the early Seventies, and he claims to feel at home among this group. Its line-up includes ska legend Justin Hines and a former Talking Heads and Bad Brains sideman, Black Skull, as well as Warren Williamson, Bongo Neville and fisherman Bongo Locksien. Richards jokingly refers to himself as "the albino in the band", but he's addressed by the five dreadlocked musicians as "Brother Keith".
"I have common roots with these melodies," he says. "They're old hymns and I was a choirboy." (He once even gigged at Westminster Abbey.)
Richards first met Skully and Hines after recording the Goat's Head Soup album with the Rolling Stones in Kingston in 1971. "We didn't know he was Keith Richards, such a great man," says Hines. "He was relaxed, just like a normal person."
In the mid-Seventies, when Richards couldn't be with his kids because of the Stones' endless touring, he entrusted them to the Rastas, who looked after them at home in the village of Steertown. "Safest place in the world for them," he says stoutly.
Richards came up with a name for the group. "Justin's voice - it sounds like angels singing. I said to him, 'You're angels, but you've got no wings.' Then, of course, that led to the jokes - like, the wings had got stuck in customs at Kingston."
Cups of tea flow steadily while the Angels philosophise and reminisce. No matter how secular their previous music might have been, they see a clear connection between Biblical cosmology and everyday life. As Hines observes of the song, Book of Life: "When you become a spiritual person within yourself, your name will be written there as one of the chosen ones.
"I'm looking for all the peoples in the world to have their names written down in the long book of life."
In its purest form, nyahbingi drumming is played at Rastafarian meetings and involves repetitive chanting and drumming. The touchstone recording of the genre remains the epic three-volume box set by the late Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari.
The collaboration between Richards and the Angels expands the genre. Radically breaking with Rasta machismo, the group features a female voice, that of the sensible Sister Maureen. The traditionally sparse sound is further embroidered by the delicate filigree of Richards's guitar, and the fiddle and squeezebox of Irishman Frankie Gavin.
"I wanted to put stuff in without getting in the way," says Richards. "It came slowly. As usual, the more space you leave, the better. Silence is your canvas, then you start to tickle it and play with it. That's how you get depth and space and dynamics, and that's what these guys are past masters at."
It took the best part of three decades to get round to making a proper album. "Like fine wine, the music has matured," Richard claims. Now, the Stones demand his attention for the Bridges to Babylon world tour. But Hines, for the Angels' part, isn't fazed: "He still moves humbly today; I and I have sincere love for this brother."
"Knowing people for a quarter of a century is a long, deep thing," Richards observes. "Nothing was ever planned on this; it's just what we love to do. As soon as I come to Jamaica, when the sun goes down, the drums come out."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4711241/A-Stone-goes-back-to-his-choirboy-roots.html
"Keith Richards, Old Man Riffer The Rolling Stones' Enduring Guitarist"
By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 19, 1997; Page G01
"At the moment, Keith Richards is sprawled on a couch in a room deep within the bowels of Ericson Stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers. The room has been temporarily converted into a rock-and-roll laundromat -- a pair of Maytag washers and dryers roll with the Stones, ready to rinse out each night's sweat. The Maytag slogan could just as well be Richards's attitude about the group: "Needs No Repairs."
This may be Rolling Stone Time -- "Bridges to Babylon" opened at No. 3 on the charts last week and the tour has been selling out stadiums around the country -- but Richards is also papa to a just-released project, "Wingless Angels." The album is a mesmerizing collection of drum- and chant-fueled Rastafarian spirituals recorded in the front room and garden of the hillside Jamaican home he's kept since the Stones started recording in Kingston 25 years ago.
Richards produced the album and plays some very supple, low-key guitar on it. The album is full of slow, transcendent grooves performed by musicians who include ska legends Justin Hines and Winston Thomas.
"I was so fortunate to bump into those guys when I first went to Jamaica," Richards says. "They kind of found me, like gurus. They picked me up on the beach, had no idea what I did."
"Wingless Angels" reflects Richards's love for reggae and ska, as well as blues. "It's something that connects way deep in the genes," he explains. "You can never put your finger on it, but I know where it
is. I didn't realize what a privilege it was to be allowed [to play with them], and then the music took me over immediately. It's been running in me ever since. Once the feel is there, then you don't really interfere with it, you just do it."
Much the same could be said for Richards's other group, which owes much of its power to a different kind of primal groove. "Even though on the surface it seems to be very different kinds of music, with very different backgrounds," Richards says, "there's got to be a connection."
"I don't know why it resonates particularly within me, but something does take over that's hard to identify. I don't know whether it has something to do with synchronization or teamwork . . . . "
From Rolling Stone, October 8, 1997
Richards' Wingless Angels Set to Fly
While Rolling Stone Keith Richards criss-crosses the globe on his band's Bridges to Babylon tour, one of his side projects is embarking on a journey of its own.|
Wingless Angels, a group of five Nyabinghi Rastafarian drummers and a vocalist named Sister Maureen, will release their eponymous debut album on Richards' Mindless Records on Oct. 14.
Recorded at the famous guitarist's Ocho Rios, Jamaica villa, the album features drums, chanting, Richards' guitar and bass, and a soulful Irish fiddle.
Asked about the group's name, Richards joked, "They sing like angels, but they can't fly." (Scott Hess)
Keith interviewed about Wingless Angels in the March 1998 issue of CMJ...dig it.
Richards' Rasta Project Takes Wing on Island
PLAYBOY: A different subject: Keith Richards, the producer. You have just produced a record with the Wingless Angels. How did this come into existence?
RICHARDS: It was pure coincidence, totally unplanned. After the "Voodoo Lounge" tour, I wanted to go on holiday, to my house in Jamaica. I deserved that. Hanging around with the brothers for a while, smoking a bit, playing a bit, all those things you do on a little paradise island. I've known the guys since 1971 or 1972. They're from a Rastafarian town. We met on the beach. They didn't know anything about the Stones and all the fuss. It was great, because I was able to keep my anonymity. They watched and heard me play the guitar and invited me over. This music, someone from Africa once said, is more African than African music itself. It's been surviving there in the jungle hills for hundreds of years without influences from the outside. Voices, drums, that's it. Without planning anything, we started playing for fun. They brought the drums into my house and I was utterly fascinated with the beauty of this music. One night, we went in my Range Rover to the studio in Kingston, 15 Rastas with their drums. And I knew instantly - that won't work. You can't put them in a sterile studio. It's too regulated. Well, we thought, then we'll keep it to ourselves. Not for the public!
PLAYBOY: And how did the story go on?
RICHARDS: Very mysteriously. As I said, in 1995, after the "Voodoo Lounge" tour, I was in Jamaica. I met the guys again and a representative of the Jamaican Film Board heard one of our sessions. That's got to be recorded, he said, and I told him about the unsuccessful attempt a few years ago. A few days later, a mobile recording studio showed up in front of my house - a "present" from the man from the Film Board. Well, fine, but who was supposed to operate the equipment? The next day, there's a knock on my door, and the only person in the world who could record something like this, stood there in front of me - Rob Faboni, who had got married in Jamaica, and who knew the guys. It was really strange. It dawned on me that my holiday would be entirely canceled, and that some secret forces somewhere had become active. My house was turned into a studio: drums, microphones, cables etc. After a month, about halfway through the project, Chris Blackwell (the founder of Island Records and who initiated the worldwide success of reggae music) appeared and said: "Once you've finished recording, I would be delighted to release the record!" This was when I knew: "Hey, we're really doing some work here."
PLAYBOY: You did play the guitar for this production, didn't you?
RICHARDS: Yes, I found that to be a very special honor. Normally, all instruments, apart from the drums, are an absolute no-no for these serious Rasta songs. But the boys insisted on me taking part in it. We then went to New York with the basic recordings and I wondered what other instrumental elements could be added at all. I could think of only one person who would fit in: Frankie Gavin, an Irishman, who masters about any instrument you can possibly think of: violin, concertina, flutes and many others. He is the sort of person who can play with Peruvian musicians just as well as with Irish folk groups or Hungarian Gypsies. All of a sudden, there was a knock on my door and Frankie Gavin stood outside, asking me, "I happened to be in town and I wonder whether you've got some work for me?" Everything just fell into place. Jah had a hand in it. I knew then who I was working for (laughs).
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