about
“There’s an image in my memory, from the film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, of Chuck Berry crossing the departure lounge of an airport with his guitar case as his only piece of luggage to declare.
“In 1991 in Paris, that’s how Keziah appeared to us for the first time, with a guitar case that could only belong to him and which went with him everywhere – a silhouette, a free artist, alone with his guitar, which he played with a series of riffs, slaps and percussive sounds. One night, he set Paris’ Zenith theatre on fire; it was packed to the rafters with people who had initially come to applaud a certain Lenny Kravitz.
“He shares with Chuck Berry a sort of invented style, a way of playing and of being a free artist, an attitude of ‘attitude’” – Laurence Touitou, co-founder, Delabel France
Keziah Jones returns with his fifth album, NIGERIAN WOOD (a knowing wink to the Beatle’s Norwegian Wood). Originally from Nigeria, the young Keziah travelled to London to pursue his education, leaving his country to become a musician, and not a doctor as his family would have liked. In 1992, he was signed to Delabel after being spotted in the Paris Metro. The following year, his first album, BLUFUNK IS A FACT, was an immediate success, with the surprise triumph of Rhythm Is Love, a single that became a worldwide hit. A classic that founded a new rhythm philosophy, this first album already foreshadowed many of the musical directions that Keziah would take during his career, from blues to funk via rock, pop and, a little later, Afrobeat. This successful – and wholly unforced – fusion of genres is Keziah’s trademark and remains a key to his success.
In 1995, his second album, AFRICAN SPACE CRAFT, an album-manifesto of the jigsaw puzzle that is Afro funk-rock, reinforced his standing as an exceptional artist. It was followed in 1999 by the experimental LIQUID SUNSHINE.
In 1997, the year of Fela Kuti’s death, which affected him deeply, Keziah left Paris and Lagos definitively to settle in London. He had met Fela for a long interview-conversation, which would be the last public statement from the ‘President of the Kalakuta Republic’ (Fela’s nickname). It is an artistic and political ‘last will and testament’ from Fela, like a passing of the baton between two generations of the African avant-garde.
In 2003, with BLACK ORPHEUS, he offered up an eloquent homage to Fela’s Afrobeat legacy. With the lyrical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as its backdrop, this fourth album confirms his return to favour with the general public. On it, he undertakes an astonishing fusion of genres. The album offers a framing perspective on Lagos (the ‘New York’ of Africa) and Yoruba culture, drawing on the past in order to look more clearly toward the future, constantly switching between tradition and a reinterpreted Afrobeat.
This is an ‘organic’ album, as its creator likes to say, on which acoustic guitars and brass take precedence over electronic instruments – an African folk music sung mostly in English (a foretaste of the folk revival, the new benchmark genre since 2007).
Since then, based in Brooklyn/New York while keeping up his Lagos-Paris-London shuttle trips, Keziah Jones tirelessly travels the planet in pursuit of a wealth of influences. In 2007, he thus covered U2’s One on the compilation In The Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2, and plays on the next Amadou and Mariam album.
