Short history lesson, coming up, so loosen your ties, tilt back your chair and wait for the wind rush. It’s June 22, 1948, and the SS Empire Windrush is docking at Tilbury in Essex. It’s an important moment in the history of modern England. The steamship has stopped in Jamaica to pick up some of the thousands of servicemen who had been recruited to serve in the armed forces during the Second World War. Also on board are some 500 other Caribbean men and women keen to visit England. And their arrival changes the cultural reach of the British landscape forever; the civil equivalent of packing 500 pounds of Hog Plum Cocoa and Rum incendiary material into the veins of Old Blightly and letting the whole bloody thing explode in a massive Ganga cloud of fruity abandon. And this album is no different.
With roots in East London, Black Britanyaa’s Segga Dan and Daddy Ash pay homage to the event with debut album, ‘The Windrush Vol.2’ – a spirited if occasionally patchy collection of hip-hop and ska tunes matured in the Port and Sherry Casks of the 50s and 60s. A fluttering of flutes, the sweet jiggery-pokery of third-generation beats and the smoky, industrial blow of true-Brit. Highlights include the frisky and Brazilian, ‘Lonely Roads’ and salubrious vocal stab of ‘Liberation’ featuring Omar.
The spirits only talk when they want to.