SPOTLIGHT: Aphrodesia

Aphrodesia is an eleven piece band from San Francisco that takes the music of Africa and infuses it with a mixture of funk, pop and hip hop.

Birthed in 2003 in the backyard shack of bassist Ezra Gale, Aphrodesia quickly recorded “Shackrobeat Vol. 1”, a disc heavily influenced by singer Lara Maykovich's experience living in Ghana and Zimbabwe which was picked as a top record of 2003 by the East Bay Express. The following year the politically outspoken group launched the “Just Vote Tour”, a cross-country swing-state voter registration tour undertaken in the group's vegetable oil-powered bus that landed in New York City during the Republican National Convention.

A second album "Front Lines" soon followed. The group began to establish a reputation as a great live band. The line-up included singers Mayokovich and Dorn, bassist Gale, guitarists David Sartore and Chris Mulhauser, the horns section of Henry Hung, Liz Larson, Mitch Marcus and Sylvain Carton, percussionist Paul Sonnabend and powerhouse drummer Jason Slota.

Now the band has released a new album Precious Commodity. On this album the group lifted its long standing ban on guitar solos and have included three in the new album. This album

maps how far the high-energy eleven-piece Bay Area band has traveled from Afrobeat worshipers to innovative and mature collective, and points to a radical new direction for North America’s burgeoning Afrobeat scene. Where once careful attention to the tradition sparked by Nigeria’s Fela Kuti reigned supreme, now musicians are madly pursuing their own visions for the music—and creating traditions of their own.

This group is different from a lot of what we normally spotlight on Voices to hear but it is great music and definitely worth hearing.