RESPECT | Lil Obeah goes Nyabinghi - Ghostdance Dubs

Lil Obeah goes Nyabinghi

Ghostdance Dubs

Nyabinghi, Reggae’s Foundation heartbeat, has finally reached Transylvania! Lil Obeah Goes Nyabinghi is dedicated to Prince Buster, the Originator!

From Lil Obeah’s first hearing of this African Jamaican sound’s beat and performance power, he was hypnotized. It was the classic reggae film Rockers, and nyabinghi is the opening sonic attack against Babylon. As a huge fan of dub poetry, he further enjoyed nyabinghi as a foundation for innovative poets such as Mutabaruka, Oku Onuora, Micheal Smith, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Sister Breeze, Roger Robinson, and even soul, jazz, blues poet Gil-Scott Heron, who was half Jamaican.

Prince Buster the Originator, the inventor of spooky ska, reggae, and even dub music, which directly influenced anthems like Ghost Town by the Specials, is also one of my inspirations, and Ghost Dubs is dedicated to him.

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The records of the afro-futurist Jamaican project Grounation always froze Lil Obeah into deep listening, so after more than a decade of making eclectic, slightly electronic music, he kept wondering how he could translate his love for the nyabinghi sound into his new Obeah transmissions.

It was possible with the help of Marius Costache from Studio148, with whom Lil Obeah shared a love for industrial dub, reggae, and dancehall and where they stripped away everything production-wise. All that was left was a couple of layers of percussion and splashes of reverb, echo, and subtle bass drum sounds.

Together, they brought the lyrical message into the spiritual realm of our favorite jazz, afrobeat, and folk albums from artists like John Coltrane, Hank Williams, and Fela Kuti, plus Tony Allen, and opened the conversation meditating about the Apocalypse, the bridge between our dead ancestors and future generations, hauntology, exorcism, and superstition.