From Joaquin "Joe" Claussell's Spirtual Life label comes this diverse and fascinating album. 3 Generations Walking is the brainchild of Michael Kenneth Lopez (MKL) and Herman "Soy Sos" Pearl, whom you may know from their remixes for Femi Kuti (What Will Tomorrow Bring), Tom & Julie (Like Ours) or Sade (Surrender Your Love). Together with musicians, who span, well, three generations, they create a unique sound that combines influences of house, jazz, soul, reggae with a slight overall dub feeling to most songs. This sound may be hard to pigeonhole and it may be difficult to find the right name for 3 Generations Walking's music but that's what really makes it exciting, that MKL and Soy Sos just transcend bounderies of today's music genres.
Avid collectors of the Spiritual Life label certainly know the previous 12" released Slavery Days (with Chilean born, NYC based jazz singer Claudia Acuña on vocals) and To Live (with Haitian born Gary French on vocals).
And the varied mixture of using musicans from all over the world continues on the other 11 tracks on the album. The lounge/house influenced Glory features Orleans/France born Christiane D. on vocals, some great congas by George Jones and a effective cello by Erin Snyder. Christiane is also singing on Skin, Feed and Mokawk, a very interesting song that starts like a classic jazz song with just some keys and then it's Christiane singing over a bass only until the song drifts heavily into dub territory.
The aforementioned Claudia Acuña is also featured on Who Knows lamenting over a slow beat with bass and a violin that gives this song an overall sad feeling.
One of my favourite songs on this album is the uptempo Love Always Love with a lots of congas by Carol Peña, a fierce bass by John Hall and Gary French singing in English and, er, French.
There's also the slight afro influence on Gainde that adds more spice to this fine record, or the reggae rhythms of Believe (with Zapology on vocals). Also worth a listening is the dub-reggae influenced Desperia featuring Bongo Asher on vocal duties.
With over 70 minutes of music and such a diverse coverage of music genres this is really an album you will enjoy if you want to broaden your musical horizons or if you're already generally open-minded :-)