»We be all africans/coming from the motherland«, chant The Pyramids along to deep Afro-funk around Idris Ackamoor in the first song of their new album; actually we are all Africans, the cradle of mankind was in Africa.
Idris Ackamoor already completed the journey 40 years ago to the African motherland. With like-minded people, whom he met at Antioch College in Ohio he travelled in the 70’s to Amsterdam and there founded The Pyramids, with whom he then travelled with through Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia. After their return home to the USA, three legendary albums arose with spiritual jazz, before the band broke up in 1976. Now since almost ten years, they are playing once again together. And they sound as fresh as ever. The seven pieces on »We Be All Africans«, the second work since their reunion, range somewhere between John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Fela Kuti. In a Jazz band which was topped up with a thumb piano, several traditional percussions and a violin, The Pyramids have recorded in Berlin a seductive, more stubborn album, which knocks – musically speaking – the African motherland in the direction of outer space. Between infectious funk pieces and twisted space-jazz, there are also elegiac pieces like »Silent Days«, where the singer Bajka from Berlin makes her mark.
The Pyramids
Aomawa: The 1970’s Recordings
Strut