VARIOUS ARTISTS - ORGANIC SOUL VOL 2
The philosophy behind our 'Organic Soul' compilations is simple - real SOUL from the roots. There's no substitute for Soul, the way it makes you feel - hair's standing up on the back of the neck, the tingle up and down the spine - you get what I mean. No other music quite hits you in the same way. Soul is something special. Over time this Soul feeling has been diluted by commercial pressures from the record industry - the quick buck, cross-over appeal etc, and that the music has become somewhat detached from its roots; today's black RnB/pop music is but the latest example. Many artists and listeners alike share the feeling that Soul music deserves better and that the depth and edginess that Soul once engendered has been sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. Soul has always been (in our opinion) about the real deal, about life and one-dimensional disposable music cannot possibly duplicate this. The inspirational Soul of Aretha, Marvin and James Brown (to name but a few) defined an era, encapsulating the demands and aspirations of an entire generation of Afro-Americans during the 60's civil rights movement and reaching its musical zenith (to date) in the early/mid 70's. And yet this music had universal appeal touching the lives of millions of all backgrounds right across the globe. And, whilst major label artists like Angie Stone, India Arie, D'Angelo or Erykah Badu are today's torchbearers, it is the independent artists that constitute the core of the contemporary Soul movement. This movement is largely underground, and the artists record primarily for their own labels, at times through choice, at others through necessity. One of the effects, however, is that the artist has more control over the recording - with no record company exec pulling the strings and telling the artist what they can or cannot do. This control gives the music a distinctive feel with songs written from the heart, relating personal experience and drawn from real life. This music however demands and deserves wider recognition. Organic Soul's main rationale is to showcase these talented new Soul artists like Ledisi, N'Dambi or YahZarah and to try to help them to to reach as wide an audience as possible. The compilation also highlights the artists' releases with the intention of encouraging the sale of their own albums. Organic Soul ? It was not just a catchy title for the compilation, but really seemed to capture what we were trying to achieve with the release - the promotion and support of artists and music that are the essence of what, we believe, constitutes 21st Century Soul. But organic implies more, and incorporates the concept of roots and of a living, breathing and growing entity with connotations of strength and health as well as the opposite of the synthetic and manufactured. Musically, it also implies a reliance on real instrumentation and wherever possible avoidance of the dreaded drum programming that afflicts much of our music. Each volume showcases five artists and each artist contributes three tracks to the compilation. We have selected those tracks that epitomise these 'Organic Soul' principles and not necessarily the most commercial songs from each. All of the artists represented on both volumes, to some degree share this vision of a rootsy soulful future. Malcolm Prangell Soul Brother Records



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