MOG

When I say Afro-Rock I'm not talking about African musicians playing rock. I'm talking about black musicians based in the US,UK, and France connecting rock/ soul/jazz sounds of the late 60's and early 70's back to African roots. On my page you can link to other posts I've made and Kate's post about Osibisa. In almost all cases there wasn't much drawn directly from identifiable African music styles, the connection was more a spiritual, cultural one, although The Pharoahs actually incorporate percussion and chants to the mix.

This is what the Awakening jacket (it was a self pressed LP ) said: _Once upon our time there is a group of young men who came together and formulated a dream. They dared to dream that they could create an approach that would encompass their experience in America, the soul of their mother land...Africa, and the spirit of the oneness of the universe. This marked the Awakening._

Hey it was '71..it seemed like there were possibilites, even in Chicago. What ended up happening is many of these cats went on to be the horn section of the afro (soon to be pseudo afro) rock band Earth Wind and Fire.

The Awakening album and it's unreleased songs counterpart,In The Basement, faded into obscurity, until they were re-issued by San Fran's Luv N' Haight label in '96.

Earlier today I posted one of their songs on a great post by Dzendvokh , but here's Freedom Road..with The Pharoahs Love Y'all and Damballa (check the fuzzy guitar solo) in comments.