Yoruba Singers

The story so far.

Written and edited by Smokiller

The Yoruba Singers are a band founded in 1971 by Eze Rockcliffe, who was then working with a grassroots organisation devoted to African culture, and the group first worked out its sound in that organisation's basement. A Bandcamp Daily review describes the band's style as a merger of Guyanese rhythms with reggae, funk and afrobeat, and calls the 1981 album Fighting for Survival a gutsy blend of calypso, funk and afrobeat. That record, regarded by many as the group's studio high point, was hard to find for years until Cultures of Soul Records reissued it. Its songs include Frustration, Revolution Day, which looks critically at the colonial past, the ballad Bleeding with Hate and the title track. Other releases listed on Deezer include Ojinga's Own, Ah We Like Dem Song Dis and Black Pepper. Live clips of Long Grass and Tell It Like It Is circulate on YouTube, and the band was still touring and recording when the 2018 review appeared.