Budos Band 'Carve' Their Own Style of Afrobeat

Posted on Aug 10th 2010 11:00AM by Mike Ayers
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Kisha Bari

With the arrival of 'Budos Band III' on Daptone Records, it'd be rather easy to assume the group's Afrobeat leanings were just a fashionable, trendy style choice. Between the success of fellow New Yorkers Antibalas and the Broadway smash 'Fela' winning Tony Awards left and right, the longstanding jazz/fusion/funk genre is seeing a nice, well-deserved resurgence, a notion not lost on Budos Band's baritone saxophonist Jared Tankel.

"There are more Afrobeat bands in general, and 'Fela' is on Broadway, which is just funny and interesting," Tankel tells Spinner. "But the interest, it obviously is good for us. We appreciate it. We started off as an Afrobeat band and that's still a part of our sound, but as the years have progressed, we've added various influences. We feel like we've carved our own sound. We're a band that people recognize have a particular unique take on Afrobeat, soul and even rock, where we put it all together in our own way."

Indeed, 'Budos Band III' sees the Staten Island 10-piece at their most diverse to date. Songs like 'Black Venom' and 'Nature's Wrath' have a bit Middle Eastern vibe, sounding like great music for charming snakes to, while 'Mark of the Unnamed' has a 1960s James-Brown-meets-Fela-Kuti vibe to it.

And with the breadth of sound ranges they're covering, one could think that bringing in guest vocalists would be the next logical step. New Orleans' house band Galactic have done so over the years with varying degrees of success, and the Budos certainly have access to their Daptone label mate Sharon Jones.

"We've never done the vocalist thing -- we've never had a lead vocalist and that's been by choice," Tankel says. "It's certainly been proposed to us but we've definitely made that choice because we feel strongly about continuing the instrumental thing we have going on. Various collaborations have been proposed, but maybe at some point we can do that. We're a large enough group as it is -- 10 guys -- and that's the sound we're most interested in having."

Listen to 'The Budos Band III'

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