M'lumbo
M'lumbo is an American band based in New York City. Their music spans several genres — jazz, electronic, rock, hip-hop — and incorporates sounds and rhythms of the world's cultures and traditions — Western orchestral, African, Latin, Asian. Founded in the mid-1980s by working rock and session musicians with broad musical backgrounds, M'lumbo was conceived as a vehicle for eclectic, hand-made music free of the mannerisms of any era but free also to reference any of them. From the start, the band's music has featured improvisation, interplay, and a wide dynamic range from relaxed and sparse to intense and many-layered.
Material on M'lumbo's earliest releases was a mix of originals and innovative cover versions which gained recognition and acclaim,
and ensuing airplay. Some of the band's covers — Mickey Mouse, Movin' On Up (Theme from The Jeffersons), Hawaii Five-O — have been among their most popular tracks.
In the later 2000s and early 2010s, M'lumbo would return to covering pop-culture "standards" with versions of such favorites as Hawaii Five-O revisited, Sesame Street and Beat It.
Except for a period in the early 1990s, M'lumbo's music has had few sung lyrics, but it has often had vocals: many songs have some speaking or singing, found, cut up, or performed by band members, of varying prominence, ranging from incidental color to hooks and even dialog or narration that functions like a lead vocal.
As a band and individually, M'lumbo and its multimedia crew have done creative work for hire for various well-known performers and national brands. Such work doesn't always result in credits, but often enough it has: drummer Dr. Jaz Sawyer has recorded and performed with many notable artists, including Abbey Lincoln, Wynton Marsalis, George Benson, Bobby Hutcherson;
Director and Director of Photography Matt Bass has an extensive reel comprising commercials, documentaries, and music videos.
In 2020 M'lumbo released its most recent two albums on Ropeadope Records, Fairytale Aliens and Celestial Mechanics.
M'lumbo has been active through the pandemic, writing and recording new material, collaborating mostly remotely with each other and with special guests Jane Ira Bloom and Page Hamilton. The result has been
a couple of albums of new material that will see release in 2023 (see below, During and Since the Pandemic).
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