The Promise, produced by Michael and Alicia, takes the musical stew, Speak, to the next level, expanding on the earlier album’s rich sonic and lyrical tapestry. It fulfills the promises suggested by Michael’s 2009 debut, Speak, named the R&B Album of the Year at the 9th Annual Independent Music Awards and given a rave review by the BBC’s music website, which called it “the expression of a singular creative voice that taps all the cultures from which it is born.”īut even more than that, The Promise (World Tune Records) fulfills the couple’s collective vision to create music that fuses such traditional elements of African music as the Yoruba tongue, the talking drum and call-and-response vocals with the familiar Western languages of contemporary jazz, traditional gospel, R&B, neo-soul and a funky groove. The Promise is the ideal title for the new release from the Olatuja Project, the first recorded collaboration between Michael Olatuja (acoustic/electric bassist and composer), his wife Alicia Olatuja (vocalist/composer) and their virtuoso band. One! Both definitions of promise are bound to faith and trust. We even say an artist’s next work promises to be even better than the last And then there’s the more intangible promise that looks to the future with hope and anticipation: a gifted student or athlete who holds so much promise. We promise to keep our promises and we take offense when others don’t. We promise to do our best, we promise to pay our debts and to take care of one another. The word promise holds many meanings, all of them profoundly important to our lives. Jazz, gospel, soul and traditional African sounds mix happily on husband-and-wife team’s uplifting debut collaboration The Olatuja Project’s “The Promise” Fulfills a Vision (or Two)
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