Antibalas - Where the Gods Are in Peace (Daptone Records)

Add Date: 09/12
Focus Track: 6
FCC: Clean
Formats: Top 200, World, Triple A, Modern Rock Specialty

Artist Info: Antibalas’ forthcoming album, titled Where The Gods Are In Peace, opens with “Gold Rush,” a tribute to our forgotten indigenous people. Martín Perna, baritone saxophonist and founder of Antibalas, comments, “‘Gold Rush’ is a musical reckoning with a past and an imagining of what possibilities for equality and justice exist beyond conquest, domination and exploitation of natural resources.”

A kung-fu master by day and Afrobeat superstar by night, lead singer Duke Amayo initiates a striking narrative from the devastation of the Gold Rush era. Indigenous communities being depleted of land and resources for the profit supporting a greedy system, Amayo sings of the bloodshed and sacrifice endured by legends Black Hawk, Sun Dancer and Sitting Bull. Reparations are in order for fallen indigenous heroes and slaves who tirelessly fought for freedom.

“I don’t see what’s happening in our country and around the globe as a problem, it’s an opportunity,” says Amayo. “We fight the hardest when things are about to change. Our generation has the incredible ability to make things better for generations to come. We’ re at a critical tipping point, it’s time for change.”