Derrick N Ashong & Soulfege

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
JOIN THE MOVEMENT! ONE MILLION FREE DOWNLOADS FROM DERRICK N. ASHONG & SOULFEGE
New York, NY, January 17, 2012—Ghana-born Derrick N. Ashong & Soulfège are at it again. They’ve recently launched the Music Ambassadors Program, a global outreach initiative designed to broaden their movement of empowerment and increase awareness of their Million Download Campaign, whose mission is to offer a million free downloads of songs and remixes from their recently released and highly successful CD, AFropolitan, by Christmas of 2012. “We've always said that what we do is about more than music, it's a movement. We believe artistry has the power to change the world, and we create our art with the world in mind,” Derrick recently remarked. And now Derrick N. Ashong & Soulfège are inviting everyone the world over to take part in this global grassroots effort.
As host of Al-Jazeera English’s cutting-edge show “The Stream,” Derrick has scooped some of the biggest social change stories in the world today from stories tweeted live from the ground in the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street and its global echoes. But long before these seismic international events, Derrick N. Ashong & Soulfège’s music has presaged power rising from “the streets and the Net,” as Vanity Fair’s Creative Development Editor wrote on VanityFair.com: “Here are musicians, poised with a positive vibe and with lyrics so uplifting that you actually believe, if only for one night, that . . . a new world mood may emerge from the street and the Net, somehow defying the odds—a spirit of promise and hope and harmony, a spirit that denies dissonance. Soulfège lets us dream such sweet dreams, in vibrant colors.”
The purpose of the Million Download Campaign is to connect people around the world through the electrifying, consciousness-raising, hybrid-genre songs of AFropolitan, and to change the music industry by offering participation in a historic global grassroots campaign to put a band at the top of the charts and in contention for major music awards without corporate label domination. Along with the Download Campaign, the Music Ambassadors Program provides participants the opportunity to be part of history by downloading the album and then using Social Media, E-mail, and www.derrickashong.com to reach the goal of giving away 1,000,000 downloads by Christmas 2012.
"Its [Soulfège’s] members realized they had the platform to reach ears not only with their music—a fusion of thumping African music and rhythms, sweet reggae breezes, funk, and hip-hop—but also with their message."
—The Boston Globe
Music Ambassadors will be the frontline in taking the music and message of Derrick N. Ashong & Soulfège to a global audience. The Music Ambassadors Program is the brainchild of James Propa, a Ugandan media personality and fan of the band, and the Ambassador’s mission is simple: to share the music and empowering message of Derrick N. Ashong & Soulfège with as many people as possible. For 2012 the band is recruiting a global team of Ambassadors to spread the word. Ambassadors will receive a number of benefits including free passes to concerts, invitations to special events, first access to new music, behind the scenes footage, access to wholesale pricing of T-Shirts, CDs and other merchandise, tastemaker status and rights to share unreleased material, public recognition and acknowledgment of their efforts, as well as other perks.
To learn more about the Million Download Campaign or the Music Ambassadors Program or join the movement, visit Derrick N. Ashong & Soulfège on the Web at www.derrickashong.com.
Contact info: Janet Castiel, Redwood Entertainment Inc., (212) 543-9998 info@redwoodentertainment.com
For more info: Management, M. Quentin B.L. Williams, The Butler Lappert Williams Firm PC, (212) 572-4822
info@blwfirm.com, asst@blwfirm.com - Redwood Entertainment

Vanity Fair - Afropolitan P-Funk Progeny
Publisher: Vanity Fair

By David Friend
Published April 29, 2008

Call them Afropolitan. Call their sound ReggHopFunk Fusion, by way of Ghana and Harvard Yard. Call this team of beaming musicians (with not one, but three soaring vocalists) P-Funk progeny, channeling Manu Dibango and Sly Stone and Rage Against the Machine.

Whatever you want to dub them, this weekend’s performance by Soulfege at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory was a rare treat in these way-ironic days: a full-on groove group powering out songs with upbeat melodies to match their message—one of global community and connectedness, conveyed with such energy, assuredness, and good will that they transcended the ironic, transformed the conversation, and transported the listener beyond the otherwise dismal and downbeat world around them.

Soulfege (a term for the diatonic “do-re-mi” music scale) is led by Derrick Ashong, a West African-raised, Harvard-educated, L.A.-based song-songwriter (his moniker: D.N.A.), actor (Steven Spielberg’s Amistad), lecturer, and political activist. (In February, I blogged about his viral YouTube video, on his passion for Barak Obama.) On Saturday, with his fellow choirmates from his college days, Jonathan Gramling and Keely Nicole Johnson, Ashong and company echoed and built on one another’s buoyancy, backed by thick, sick basslines and drum-and-bongo beats. (They just won Billboard’s Best Hip Hop Songwriting contest.)

“How many of you were born in another country?” Ashong shouted out early on in the set, requesting a show of hands from the young crowd in the Knitting Factory’s cramped “Old Office” basement. “How many ever been overseas?” More and more hands. “How many ever dream of being overseas?” All arms aloft, tall stalks of waving limbs. Ashong then launched into “Why?,” a bilingual rap-ballad melange (English and “Ga,” a dialect from the greater Accra region of Ghana), drawing in his audience with:

“Listen my people for I tell you true
It seems some of us know not what we do
We leave our culture
To search for something ‘better’
So you can trade your mama for a foreign suit
But I never saw a tree that grow without it’s roots.”

Soulfege’s songs, heavy on the funk and reggae, threaded with hip-hop, infused with enthusiasm (band members actually bobbed and weaved constantly and infectiously throughout the 90-minute set) were about crossing cultures, about long-distance heartbreak, about forging one’s identity in the global age. The highlight may have been the group’s update of the Sugarhill Gang’s rainbow-mash classic “Rapper’s Delight.” Looking out across that sea of raised hands, the room and the world, for just a moment, sure looked gloriously flat and friend-filled and navigable.

Here are musicians, poised with a positive vibe and with lyrics so uplifting that you actually believe, if only for one night, that slowly, out of a species-wide weariness for discord and conflict, a new world mood may emerge from the street and the Net, somehow defying the odds—a spirit of promise and hope and harmony, a spirit that denies dissonance. Soulfege lets us dream such sweet dreams, in vibrant colors.

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Boston Herald - Hip to politics - Video shows this Barack backer knows his stuff
Publisher: The Boston Herald

By Bob Young
Published: March 27, 2008

Move over, Rev. Wright. There’s a new star on YouTube who may actually do Barack Obama some good. Even if he doesn’t, unlikely video phenom Derrick Ashong is drawing massive attention to his own Cambridge-spawned funk crew.

Until a few weeks ago, the 32-year-old singer and guitarist - aka DNA - was known primarily as co-founder of Soulfege, a socially conscious hip-hop-meets-world music-meets-funk band formed by Ashong at Harvard.

Now, thanks to a video interview outside a Democratic primary debate in Hollywood in late January, Ashong is known to a million YouTube viewers. Responding to a hostile interviewer looking to expose the ignorance of Obama’s infatuated supporters, Ashong impressively detailed the candidate’s policy positions on universal health care and public-private partnerships, not musings on music or Obamba’s sex appeal.

“This week all of this stuff has been exploding,” said Ashong by phone from Costa Rica, where he was a speaker at an Alliance For A New Humanity conference. “It’s just really funny because it’s all so random. I think it went viral because it captured the Zeitgeist in that there’s been so much discourse about whether young voters are really informed or simply supporting Sen. Obama because they like the idea of a rock star politician.

“The video puts the lie to the idea that we just don’t know what’s going on. (Viewers) have latched onto it as proof that this election is about something serious and here’s an example of how serious we are.”

Ashong didn’t know he was on YouTube until a friend e-mailed him. Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog at The Atlantic picked it up, followed by The Economist, The New York Times [NYT] and others. YouTube viewings are now approaching the million mark.

“It just started going crazy,” said Ashong. “I’ve got hundreds of messages on my Facebook e-mail that I haven’t responded to. I can’t keep up.”

Ashong did make time to create a YouTube video of his own to rebut charges that he was an Obama campaign plant. That video has become a second YouTube hit with nearly 400,000 views.

“People were saying the interview must be fake, a publicity stunt,” he said. “But it was genuine. I’m a citizen like every other citizen expressing my freedom and advocating for my candidate on issues I care about.”


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New York Times - More Than a Sound Bite, This Clip Has Some Teeth
Publisher: New York Times
By David Carr
Published: March 17, 2008

On Jan. 31, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year-old musician, dropped off his pal, Shaunelle Curry, at the Democratic primary debate taking place at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. After shrugging off her suggestion that he join her in carrying a sign for Barack Obama outside the theater — his band was leaving on tour the next day — he reconsidered and walked back to join her.

Carrying a sign saying “¡Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!), he joined a throng that was milling around in the background of the live CNN shot focused on the anchor Wolf Blitzer. Then a guy named Mike carrying a video camera came walking by and began peppering Mr. Ashong with a series of skeptical and very pointed questions.

“So why are you for Obama?” he asked. It was clear from his approach that he expected a dimwitted answer, an expectation that he was about to talk to another acolyte smitten by Senator Obama’s rock star persona.

But, as it turned out, Mr. Ashong, who was raised in Ghana and elsewhere, was glad to be asked. For almost six minutes — about a century in broadcast television years — Mr. Ashong, who has an immigrant’s love of democracy and the furrowed brow of a Brookings fellow, held forth on universal health care, single-payer approaches and public-private partnerships.

“A lot of these H.M.O.’s are publicly traded companies anyway, but I don’t think we want to create a market for health care per se, like we don’t want to create a futures market in health care,” he said. And so on.

Cute stuff. Highly informative. But not the kind of political discourse that generally captures a wider audience.

But here’s the weird part. On Feb. 2, the interview of Mr. Ashong was posted on a YouTube channel called “The Latest Controversy,” where supporters of both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Obama are asked very aggressively to justify their choice of candidates. The video blew up, drawing more than 850,000 views. And after that huge response to his policy analysis, Mr. Ashong decided to double down and explain the emotional component of his support for Obama in a follow-up video that was posted Feb. 11 and received 300,000 views.

Taken together, that means a guy who was looking to (anonymously) show a little love for a candidate was able to look into the camera for more than 13 minutes combined and draw in more than a million clicks with an impassioned but reasoned pitch.

At a time when politics and popular culture are still in an awkward mating ritual, Mr. Ashong inadvertently tapped into the youthquake that is shaking up the campaign. While the clip could have been lost among some of the popular rubble at YouTube (“Let me see, do I watch a tutorial on health care or Tori Spelling on ‘Jimmy Kimmel’?”), Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic blogged about it, as did Think on These Things, a political blog. Then The Economist chimed in, which led to an editor at The New York Times hearing about it and — well, you get the idea.

Part of what is under way has to do with a subversion of expectations. Watch broadcast news and you will see any number of man-on-the-street interviews. In this trope, a person with good hair solicits an enthusiastic sound bite from a supporter, pats her on the head and then moves on. But in this instance, neither party played by the rules. The journalist is never seen and is extremely aggressive in asking questions, while the subject, Mr. Ashong, does not so much take the bait as reel in the guy setting it out there.

“What you have here is two amateurs who are not acting like what they represent,” said Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “The ‘reporter’ is very probing, and then the ‘subject’ gives as good as he gets. It is a classic viral moment.”

Since the phenomenon surfaced, some people on the Web have suggested that Mr. Ashong, with the trade dress of a hip-hop star (he is actually an M.C. who performs as D.N.A.) and the predilections of a wonk, was a plant by the Obama campaign or that the interview was a setup. But Mr. Ashong says he had never before seen or talked to Mike, the interviewer behind “The Latest Controversy” (a message left for Mike on his YouTube site was not answered). And Mr. Ashong said he had not been in touch with the Obama campaign before the interview and has not been since.

Not that Mr. Ashong is some sort of naïf. The son of a pediatrician, he grew up in Ghana, Brooklyn, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In addition to performing with his band Soulfège, Mr. Ashong is a public speaker, an actor who had a role in “Amistad” and an entrepreneur who is putting together a media company called Take Back the Mic, which is an effort to use niche marketing to bring music and other media to a global market.

In a tidy bit of coincidence, his spontaneous interview on the street demonstrated the power of viral marketing in a way he is hoping to replicate with his band and his company.

“It’s weird, because right when this happened, our song was named Billboard’s hip-hop song of 2007, but this was so much bigger,” Mr. Ashong said by phone from Costa Rica, where he is speaking at a conference.

“Certain types of discourse are better suited to the Web,” he said. “There has been so much talk about how this campaign is all about style and no substance, and this video contradicts that. There are reasons that we support Obama, and it has to do with the issues. You can’t get that on CNN right now, you can’t get that on MSNBC right now, and young people saw it on YouTube and they took it.”

Mr. Ashong followed up his sidewalk bulletin to the world with a direct address to the camera, an impassioned seven-minute soliloquy about democracy that would not be out of place in the “John Adams” miniseries unfurling on HBO.

“I have a lot of friends who were born and raised here who take what we have for granted,” he said by phone. “Immigrants who come here fall in love with the concepts and principles this country was founded on, even if America does not always live up to them.”

David Burstein, 19, who made a documentary about the current youth engagement in the political process called “18 in ’08,” said Mr. Ashong’s popularity is a vivid reminder that young audiences show up to this election with a different set of needs.

“Now that the campaigns are getting into this back and forth, young people are tuning out all the sniping,” he said. “They want meat and potatoes, and that’s why TV ads have not played as much of a role in this election. They want to see their peers, people who are not part of the punditocracy, talking about what this election means to them. I don’t think the interest in this video is all that surprising.”

Peter Levine, director of Circle, which promotes civic engagement among young people, said a friend of his who is a state legislator was quite taken by the video. “She had an emotional interest in Obama, but she watched it all the way through and took some notes on the issues so she has some talking points to back it up.”

Speaking of subverting expectations, three of the dozen most popular videos on YouTube this month are about Barack Obama, not Paris or Lindsay or Britney. Many long-held beliefs are taking a beating during this election, chief among them the idea that if you want to connect with young people, you’d best keep it short, funny and stupid.

Mr. Ashong, with an audience of more than a million so far, thinks he knows what made the difference for him. “My ears, I have really cute ears,” he said.

They do stick out a bit, along with the space that lies between them.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com

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Summer 2008: A Just Foreign Policy
Derrick Ashong: Sweet Mother Tour
yesmagazine.com
Published: June 2008

Sweet Mother Tour
Listen to music by Soulfège:
Sweet Mother from the album Heavy Structured.
To Be Free from the album Take Back the Mic.
Trailer for the film The Shift, featuring the Sweet Mother Tour.

Ghanaian-American Derrick Ashong didn’t like what he was seeing when he watched images of Africa on TV: “When I see stories of my homeland, it’s like death, destruction, warfare, violence, the worst things on the planet.” Ashong decided to do something about Africa’s image problem. The 32-year-old Hip Hop musician, along with fellow members of the band Soulfège, founded the pop music and multimedia phenomenon Sweet Mother Tour, which has brought positive music, videos, and stories about Africa to 146 million viewers through television and radio broadcasts in more than 45 countries. The goal: to bring to Africa a sense of empowerment and cultural self-worth as a foundation for cultural progress.

In April 2006, the group convened a gathering of 250 people from several countries to discuss issues facing the pan-African community. The Tour has also expanded its focus beyond Africa to support youth leadership in art, business, and politics.

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A band's plan to change the world
The Boston Globe
By Daniel T. Swann
Published: June 8, 2007

Six years ago, while visiting Ghana, musician Derrick N. Ashong heard a Ghanaian man use the n-word.

"The American hip-hop scene had not only made it acceptable but had also made it cool," says Ashong, who is a member of the Boston-bred band Soulfege. "[That man's] whole experience of African-America was its MTV and BET videos, music, artists, and movies, so how would he know about racism? How would he know about [US] poverty? How would he know about unemployment?"

The encounter planted a seed in Ashong's mind. Hip-hop, he felt, was teaching Africans that African-Americans were rich and violent; the US media, conversely, was teaching Americans that Africans were poor and helpless. His band was in a position to help change misperceptions on both sides.

Soulfege has one foot in Africa, one in America. Its core members -- Ashong, Jonathan M. Gramling, and Kelley Nicole Johnson -- were brought together by their alma mater, Harvard, where all had been in the Kuumba Singers, a gospel choir. But Ashong was born in Ghana, and many of the band's lyrics reflect a connection to the African diaspora. "Yaa (dis be fo radio)," for example, includes lyrics in Ga (spoken in Ghana), as well as in Portuguese and English.

Bolstered by a traveling ensemble of anywhere from two to seven additional musicians, Soulfege's soulful vocals and harmonies, warm horns, and engaging lyrics have attracted fans from Massachusetts to West Africa. Its members realized they had the platform to reach ears not only with their music -- a fusion of thumping African music and rhythms, sweet reggae breezes, funk, and hip-hop -- but also with their message. The band, which plays Bill's Bar tomorrow night, "believes in things bigger than itself," says Ashong.

And so was born a project Soulfege calls the Sweet Mother Tour, an umbrella title that encompasses efforts as diverse as band-led workshops for students, activists, and entrepreneurs; a website (sweetmother.org ) that serves as a gathering place for people to discuss issues and watch videos; documentary filmmaking; and an international hip-hop competition. SMT, as they call it, takes its name from the traditional West African ballad "Sweet Mother." On its debut album, 2004's "Heavy Structured," the band reworks the song into three different tracks, each a tribute to the loving bonds between a mother and her child and a citizen and his roots.

Part of the vision behind SMT is that if you can take a kid from Ghana, and through music, through art and culture, connect him with a kid from Roxbury, then maybe he will learn that BET isn't telling him the entire story," Ashong says. "If that kid from Roxbury could meet someone who grew up actually seeing warfare, actually living in a refugee camp, actually grew up a child soldier, maybe that would help both of them see the world differently."

Soulfege has performed in Ghana, Germany, Indonesia, Trinidad, Jamaica, and England, among other countries. And its ideas are starting to spread. In January, for example, an SMT chapter formed in Seattle after its members met Soulfege at a conference on identity at Harvard Law School. Ashong networked with youth on a trip to Sweden, and they are now talking to their peers in Ghana and Jamaica through the website. SMT is also partnering with organizations that will increase its visibility, such as SplashLife (which puts together "global campaigns for communities that are youthcentric," says CEO Marisa Martin) and Eurythmic Dave Stewart's company Weapons of Mass Entertainment, which works with artists and companies that use pop culture to create social change. (Stewart is also the executive producer on Soulfege's next album, tentatively titled "Afropolitan," due out in the fall.)

On Oct. 1, with a project called "Take Back the Mic," Soulfege will begin a trip around the country in a biofuel bus to create a documentary challenging the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop. They will perform, hold workshops, and invite people to speak on film. They hope to release the documentary Oct. 28. And an international project, "Voice of the Streets," will allow hip-hop artists worldwide to represent their cultures and compete in what Sara Teklua, the producer of SMT films, describes as "a World Cup or an Olympics of Hip-Hop." It is scheduled to begin in 2008.

Ashong hopes these and other SMT projects will help present the music and culture of Africa and America as they really are. With the current glorification of gangsta culture in hip-hop, there's a long way to go, he says.

"Let me tell you about reality," says Ashong, who has lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as Ghana and the United States . "I grew up in the Middle East. I used to go to school with a gas mask in my bag. . . . When I think about what it is to live in the real world and what makes someone 'hard-core,' I have a different perspective."

The Rev. Conrad B. Tillard, the founder of Movement for CHHANGE (Conscious Hip-Hop Activism Necessary For Global Empowerment), agrees that there's a problem.

"You've got record companies putting millions of dollars behind nihilistic, fratricidal, and sophomoric ideas and concepts," said Tillard.

"The sad thing is this doesn't really reflect the values of average Americans. It certainly doesn't reflect the values of average black Americans."

The projects will also show that Africa is more than a continent in need of charity. "The club scene in Accra is 10 times hotter than it is in Boston," Ashong says. "What I want people to hear through music is the soul of Africa."

Gramling believes that the collective power -- and the joyous music -- of SMT will be able to bring down social and cultural barriers.

"For me it's just the beginning to talk about sweet Mother Africa," says Gramling. "It seems like tragedy will always bring people together. Why can't celebration bring people together, too?"
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Soulfege is a party with a message
The Providence Journal
Published January 18, 2007

If Soulfege wasn’t so good, guitarist Derrick Ashong’s tireless eclecticism, behind-the-scenes work and outspoken attitude would ring hollow. But the band is an exuberant, sinuous mix of highlife, hip-hop, funk and reggae — all reflective of Ashong’s wandering background.

Ashong lived in Ghana until he was 3 years old, then moved to New York for the residency of his father, a pediatrician. At age 8, a coup in Ghana brought the Ashongs to Saudi Arabia.

Ashong picked up early hip-hop and Middle Eastern music from his travels, and his parents made sure that he stayed connected with the music of his native country. “Our parents used to play these old highlife records and old Afrobeat and Afropop records, and that sound has been with me my whole life.”

Highlife is a fusion of traditional Ghanaian and other West African music, and big-band jazz and calypso. Early examples were horn-based, but with Soulfege Ashong plays a nimble three-fingered guitar-picking style that contributes to the bounce.

It’s also got an uplifting message that Ashong considers just as important. On his Web site and in his writings, Ashong is outspoken about several issues, including the images of the African-American community perpetuated by mainstream hip-hop.

“We will never do a show where we invite somebody up there who’s going to call you a bitch or the N-word or anything like that. Not because that music shouldn’t be done, but because the mainstream is saturated with that. And it does have a negative impact. And I’m sick of some corporate executive telling me what’s authentic, and that what happens to be authentic is destroying the communities that I love.”

Ashong notes that hip-hop music is bought primarily by white kids, and says that the opportunity for cross-cultural communication is being abused.

“The race thing — who cares? Anybody should be able to buy and commune with this music.

“But what the record industry has done, is say, ‘Well, if this guy’s talking about black nationalism, I don’t know if our target audience is going to deal with that.’ ‘Oh, this kid is talking about uplifting their community, but it’s so localized, is our target audience going to really relate to that?’

“So what sells to the lowest common denominator? Sex and violence. And these artists are getting pimped and pimping their own communities, and I refuse to make excuses for that.”
Eyes on a TV series

Ashong, who majored in African-American studies and ethnomusicology at Harvard, lived in Boston until recently moving to Los Angeles to work with Artist Network, a new media company founded by Dave Stewart, formerly of The Eurythmics.

Ashong is working on music and video production, as well as the business end of show biz. “I theorized around lots of different ways of looking at intellectual property and distributing music in grad school, and I’m putting some of those things that we used to get the Soulfege name and word out to creating a new record label.”

Soulfege hasn’t been playing as much lately as previously, Ashong says, because he and the other two “core members” — singers Kelley Nicole and Jonathan Gramling — are busy “writing business plans and raising capital” for a proposed TV series. The show, Ashong says, would be “a global fusion of Making the Band, Behind the Music and American Idol” in which the band would travel through many different countries, learning about youth culture through music.

They’re also being filmed for a documentary to be called The Shift, which Ashong says is about “global change agents” including Al Gore, Deepak Chopra and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And Soulfege has founded the Sweet Mother Tour, a rubric for many of its shows that combine high-tech communication with the musical experience.

“SMT is more than the music; it’s a movement.

“The basic premise is that no society can develop without an understanding of its own worth. And because artists have this power to influence people’s thinking in profound and intimate ways, we want to apply that power to making people feel empowered to facilitate change in their society. We want to connect those change agents to each other by building bridges — through the arts, music, film, television, Internet, whatever.”
Part jam, part rally

At many SMT shows, there are Web portals with live video and audio, where people can meet up and sample works by people from around the corner or around the world. Eventually, the goal is that merchandise purchases through SMT partners will fund anti-poverty and public-health work in Africa and elsewhere. “It’s part jam, part rally, part networking, but it’s all fun.”

SMT started as a way to connect elements of the African diaspora, but while meeting with prospective partners worldwide Ashong says he quickly realized that the concerns were universal. “We realized that the issues that we’ve been dealing with really are resonant for kids all over the world. So we decided that this is more than a movement for the African diaspora; this is really a global movement.”

What kind of issues?

“How are we represented in the media? How do we see ourselves? What is our value system? What defines a young man? What defines a young woman? Are you defined by the size of your attitude, by your sexuality, by your willingness to be violent? What’s happening with the dumbing down of our societies? Why aren’t people asking the tough questions: ‘What are we doing about it? Do our governments really represent us?’ That question came up everywhere.”

Unfiltered communication, Ashong says, is an end in itself.

“I can’t go and say, ‘Well, these cats in Brazil need to think about this if they’re going to interact with these cats in Belgium.’ That’s not up to me.

“But what we can do as artists, and what we can do if we reach out to people in these different arenas — technology, finance, etc. — is build bridges. And … these can enable people to engage in a dialogue on terms that they feel good about. And through that, you start to see change happening.

“You start to see people imagining things they couldn’t think of for their own community, just by seeing what someone’s doing in their own community.”
Saturday at Black Rep

There won’t be any film crews at the Black Rep Saturday night, but the band will show video footage of earlier shows and discuss the work of SMT before the show.

But even if you don’t get there early, the music stands on its own. Soulfege’s message of uplift and the interconnectedness of cultures is easy to attach to, especially since it goes down so smoothly and funkily. “The typical response is not so much that they heard politically committed music; it’s that they heard a great party band. And that is by design.

“If you were to listen carefully to the lyrics of our songs, some of them are very political; some of them are spiritual; some of them are socially conscious. Some are just about love; some are just about fun. … But you rarely hear Soulfege sing a song that’s about the government, or the Iraq war. [Our music is] something we believe in, but that whether you’re Republican, Democrat, Christian, Muslim, gay, straight, black, white, whatever, it can reach you on a spiritual level if you’re open to the sound.”

Ashong says Soulfege’s audiences have included grandparents, grandchildren and “a bunch of drunk college kids jumping up and down in a basement. But what we try to convey is a sense that ‘Hey, we can come together, we can have fun, we can make music that fuses our cultures, and it’s all good.’

“For those who want more, there’s a world they can discover. But we’re not pushy. We don’t proselytize; we play.”

Soulfege is at the Providence Black Rep, 276 Westminster St., Providence, Saturday night. The pre-show presentation is at 8 and the show is at 9:30. Admission is $10. Call (401) 351-0353.

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Conference Challenges Students to see Africa in New Light
The Harvard Crimson
Published Monday, April 10, 2006
By YING WANG
Crimson Staff Writer

Students and activists from around the world gathered at Harvard this weekend in a unique effort to use various mediums of art to challenge contemporary misconceptions of the African continent and embrace the cultural richness of their “sweet mother Afrika.”

The first-ever annual African youth empowerment conference, entitled “Youth and the New Pan-African Renaissance,” was hosted by the Sweet Mother Tour (SMT)—a global project of artists and activists dedicated to using pop culture to spread positive images of Africa.

“Over 100 years of tyranny and oppression didn’t make an African a nigger, but 15 years of hip hop did it...and some of us are fed up,” SMT founder Derrick N. Ashong ’97 said at Saturday’s opening speech. “If pop culture can turn us against ourselves, then why can’t we use it as a tool to uplift and build up one another?”

The conference kicked off Friday evening with a banquet reception and film festival showcasing documentaries about the hip-hop movement on the African continent. Nearly 250 delegates attended the weekend’s panels and interactive workshops held in the Science Center, which were geared toward spurring dialogue about a wide range of issues facing the present day pan-African community.

Conference chair Kelley N. Johnson ’02 said the event encouraged the use of different art forms as a vehicle for social change.

“Art-making is never in a vacuum...If you intertwine certain things like social causes, political causes, and pride, [the message] comes across stronger than any PSA [public service announcement],” Johnson said.

Students from the Black Mens Forum (BMF) and the Youth Alliance for Leadership and Development in Africa worked closely with members of the SMT staff to help fundraise and coordinate campus logistics.

Student delegates from over 15 colleges across the nation—including Stanford University, Columbia University, and the University of Minnesota—participated in the conference. Attendees from abroad hailed from over four different countries, according to organizers.

During select panels, delegates stationed in Ghana, Nairobi, and Kenya participated in the live discussions through an internet portal network.

BMF President Tracy “Ty” Moore II ’06 said his organization decided to help sponsor the event because the aims of the conference to help empower youth and redefine the image of black people worldwide coincided with the BMF’s mission.

Moore said that there is a prevalent misconception that Africa is in a state of chaos, and that it is imperative for the media’s focus to be redirected toward “what we have instead of what we don’t have” in order to show the world that “black is beautiful.”

Saturday’s events culminated with the “high-energy” benefit jam, featuring local bands Soulfège and The Foundation Movement as well as a blend of spoken word “slam-poetry,” stand-up comedy, and a world fusion dance mix spun by a DJ duo.

The proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Selula Sandla AME Village, a home for HIV orphans in Swaziland, and the Liberty Hall Youth Culture Center, which teaches cultural literacy and computer skills to children in the ghettoes of Kingston, Jamaica.

“No one is strong enough to stand alone—no matter how strong your beat...the movement is stronger than the sum of its parts,” Ashong said in his closing speech, asking the audience to raise their hands in the air. “Reach out and grab that movement.”

The SMT conference was conducted in partnership with the Harvard Cultural Agents Initiative, a network of academics and artists which promotes creativity and artistic expression in youth as foundation for democratic change.

—Staff writer Ying Wang can be reached at yingwang@fas.harvard.edu.

_____________________________

Grammy award-winning artist collaborates with Soulfège
ASAFO Media
published: May 2005

Kingston, Jamaica – Featured on Soulfège’s latest remix of the African classic “Sweet Mother” is Grammy-award winning reggae artist Bounty Killer.

Building on the success of the music video from Soulfège’s last single “Sweet Remix,” which gained regular rotation across the African continent (via Channel O) and Jamaica (via RETV), and was voted one of the top 4 videos in Ghana and one of the top 10 on Boston Block Madness, Soulfège has updated “Sweet Mother” yet again, this time with more flavor, more bounce, and a featured performance by the Mighty Bounty Killer.

Bounty has been at the forefront of Dancehall and Reggae music in both Jamaica and the US for over a decade. He won a Grammy for his collaboration with No Doubt on the hit single “Hey Baby,” and made history as the first Jamaican artist to win an MTV Music Video Award (2 in fact).

Led by Ghanaian-American artist and activist Derrick N. Ashong (aka DNA, one of the stars of Steven Spielberg's "Amistad") Soulfège has pioneered a distinct sound they call "Afro-Diasporic Groovalicious Funkadociousness" - a unique and irresistible fusion of reggae, funk, highlife, and hip-hop. Soulfège members have performed with and for some of the world's most talented artists and distinguished dignitaries including: Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Bobby McFerrin, Nelson Mandela, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Dr. Cornell West, and Al Gore.

Stay tuned to www.soulfege.com for more information on when and where to get this latest single from Soulfège, coming soon!

For more information on doing a story about Soulfège contact Maleka Gramling at 617.492.3673 or maleka@asafo.com.

___________________________

Best of 2005
Reggaetrain.com
published: April 2005

ReggaeTrain.com voted "Heavy Structured" one of the best of 2005 alongside such greats as Bob Marley, Sizzla, Luciano, and others. Check out the list here:

http://www.reggaetrain.com/bestof05.asp

___________________________

Harvard Musicians on a Mission
The Berkeley Beacon
published: Thursday | January 27, 2005

It is not often that a band comes along that describes its music as "Afro-diasporic Groovalicious Funkadociousness." Enter Soulfège, a septet of Harvard-educated musicians on a mission.

The group (lead vocalist/guitarist Derrick N. Ashong, vocalist/percussionist Jonathan Gramling, vocalist/saxophonist Sheldon Reid, alto saxophonist Jorge Montoy, lead guitarist Jeff Lockhart, and vocalists Kelley Johnson and James Shelton) brings its Africana fusion of reggae, hip-hop and funk to the Western Front in Cambridge on Saturday, as part of the AFRIKA JAMMIN'!! Dance Party.

Ashong, a graduate student at Harvard, recently spearheaded a worldwide project for his band called the Sweet Mother Tour (SMT), which he launched in Boston with a group of other artists and activists. Through the initiative, Ashong and other musicians hope to bring a positive image of Africa and Africans to people around the globe.

They feel, however, that change begins at home, and so the underlying goal of the project is to inspire nationalism and a sense of pride among Africa's younger generation. The project uses pop-culture methods like music videos to encourage African youth to "fight for Mama Afrika."

Ashong was born in Ghana but moved to Brooklyn when he was three years old. Still, he never forgot his roots.

"When I was growing up, my parents always told me that I should be proud to be an African; that I should always remember where I was from and those who came before me," he writes in his explanation of the SMT.

Ashong first conceived the idea of the SMT in 1995, when he returned to Ghana, for four months through a study-abroad program at Harvard University.

"As soon as I stepped off the plane ... I knew that I was 'home,'" he writes. "Amazingly enough, after 17 years of living abroad, I felt more welcome in Ghana than I had anywhere in my life."

In his explanation of the SMT, Ashong expresses his disappointment with the negative stereotypes of African Americans as perpetuated by the popular hip-hop music of today.

"As an artist, as an African, as a man, as a human being, I reject the characterization of my people as merely gangstas, thugs, bitches and hoes," he writes. "I recognize that the impact of music on society extends far beyond 'entertainment,' particularly as it has long functioned in African cultures. We don't just sing our songs, we live them, and they, in turn, reflect our lives and our values."

By drawing on traditional African musical influences, Soulfège is able to preserve its cultural roots and bring past artists' contributions to a new generation.

The SMT began with the recording and release of Soulfège's album, Heavy Structured, followed by music videos for the group's single "Sweet Mother," and a documentary about the influence of hip-hop on Ghanaian youth, which is scheduled to be released this summer. An interactive Web site is also in the works to educate readers about youth activism projects in Africa.

The funky tune "Sweet Mother," originally recorded by African artist Prince Nico Mbarga in 1976, is the second track on Heavy Structured. The song's music video is on the top 10 list on Ghana's "Metro TV" and is getting heavy radio airplay in Jamaica.

In the refrain, one notices a reverence to the group's motherland of Africa, and comparisons of the country to a nurturing parent. The chorus sings "Sweet moda' / I neva' forget you / The way you suffa' way / You suffa' for me oh."

"I decided to put my talents and energies toward presenting an alternative image of who we are," Ashong writes. "One that allowed for art that was fun, funky, sexy, cool and could still make you feel good about who you are, as a man, woman, African, human being, etc. I set out to build a musical movement that would bridge the gap between Africans at home and in the Diaspora and empower us to critically question what is happening to us in the world today and to reclaim our pride."

Ashong and the other members of Soulfège wish to spread a positive message, one of hope and equality.

"For me it is to not only know myself as an African, but to reach out in service of my people that I may do justice to the memory of those who struggled before, so that I might go further," Ashong writes.

"It is because I stand on the shoulders of giants that I can see a future where the lives of African people are of equal worth to the lives of all other peoples."

Soulfège will perform at the Western Front in Cambridge on Sat. The show is 21+ and begins at 10pm. Tickets are $10 at the door. For more information call 617-492-7772.

Liz Raftery
Beacon Staff
- Various

by Craig Lambert
September-October 2010

In their version of the classic West African song, “Sweet Mother,” the band Soulfège sings in English, Jamaican patois, and the African languages Ga and Twi in one verse. “There are very few people around who will understand everything said in that verse,” says Soulfège co-founder Derrick N. “DNA” Ashong ’97. “But everyone can kind of feel the joy and vibe and the love in it.” Indeed, last January the band (www.soulfege.com) played in Laramie, Wyoming—about as far from Ashong’s Ghanaian roots as you can get. Yet “the kids were bobbing their heads and jumping up and down,” Ashong recalls. “Paintings and clocks were literally falling off the walls because everyone was jumping up and down so hard that the walls were shaking.”

If this is an era of globalized culture, world music, and the erosion of international barriers, then Ashong and Soulfège (a play on solfège, the popular method of teaching sight-singing), may be perfectly in tune with the times. The six-member band’s sound fuses elements of reggae, hip-hop, funk, and West African highlife. “All these musical idioms are a palette for expression,” Ashong explains. “The colors we use depend on what we’re singing about, what we want to say. When I write a song, I have a feeling of how it moves me, and that shapes how the song is written and how it is produced. I can take the same song and make a folk song, a rock song, a reggae song, or a country tune, all depending on how it is produced—the reggae artists can take Céline Dion and make it into reggae! It’s choosing the right idiom to convey the feeling. I don’t want to hit a baseball with a golf club.”

Ashong’s own biography echoes the diverse chords of Soulfège. Born in Accra, Ghana, he moved with his family to Brooklyn at a young age, then lived in Saudi Arabia from ages 8 to 12. Next came a stint in Doha, Qatar, then back to the States where, almost ironically, Ashong completed high school in the suburban New Jersey town of Voorhees. His mother, Stella, is a registered nurse and his father, Emmanuel, M.P.H. ’82, a pediatrician; both sing well.

Ashong played classical piano, clarinet, drums, and sang in the choir at his high school. At Harvard he joined the Kuumba Singers and there befriended Jonathan Gramling ’98, who launched Soulfège with him about a decade ago. (Several other Kuumba alumni, including Sheldon Reid ’96, Ed.M. ’98, James Shelton ’97, Kelley Johnson ’02, and Jorge Montoy ’04, were in the group’s earlier incarnations. The band once had 12 members, which was fun but, as Ashong explains, “too many to take on the road.” He and Gramling, the two vocalists, are the only remaining Harvardians.) During college, Ashong took a leave of absence to play the lead character’s younger brother in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film Amistad. He later pursued a Harvard doctoral program in ethnomusicology for four years, but eventually chose to make music rather than study it.

Now based in Los Angeles, Ashong also does a good deal of public speaking as a committed advocate for social change who worked for the Obama campaign. Soulfège’s Take Back the Mic is not only a CD but a project that aims to “teach a new generation to speak for itself, with art and technology,” Ashong explains. “Similar issues of identity and expression, and feeling empowered to have an impact on things, are being felt by kids around the world.” The band conveys, according to VanityFair.com, “a spirit of promise and hope and harmony, a spirit that denies dissonance. Soulfège lets us dream such sweet dreams, in vibrant colors.”

Ashong puts it this way: “Our music is naturally calibrated to get in you, to pass seamlessly through the pores of the human spirit. A lot of music is negative, not aspirational, not beautiful. It should be flavorful, and express things that encompass the flavor of human life. People say, ‘The world has all these issues, all these problems—who’s going to come and fix them?’ Nobody’s coming to save you; it is for you to save yourself. In order to do so, you’ve got to have two things. One, the belief that you have the power to save yourself, and two, the understanding that you have something worth saving. These are not necessarily things you hear me say directly in my music, but that’s the philosophy that underpins what I’m doing. So whenever we create something, it’s designed to give the individual food for the soul. When you come to a Soulfège concert, even if you don’t listen to a single lyric—maybe you just dance your ass off—when you go home, you should feel better than when you came in. And if you do, I think I did my job.”
- Harvard Magazine

August 30, 2010
by Mike Rosen

I’m hardly through my first cup of coffee on a sticky morning in late-July when I get a call from Derrick Ashong, the front man of the burgeoning six-piece band Soulfege and the host of Oprah Radio’s The Derrick Ashong Experience. It’s a bleary 7AM in Los Angeles where Derrick is calling from but he’s already been up for a few hours to get some work done before heading into the studio to work on Soulfege’s 3rd full length album, the follow up to 2008’s Take Back the Mic. Clearly, the man has a lot on his plate, yet he’s taken the time out to talk to me, an amateur journalist still going through undergrad, and so, right away, I can tell there’s something special about Derrick.


There’s something special, too, about his band. With members hailing from Seattle to Ghana to Portland, Soulfege combines light reggae guitar melodies with driving rock chords and heavy hip-hop beats, along with more traditional African music. For those who cringe when they hear about a new “fusion” band, I feel you – but Soulfege, in terms of both sound and message, is deep into a style that is unique and part of a larger, emerging trend around the world. That trend is best described as “afropolitan,” a term the band itself is fond of (so much so that they’re using it to title their forthcoming LP). “Afropolitan,” Ashong explains, “is the idea of, not citizens, but Africans of the world… They are people who are not necessarily African, but who connect to that culture.” They are the generation created by an ever widening global cultural sphere that is not only more expansive but more accepting, and are thus able to draw equal inspiration from Africa as they are from the West. Embodying the spirit of this population, Soulfege creates music that can blend the musical influence of multiple continents with messages that transcend cultural differences.

Walking this line between genres, however, has not always been easy for Soulfege. “World Music has always been people from the Western world seeing people doing something that is not Western pop and calling it ‘World Music’ and taking a nativistic view,” Ashong says, “like ‘you got to get these traditional instruments, and have really wonderful polyrhythms, and we want to see the traditional garb, and it’s amazing – oh my god, I love Africa.’” In other words, having an African band leader, African musicians and recording an album in Africa was not enough to keep these so-called experts from scoffing at Soulfege for its hip-hop and because, as Ashong puts it, “no one pulled out an mbira.” Meanwhile, hip-hoppers weren’t feeling it because the trend in hip-hop is toward gore, not feel-good reggae rhythms. Yet, as the years went on and the band released more music, Soulfege began to carve out a niche, because, as evidenced by the crowds that show up to their shows – whether they play in Boston (the group started at Harvard where Ashong and the group’s second vocalist Jonathan Gramling met in choir) or Berkley – is that the afropolitan movement is gaining ground. Soulfege’s musical flavors reflect a new generation of people who are willing to look beyond their immediate surroundings for “good art.”

Look no further than this site for proof that music fans in the United States are no longer allowing the gate keepers of the World Music genre to decide what does or doesn’t make it into their headphones. Rather, listeners here and abroad are using the resources at their disposal to discover music for themselves, and the result, Ashong believes, is that kids in the USA are starting to listen to the same music that kids in Africa are listening to, not what they’re being told represents a mythical, caricatured Africa. According to Ashong, the current generation of young adults is the first generation that is actually capable of doing this. It is also the first generation that can really wrap its head around how Ashong got his big break: as a YouTube sensation.

In a moment that has now been seen over one million times, Derrick was standing outside of an Obama-Clinton debate during the 2008 election season when he was confronted by an aggressive journalist and his camera. Clearly hoping to find some bozo in the crowd, the interviewer was taken aback by the detail, eloquence and sophistication of Ashong’s responses as he elaborated on the reasons that Obama was a superior candidate. Derrick quickly became the voice of a generation of young people who not only cared, but knew what they were talking about, and, most importantly, were willing to say something in the first place.

Since then, Derrick’s public profile has continued to rise, and with it, so has Soulfege’s Take Back the Mic single, “Sweet Mother,” which checked in as the number 3 video in Ashong’s home country of Ghana. The band has since been playing to packed crowds on both coasts of the United States. There’s no way to tell what will happen to Soulfege, if they’ll be able to maintain their own identity between genre classifications or if they’ll be overpowered by the mainstream machine, but the trend toward African-influence (and good music in general) is certainly in their favor.

Responding to this idea, Ashong recalls an old saying, “a rising tide carries all boats,” and it occurs to me if this man, who has just talked to me with equal ease and dexterity about the real issues facing Obama’s presidency (“this is not a problem, this is just what happens when you try to take ideas into the real world, things have to be smoothed out”) as he has about the intricacies of the music business, continues to captain the ship, Soulfege has some very, very promising waters ahead.

- Mike Rosen

Derrick and Soulfege have been kind enough to let us stream a few selections from their album Take Back the Mic – to download these tracks or hear the others check them out on iTunes.

- OkayAfrica.com

By Noel Nocciolo on August 31, 2010

What do you get when you take hip-hop and a Ghana-born, Oprah-endorsed Harvard graduate? You end up with thoughtful, bright hip-hop; certainly not the stuff of “bitches and hoes.”

Soulfège is lead by Derrick Ashong, a.k.a. DNA, who hosts “The Derrick Ashong Experience” on Oprah radio, found on Sirius 195/XM 156. His music is wholesome and fun; a breathe of fresh air in an industry saturated with the quest for the next big thing. This is not poised to be buzzed about one day and forgotten the next. Soulfège is simply an alternative to the “all-style-and-no-substance” found in some modern hip-hop. I’d recommend this to those who enjoy the genre but feel guilt at misogyny.

With hip-hop at the core, the band also takes on the flavors of funk, reggae and a kind of world beat that you know isn’t being made by a bunch of suburban white kids. It is party music, but the kind of party music that, when listening to the lyrics in between your party-time, you start feeling guilty that you aren’t doing more to advance mankind.

The stand-outs on their most recent release, “Take Back The Mic” include “Damoshi (Stand Up),” the album opener. It is the perfect thesis introduction to the core of Soulfège, sung in multiple languages, pumping beats, multiple instruments, multiple vocalists. “Do Right” sounds like it may be more at home on Soul Train, upbeat, fun, horn section; a win! “To Be Free” is a “let’s-make-mojitos-and-sit-on-a-Caribbean-beach-during-the-summer” jam.

Their live show was one of the more uplifting experiences I’ve had recently at a music venue. You can’t help but smile and groove at what they throw down. It’s just….wholesome. Sometimes you can’t beat wholesome. Keep your ears open for Soulfège and click here to visit their official site!

Recommended downloads: “Damoshi (Stand Up),” “Do Right,” “Beans N Rice.”

- GeekScape.net

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 4, 2010

Breakthrough Band Soulfège Scores Top Ten Debut on Jamband Chart

LOS ANGELES - Upstart hip-hop reggae fusion band Soulfège debuted in the #8
slot on the JamBands.com/RELIX Magazine radio chart released on 2/26/10
with their album "Take Back the Mic". The top-ten debut is the latest in a
long list of accomplishments for the indie band and builds on a Top 100
chart debut on the JazzWeek World Radio chart in the album's first week on
radio.

Launched by Harvard-educated musicians, Soulfège has left its mark on the
indie music world with numerous accolades including multiple Boston Music
Award nominations, as well as nominations for an Independent Music Award
and Boston Urban Music Award. Bandleader & primary songwriter Derrick N
Ashong won the 2007 Billboard Songwriting Contest for Best Hip Hop song
("From The Soul").

"This stuff is 'a real upper' it evokes summer days gone by with positive
vibes to come! Go spend your money on it! It is worth it! - Score 9.5 out
of 10." writes British record producer Charles Foskett (Ringo Starr, Paul
McCartney, Elvis Costello) in his review of the record."

Soulfege make politics sexy," says Dave Stewart, multi-platinum pop legend
& co-founder of Eurythmics. "They make you want to be part of something
that is positive, sensual and wholesome. Check out their fusion of all the
groovy things in life. These cats have good taste!"

The mission behind Soulfège and their artistry extends beyond the world of
music. Bandleader Derrick N. Ashong - also known as DNA - is the host of
"The Derrick Ashong Experience" on SIRIUS XM's Oprah Radio. The show is a
mash-up of politics, pop-culture, social media, music and the arts,
informed by Derrick's experiences and travels across the globe. It airs
Saturdays from 12:00 - 3:00 pm ET on Oprah Radio, XM channel 156 and SIRIUS
channel 195 and is streamed live on www.OprahRadio.com.

Ashong describes the Soulfège sound as "offering a distinctive groove and a
positive message of self-empowerment, thus redefining the sound and image
of Urban Music as we challenge a generation to literally Take Back the
Mic."

Find Soulfège at www.soulfege.com, www.facebook.com/soulfege, and
www.myspace.com/soulfege.

Find Derrick N. Ashong at www.facebook.com/DerrickAshongExperience,
www.twitter.com/ashong, and www.derrickashong.com.

For information on the band or DNA contact info@blwfirm.com


Soulfège - As heard on...

- ClearChannel NEW! Discover Music program, 97 clear channel stations nationwide
- "Carribean Fever" w/ Dahved Levy, WBLS (NY)
- "Tell Me More" w/ Michel Martin, National Public Radio (NPR)
- "Open Mic," National Public Radio (NPR)
- "Fair Game" w/ Faith Sally (PRI)
- "Greatness by Design," w/ Blanche Williams (XM Satellite Radio)
- "Mind Yo Business" w/ Brian Higgins, XM Satellite Radio Channel 169 "The Power"
- "Africa Meets Africa," WPFW 89.3FM (Washington DC)
- "Afro-Pop: The Rise and Rise of African Hip-Hop," BBC World Service Radio (UK)
- "Destination Africa," w/ DJ Edu, BBC 1Xtra (UK)
- "Commonwealth Journal," w/ Barbara Neely, 91.9 FM (New England)
- Reggaeton Hour, WJMN 94.5FM, (Boston)
- "Caribbean Forum," 90.3 FM, Boston College
- "Juvert Jams," 90.3 FM, Boston College
- "Ragamuffin International," 90.3 FM, Boston College
- WTBU, 89.3 FM, Boston University
- WESX, 1230 AM, Boston
- "The Upper Room with Joe Kelley," 88.5 FM, Fairfield (CT)
- "The Motherland Influence," 97.3 FM (Richmond, VA)
- "Pajama Politics" BlogTalkRadio (Atlanta)
"The Black Right" w/ Keith Bryant
- "Conversations" w/ Michael Anthony Cuffe, Radio MONA (Jamaica)
- "African Roots" w/ Isis, Roots FM (Jamaica)
- "My Place" w/ Tony Young, KLAS FM (Jamaica)
- XEB AM 1220 & MVS 102.5 FM (Mexico City)
- "Radio Penguin" w/ Serge Tiknahoff (Russia)
- "Reggaeneracija" w/ Danko Draskovic (Montenegro)
- "Pulsation" w/ DJ Jarek Hejenkowski (Poland)


Soulfège - As seen on...

- "Chronicle" WCVB (Channel 5 ABC Boston)
- MTV Africa (Africa/Europe)
- Africa's first 24 hour Africa-wide TV music channel - Channel O (S. Africa)
- "Studio 53" - MNet Africa (S. Africa)
- Voted one of the top 4 videos on "Smash TV," next to R. Kelly, Beyonce, and Usher - Metro TV (Ghana)
- "E Zone" w/ Iso - TV3 (Ghana)
- "Morning Ride" - Metro TV (Ghana)
- GTV (Ghana)
- "Music, Music" - TV3 (Ghana)
- "Profile" w/ Ian Boyne - TVJ (Jamaica)
-RETV (Jamaica)
- "Entertainment Profile" - Boston Neighborhood Network
- "The Black Experience," a 4-part series on the history of Black people - Boston Neighborhood Network
- Voted in the top 8 on "Boston Block Maddnes"(sic) - Boston Neighborhood Network
- "African Heritage Magazine" - GAIN TV (Global Africa Independent Network) (New England)
- Voted in the top 5 most requested videos on "The Connection" - ADTV (NY/NJ/CT)
- Sounds of Africa TV (NY)
- ASAFO Media

Soulfège has played the following venues/special events:

2008:
Consumer Electronics Showcase
2008 Sundance Film Festival
Oasis Entertainment Pre-Grammy Bash
2008 NACA National Convention
2008 NACA Northern Plains Convention

Los Angeles:
House of Blues
The Gig Hollywood
Club Zanzibar
Tangier

Boston:
Bill’s Bar
Club FELT
Harper’s Ferry
Harvard Square
Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center
The Middle East (downstairs)
The Middle East (upstairs)
Paradise Lounge
Paradise Rock Club
Sculler’s Jazz Club
Sky Bar
Spontaneous Celebrations
Western Front

New York:
Knitting Factory
The Living Room
Crash Mansion
Cornell University
Makor Cafe
Nuyorican Poets Café
Satalla

Portland:
Mississippi Pizza

Schools played:
Armstrong Atlantic State University-GA
Augusta State College-GA
Boston Renaissance-MA
Boston University-MA
Buckingham Browne & Nichols-MA
College of St. Catherine-MN
Cornell University-NY
Dunwoody College of Technology-MN
Elmhurst College-IL
Elizabethtown College-PA
Exeter Academy-MA
Harvard University-MA
Inver Hills Community College-MN
Kaskaskia College-IL
Manchester College-IN
MIT-MA
Morningside College-IA
Nichols College-MA
Normandale Community College-MN
Northeastern University-MA
Penn State-Delaware County
Penn State-DuBois
Penn State-Shenango Valley
Princeton University-NJ
Prospect Hill Academy-MA
Salt Lake Community College-UT
Southwestern Community College-IA
University of California - Santa Barbara
University of Ghana-W. Africa
University of South Florida-FL
University of Wyoming-WY
Upper Iowa University-IA
Rockford College-IL
Wayland High School-MA
William & Mary College-VA

Other:
Ghana, W. Africa
Levitt Pavilion – Harrisburg, PA

Private Events:
Cherry Hill, NJ
Philadelphia, PA
Washington D.C.
Wayland, MA - ASAFO Media LLC

"Here are musicians, poised with a positive vibe and with lyrics so uplifting that you actually believe, if only for one night, that slowly, out of a species-wide weariness for discord and conflict, a new world mood may emerge from the street and the Net, somehow defying the odds—a spirit of promise and hope and harmony, a spirit that denies dissonance. Soulfege lets us dream such sweet dreams, in vibrant colors."
- Vanity Fair.com, April 2008

"It's [Soulfège's] members realized they had the platform to reach ears not only with their music - a fusion of thumping African music and rhythms, sweet reggae breezes, funk and hip-hop - but also with their message."
- The Boston Globe, June 2007

"...the band is an exuberant, sinuous mix of highlife, hip-hop, funk and reggae...Soulfège's message of uplift and the interconnectedness of cultures is easy to attach to, especially since it goes down so smoothly and funkily."
- The Providence Journal, Jan '07

"With four singers, a saxophonist, a trombonist, a trumpeter, a drummer and a bassist, the young troupe of Soulfège filled the Upper West Side club stage, the beautiful four voices' polyphony and the smooth confidence of the band were impressive proofs that Soulfège, deserving its name, learned its craft and has crossover charm and appeal."
- Sounds of Africa TV, May 2006

"The music of Soulfège spanned the spirit of the African Diaspora, from traditional spirituals to Caribbean reggae. Gorgeous four-part harmonies backed by a tight band including two horns lifted the crowd from its post-feast stupor for an hour of vigorous dancing."
- The Cornell Daily Sun, March 2006

"Soulfège is truly a global band, and global doesn't just mean 'other foreign places' as it usually does; in this case it means 'across the planet.' "
- Northeast Performer Magazine, January 2006

"We reflect a positive vision of the world,' said Ashong. "As part of the Diaspora Funk Movement we want to make music that moves heart, body and soul and uplifts the spirit of people who hear it."
- Boston Herald, November 29, 2005

"People broke off and danced, just to boogie with Soulfège's righteous sound. By the fourth song, members of previous bands were out on the floor getting down...the room was synched up, making it hard to tell where the band ended and the crowd began."
- Northeast Performer Magazine, November 2005

"The heterogeneous quintet is undeniably polished in its arrangements, ably blending funk, reggae, hip-hop, and highlife. The result: its joyful, polished approach to music making should bode well for years to come."
- Global Rhythm Magazine, September 27, 2005

"As the band says, " If Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Lenny Kravitz and Gwen Stefani were all jammin' to the same record, it would be this one." The music way smooth, positive and very easy to listen to."
- Fishcomcollective.com, August 2005

"A cool combination of funk, jazz, reggae, hip-hop with a smattering of doo-wop harmonizing, Soulfège is arguably the most interesting-sounding band attending the ninth annual Millennium Music Conference."
- The Patriot News, June 23, 2005

"It's an African-proud, drum-conscious hip-rap-reggae type of sound...it's a great party album, one to throw into the CD player right next to an ashtray containing a smoldering spliff."
- The Noise - Rock Around Boston, April 2005

"Soulfège's Heavy Structured plays out not like a party, but like the whole damned vacation."
- Northeast Performer Magazine, April 2005

"Heavy Structured is light on inhibitions and heavy on spirit. Rejoice, dear listener, summer is here!"
- Somerville News, January 2005

"The impact of music on society extends far beyond 'entertainment'...we don't just sing our songs, we live them."
- DNA, The Berkeley Beacon, January 2005 - Various

Afropolitan P-Funk Progeny
VanityFair.com
By David Friend

Published: April 29, 2008

Call them Afropolitan. Call their sound ReggHopFunk Fusion, by way of Ghana and Harvard Yard. Call this team of beaming musicians (with not one, but three soaring vocalists) P-Funk progeny, channeling Manu Dibango and Sly Stone and Rage Against the Machine.

Whatever you want to dub them, this weekend’s performance by Soulfege at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory was a rare treat in these way-ironic days: a full-on groove group powering out songs with upbeat melodies to match their message—one of global community and connectedness, conveyed with such energy, assuredness, and good will that they transcended the ironic, transformed the conversation, and transported the listener beyond the otherwise dismal and downbeat world around them.

Soulfege (a term for the diatonic “do-re-mi” music scale) is led by Derrick Ashong, a West African-raised, Harvard-educated, L.A.-based song-songwriter (his moniker: D.N.A.), actor (Steven Spielberg’s Amistad), lecturer, and political activist. (In February, I blogged about his viral YouTube video, on his passion for Barak Obama.) On Saturday, with his fellow choirmates from his college days, Jonathan Gramling and Keely Nicole Johnson, Ashong and company echoed and built on one another’s buoyancy, backed by thick, sick basslines and drum-and-bongo beats. (They just won Billboard’s Best Hip Hop Songwriting contest.)

“How many of you were born in another country?” Ashong shouted out early on in the set, requesting a show of hands from the young crowd in the Knitting Factory’s cramped “Old Office” basement. “How many ever been overseas?” More and more hands. “How many ever dream of being overseas?” All arms aloft, tall stalks of waving limbs. Ashong then launched into “Why?,” a bilingual rap-ballad melange (English and “Ga,” a dialect from the greater Accra region of Ghana), drawing in his audience with:

“Listen my people for I tell you true
It seems some of us know not what we do
We leave our culture
To search for something ‘better’
So you can trade your mama for a foreign suit
But I never saw a tree that grow without it’s roots.”

Soulfege’s songs, heavy on the funk and reggae, threaded with hip-hop, infused with enthusiasm (band members actually bobbed and weaved constantly and infectiously throughout the 90-minute set) were about crossing cultures, about long-distance heartbreak, about forging one’s identity in the global age. The highlight may have been the group’s update of the Sugarhill Gang’s rainbow-mash classic “Rapper’s Delight.” Looking out across that sea of raised hands, the room and the world, for just a moment, sure looked gloriously flat and friend-filled and navigable.

Here are musicians, poised with a positive vibe and with lyrics so uplifting that you actually believe, if only for one night, that slowly, out of a species-wide weariness for discord and conflict, a new world mood may emerge from the street and the Net, somehow defying the odds—a spirit of promise and hope and harmony, a spirit that denies dissonance. Soulfege lets us dream such sweet dreams, in vibrant colors.

Photograph courtesy of Soulfege.

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Soulfège's “Heavy Structured (Plus)”
album rocks the world of Funk
Obaasema Magazine
By LINDA A. ANNAN
Published: December 15, 2006

They call themselves an “Afro-diasporic
groovalicious” group and their rhythms have traveled from Boston through Ghana to other parts of the world. This four-year old band consists of vocalists Derrick N. Ashong a.k.a. DNA, Jonathan Grambling, Kelley Nicole, who adds a feminine touch to the group, and two other instrumentalists. Soulfège's style is a fusion of reggae, highlife and hip-hop, but what distinguishes this band from others is their strong vocal harmonies that is a
result of years of singing in choirs and a cappella groups. Their latest record, Heavy Structured (Plus) is a re-release of their 2004 album Heavy Structured but this time with remixes, one of which features reggae artist, Bounty Killer.

With a series of projects that have caught the eyes of networks from over fifty countries since 2001, Soulfège has continued to gain publicity throughout the US. Heavy Structured Plus is a collaboration with Ghana’s Hip Life producer Panji Anoff and his Pidgen Riddim Kollektive; the group flew to Ghana for this partnership and “Sweet remix,” a hit song off of the album cracked the charts in Ghana, competing with videos by Usher, R. Kelly, and Beyoncè for the top 5 spots.
The song has been picked up by Channel O, Africa’s 24 hour TV music station and the band was featured quite prominently by BBC in a documentary on African hip-hop.

Although the focus of Soulfège's music is to impart self-empowerment and self-actualization on their fans, this latest record diverts to issues related to politics, life, and love. The baseline of their music is to uplift the human spirit, as stated by band member DNA. He poetically describes the group as one that is like water, “it’s soft, it’s fluid, but it’s also very strong…it is a natural sound…based on the combination of beauty and strength.”

The album Heavy Structured (Plus), unearths the band’s reggae/hip-hop/highlife style blended into controlled melodious rhythms. This rocker of a record sets off with a traditional highlife beat in which each member either raps or sings to
represent their 3 primary styles: American, West Indian, and Ghanaian. Prince Nico Mbargo’s once voted song, “Sweet Mother,” as Africa’s anthem on BBC’s Network Africa Program, receives 3 spots on the album. Soulfège's incredible vocal harmonies fuse together to create a beautiful remake of Mbargo’s 1976 hit celebrating motherhood. There are 2 additional remixes, one of which features reggae artist, Bounty Killer.

The track “A long way from heaven,” in which the group talks about freedom and justice, saying, “So let’s get right and put it in motion…to make it happen free your mind from the prison of inaction,” is the only track that takes a bite at societal issues. The remaining are love songs, like “Valentine,” talking about the captivating effects a particular woman has on the singer, “Sweetheart” is about his dream girl and how she makes him feel. “Sofi”, “Baby”, “Sunshine” and “Lady be mine” all hover around the sphere of love. One fascinating thing about these love songs is that they all marvel at a woman’s beauty, sort of uplifting her as a unique creature and not in a disrespectful manner.

For more about Soulfège's and ways to purchase a CD, go to: www.soulfege.com
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Sounds of Africa TV
(http://soundsofafrica.tv)
published: May 12, 2006

Soulfège, May 11, 2006, Makor, New York City
(with live photos at http://soundsofafrica.tv/SNAPSHOT/Soulfege.html)

Big Band night at Makor! With four singers, a saxophonist, a trombonist, a trumpeter, a drummer and a bassist, the young troupe of Soulfege filled the Upper West Side club stage. Starting with an a capella 'Amazing Grace' and ending with their hit song 'Sweet Mother' (cf music video), Soulfege juggled with different styles of music; an R&B ballad, a reggaeton tune, an Afrobeat song turned into hip hop, or the gorgeous rendition of Bob Marley's 'Stir it up', Soulfege kept surprising the audience with twists and turns underlined by the brass section. The beautiful four voices' polyphony and the smooth confidence of the band were impressive proofs that Soulfege, deserving its name, learned its craft and has crossover charm and appeal. Good news for New Yorkers, Soulfege is settling down in the 'Big Apple' and will be performing here more and more.

Members of Soulfege met at Harvard University where some of them are still students. Derrick N.Ashong was born in Ghana and along with Kelley Johnson and the team of 'Sweet Mother Tour', he organized last April at Harvard a conference on 'Youth and the Pan-African Renaissance'. For more information, www.soulfege.com, www.sweetmother.org.

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National Public Radio (NPR)
published: March 3, 2006

Open Mic
Soulfege: 'Sweet 3Mix'

According to Boston-based band Soulfege, they represent the "ever-evolving face of funk." Effectively fusing funk, reggae, and hip-hop, Soulfege are electrifying audiences from Boston to Ghana and beyond with a "positive vibe and relentless groove."

Soulfege's sound is innovative, influenced by the rich history and traditions of West Africa as well as pop music. They create sonic bridges that bring the African Diaspora - the continuation of African culture, history and society via music, religion and folklore - to listeners around the world.

Soulfege's album, Heavy Structured, is part of a widespread project called the "Sweet Mother Tour," an attempt to harness the power of popular culture to "challenge a new generation to fight for mama Afrika." In Ghana, Soulfege's video is ranked high on a program called "MetroTV," alongside the likes of pop stars R. Kelly, Beyonce and Usher.

The featured track from Heavy Structured is "Sweet 3Mix," a remix of the West African classic "Sweet Mother," featuring Jamaican dancehall artist Bounty Killer.

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Mothering Magazine
published: March-April 2006

by Melissa Chianta
Managing Editor

Soulfège’s “Heavy Structured” features the Afrocentric band’s unique brand of funk, reggae, and hip-hop grooves, buoyed by the powerful voice of front man Derrick N. Ashong. Arrangements include plenty of energetic percussion, brass, and bass, while positive lyrics celebrate life, love, and Mother Africa. Soulfège is the band behind the Sweet Mother Tour, a nonprofit organization that seeks to empower Africa by empowering its youth (www.sweetmother.org). (ASAFO Media, 2006; www.soulfege.com)

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Northeast Performer Magazine
published: January 2006

Soulfège - Do Re Mi Fa
by C.D. Di Guardia
photos by Marianne Bolduc

Derrick Ashong is excited. He’s talking and walking quickly around a small office in Cambridge that looks out onto the main nerve of Harvard Square. His words and ideas are flowing just as smoothly as the traffic below is not. A few posters on the wall display gigs long past, and his perfectly enunciated voice echoes around the small room, over the sound of whirring hard-drive fans and the glassed-off Harvard Square. In a town with the world’s finest institutes of learning, his righteous rap is an education unto itself. Like a Telecaster-toting Aristotle, Ashong seems to be dangerously close to the seam that sits between the worlds of philosophy, science, communication, and music.

Ashong makes absolutely effortless-sounding off-handed statements of spot-on accuracy, producing brilliantly simple ideas that shake the posts of the picket fence that separates pure music and pure communication. Having a conversation with Ashong is like sitting in on a master class and finding out that you already know this, that he is simply opening up the enthymeme and then giving you a knowing nod when he sees it all click in your head. Professor Ashong, in his customized clothes and smoothly shaved cranium, is a fantastic instructor in the realm of ethno-musicology, and he ought to be; he’s working on his thesis at that silly little school named after a Red Line stop.

More ensemble than band, Soulfége is 12 people strong. Roughly half of them are core members — the front line as it were. Ashong stands off to the side with his white guitar and signature white beads; he’s less vocal onstage than his counterpart, the effervescent Jon Gramling. Gramling is a bundle of contagious energy; he’s the guy who looks right out into the crowd and asks the requisite “Are you ready to jam?” but for some reason, there is no pretense or cliché — Gramling truly wants to know if the crowd wishes to jam, because, boy, does he want to. The smooth talking, cowboy hat-wearing cat off to the side is James Shelton. He looks tough, but when he opens his mouth to sing, or even simply to talk, his golden voice oozes respect and love for Music; one that runs so deep and true, you can actually hear an upper-case “M” in the word.

Whether she is standing tall in the middle of a stage in Central Square, cruising around Davis Square, or sitting at her desk across from Ashong in the group’s small Harvard Square office, Kelley Johnson is a natural focus point. When she tosses her hair, angels sing; when she smiles, they faint; and when she opens her mouth and sings, they just close up and go home for the night. Beautiful is too generic a term for this woman, but “beatific” could be closer to the pace. Her manner is a good microcosm of the entire Soulfége vibe: forming a bond with the audience. She smiles warmly and winks playfully like she is a friend with each member of the crowd, no doubt breaking a few hearts along the way.

Johnson and Ashong pass conversation back and forth, never interrupting each other. When he wants to demonstrate a musical point, Ashong will stop for a second, gather himself up, and just start singing, right in the middle of this slightly messy office. Heavenly harmonies start floating across the room from Johnson’s desk — the two are harmonizing a cappella with no discussion or prelude, and it’s beautiful. Right there you have approximately one sixth of the Soulfége experience, and you’d gladly pay to have it last all night. It’s apparent that they care, too. “Whether you have five people or five-hundred people, you’ve got to give them something distinctive,” claims Ashong in one of those so-simple-it’s-brilliant statements he is prone to making. They actually get more excited when they find themselves in a poorly booked-situation between hard-rock acts that bear no resemblance to the Soulfége vibe: “It’s a combination of mischief, challenge, and nervous excitement.”

Like Jules Winnfield once said, “personality goes a long way,” but Soulfége clearly has more than simple personality going for them. The vocalists in the band have been singing together for a long time. All currently in their mid-twenties, the principles have been together since their undergraduate days. Having performed in the Harvard a cappella group Kumba, Ashong, Shelton, and Gramling continued working together on music, adding spiritual music, a little Motown, Prince, and Bob Marley for good measure. On the girls’ side of things, both Kelley and Maleka Gramling found themselves drawn to the spirit of the Kumba choir, soon joining up and forming their own subset called “Sisters.” The members of Soulfége had been working and singing together for quite a while before they took their current name and identity around 2003.

Ashong writes most of the group’s original material, and his process varies from song to song. Some start as a bass riff, some on guitar. Sometimes, he’ll wake up with a drumbeat or riff in his head and rush to make sure he gets it down. As is evidenced by their ability to vocally jam with each other in any situation, the group can create and perform anywhere. It is relatively impossible to get twelve people together to rehearse at once, so the group goes in thirds, with Ashong usually bouncing between each group: vocals, brass section, and rhythm section. Ashong does not rule with an iron fist. “I have cool ideas, but others do too,” he says. While he tries to represent his original ideas in the finished product, more often than not a Soulfége song is the product of the band’s open arrangement of whatever Ashong has brought to practice. “Every song has a motive,” says Ashong. “Each song is meant to make you do something,” he adds, readily acknowledging the healthy dose of rhetoric in each Soulfége track.

Seeking something fresh and new, Ashong traveled to his native Ghana to seek out the main nerve of the Soulfége sound. When most people think of African music, they don’t necessarily think of a contemporary sound, but Ashong wanted to find young music with that contemporary sound that he could bring back and meld with current North American musical sensibilities. This is an important part of Ashong’s entire being — this mix of true global influence between North America and Africa. The group has traveled to Ghana a few times; Ashong makes it sound as natural as driving up to Maine, “with the exception of the long plane ride.”

The group have their own DVD featuring the set-piece track “Sweet Mother,” done in an especially Soulfége-ian manner: they have the original version of the track with footage of local houses and stone porches, Ashong and Gramling hanging out, jamming and enjoying themselves, but they also have the remix, this time with footage shot in Ghana of the group interacting with the citizens. The girls sing the chorus in a windy, beautifully shot field, and Ashong trades in his Stratocaster for a kente wrap, but they are the same people everywhere. Soulfége is truly a global band, and global doesn’t just mean “other foreign places” as it usually does; in this case it means “across the planet.” Towards the top of the group’s album Heavy Structured, Gramling lays bare the real soul of the group, that it’s “not so much in the words as that particular tone,” and the band brings this full circle in their music, their conversation, and their balance of sweetness, funk, and positive vibes.

www.soulfege.com

Check out the feature article here for the month of January:
http://www.performermag.com/neperformer.php

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Boston Herald
published: November 29, 2005

No guns, no ho’s: Hub Afro-funk band fights to send a positive message (2-page spread)
By Bob Young

You won’t find Derrick Ashong and his band Soulfege checking out the new 50 Cent movie.

They’re too busy making music with a message they feel is the polar opposite of the rap star’s.

“To me, music should be helping us as opposed to destroying us,” said Jamaica Plain-based singer, guitarist and keyboard player Ashong.

Judging from Soulfege’s growing international fan base, more than a few listeners agree. The video of the single “Sweet Remix,” a shout out to mother Africa, received steady play in Poland, Mexico, Jamaica and more than 40 countries in Africa, reaching No. 4 in Ghana, behind R. Kelly, Beyonce and Usher.

Back home, Soulfege was nominated for a Boston Music Award for Best World Music Act of 2005. Thursday it shares a bill at the Middle East with the Foundation, led by Eroc and Optimus, in the debut of what they call the Diaspora Funk Movement.

“Everything doesn’t have to be about guns and ho’s,” said Ashong, a 30-year-old native of Ghana. “If you really want to see what a hard life is, I’d like to take any of these so called thugs back to Ghana. Let them survive dealing with malaria and open gutters and the reality of life of truly impoverished communities.

“People who live with those realities don’t want to sing about death. They want to sing about life, and that’s what we represent.”

Ashong, Jonathan Mark Gramling and others started Soulfege after meeting in Harvard’s gospel-influenced Kuumba Singers. Later, they decided to mix hip-hop, funk, reggae and doo-wop harmonizing with African pop. Ashong took half of the band to Ghana in 2003 and that sealed the deal.

“We collaborated with a producer who’s got one of the sickest musical crews and is one of the founders of a movement called hip life, a fusion of hip-hop and traditional Ghanian high life. I was like, ‘Yo, this was a sound we could relate to.’ ”

The band’s “Heavy Structured” CD, recorded in Ghana and Boston, has a theme that runs through the lyrics: Stay uplifted.

“African youth are heavily influenced by Western popular culture,” said Ashong, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. from Harvard on the influence of music on youth. “But I think a lot of the culture we’re marketing today is very negative and very degrading to people of color, young people and people in working-class communities.

“The music celebrates and glorifies violence and materialism. So you have youth over there who don’t realize that the way those artists live or portray themselves is not actually representative of the reality for most Americans.”

For Ashong, the question was, “How do we make music that’s uplifting to the human spirit as opposed to degrading, that’s not corny or preachy, and that’s musically dope?”

The answer: by being themselves.

“We reflect a positive vision of the world,” said Ashong. “As part of the Diaspora Funk Movement we want to make music that moves heart, body and soul and uplifts the spirit of people who hear it.”

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Northeast Performer Magazine
published: November 2005

Soulfége, One-Eyed Stanley, String Theory, Six Day Slide, Meet the Day
Middle East Downstairs
Cambridge, MA
September 3, 2005

...With slightly less personnel than a professional hockey team, Soulfége took the stage ready to perform. Jon Gramling approached the crowd at a time when most vocalists are still whining to the sound man about the levels in the monitors. He worked the crowd into a frenzy, until the group launched into a genuine introductory song: each Each member of the crew took a cut saying who they are, and what they are about to do. Gramling, Stratocaster-wielding Derek Ashong, and smooth-talking James Shelton shared in the delivery of the Soulfége mission statement. This highlighted the entrance of the Belle of the Soulfége Ball: Kelley Johnson. The tall, expressive songstress stole almost every song with her sweet voice and engaging stage presence.

A few feet away from Johnson, Gramling held the audience’s attention with his effervescent energy, and Ashong proved his guitar wasn’t just for show. People broke off and danced, just to boogie with Soulfége's righteous sound. By the fourth song, members of previous bands were out on the floor getting down – the Kaptain came out and cut a rug. The room was synched up, making it hard to tell where the band ended and the crowd began. The four front-people performed flawlessly and naturally. By the time the group played “Sweet Mother” and then remixed it live, Soulfége had gained many converts and reinforced the pre-ordained. They even sang in other languages, though at this point the sound system was turning all words into pure note and rhythm. Thankfully, the band's presence isn’t through spoken dialect, but another kind of language. Soulfége is more than simply a party on wheels; they are the whole vacation

-C.D. Di Guardia
Northeast Performer Magazine

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World Music CD Reviews World Fusion
Global Rhythm Magazine

Soulfège
Heavy Structured
FAM FAM
By Robert Kaye
Published September 27, 2005

First off: Kudos to the band for its great tongue-in-cheek name. The heterogeneous quintet is undeniably polished in its arrangements, ably blending funk, reggae, hip-hop, and highlife. Not surprisingly it is making its way in the popular world of reggae-oriented artists. Case in point, along with Bob Marley, Luciano and Sizzla, Heavy Structured was named as one of the “Best Albums of 2005” by ReggaeTrain.com. The group easily won the opening rounds of the Emergenza Festival, and now proceeds to the semifinals. Some of the tracks, such as the opening “Yaa (dis be da intro),” are rap-dominated, whereas others, like “Valentine,” intersperse lead vocals sung, on this track, by female band member Kelly Nicole Johnson, with the chorus dominated by male voices. Both vocally and instrumentally, the group is highly capable of emoting great performances. Helping forge the ensemble was Sheldon Reid, director of the Harvard Kuumba Singers, from whence most of the members put in some musical boot camp time. The result: its joyful, polished approach to music making should bode well for years to come.

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Reviews - Soulfege "Heavy Structured"
FishComCollective.com
published: August 2005

website: http://cdbaby.com/cd/soulfege

Where traditional Afrobeat fused the West African sounds of tribalism with the western jazz/soul/funk/psyche ethic to create unique and touching world music, Soulfege goes for songs that are a little more concise - not so much of a progressive nature, or of a pyschedelic, for that matter - and rather than blend East and West the way Afrobeat does, Soulfege reaches farther south for the sounds from this side of the globe to blend with the old, traditional styles. The end result is a little funk, a little jazz and a heaping dose of calypso infusion. As the band says, " If Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Lenny Kravitz and Gwen Stefani were all jammin' to the same record, it would be this one." The music way smooth, positive and very easy to listen to and more accessible than Afrobeat, which some people might find difficult to submerge themselves in initially (though I think it kicks ass).

review written by: Upchuck Undergrind

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CDs of Note
The Patriot News
published: Thursday | June 23, 2005

"Heavy Structured" by Soulfege

The Cambridge, Mass., band describes itself as "Afro-Diasporic Groovalicious Funkadociousness," and that's pretty accurate.

A cool combination of funk, jazz, reggae, hip-hop with a smattering of doo-wop harmonizing, Soulfege is arguably the most interesting-sounding band attending the ninth annual Millennium Music Conference.

Stir together obvious Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley influences with the soaring vocals of Kelley Johnson, horns, sax, a pile of drums and percussion, and you have a taste of the Soulfege sound.

A polished group of creative musicians, their Millennium showcase is tomorrow at the Levitt Performing Arts Pavilion in Harrisburg's Reservoir Park starting at 8:20 p.m.

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The Noise - Rock Around Boston
published: April 2005 | Issue #250

SOULFEGE
Soulfege Records
Heavy Structured
12 songs

Do you remember the band known as Arrested Development? If you're 17 years old, the answer is no. Anyway, that's the sound I first thought of while hearing this album's first track. It's an African-proud, drum-conscious hip-rap-reggae type of sound. It turns out that Soulfege, in addition to nailing the aforementioned styles, also has a solid Jamaican-calypso thing going on, with dashes of funk---and you know what? It's a great party album, one to throw into the CD player right next to an ashtray containing a smoldering spliff. This is feel-good music, and though it does become a tad formulaic at times, this band has a momentum going for it that would be ridiculous to deny. It could be that their time and place for doing what they're doing is JUST RIGHT. Apparently they're all the rage in places like Ghana. I hope you folks remembered your 7th grade geography lessons and recall where Ghana is. The album is a great showcase for the band's music, but I'll just bet that Soulfege delivers maximum punch in a live performance. www.soulfege.com (Mike Loce)

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Northeast Performer
published: April 2005

Soulfège - Heavy Structured

Produced by Derrick N. Ashong
Mastered by Jonathan Wyner at M Works, Cambridge, MA

Reviewer -C.D. Di Guardia

Soulfège’s Heavy Structured plays out not like a party, but like the whole damned vacation; some awesome resort on a tropical island where there’s always something going on at any given time. Spinning this disc is like walking down into the lobby of said resort and finding a party already in progress, a party without end where all are welcome, kind of like when Korben Dallas first sets foot onto vacation planet Fhloston in the company of Ruby Rhod. The hospitable guys and girl of Soulfège function as concierges for this sonic vacation and are even nice enough to introduce themselves in the aptly named first track. “Yaa (Dis Be De Intro)” is one of those opening introductory tracks wherein everyone gets named and in turn gets a cut of the tune. This overture not only serves as verbal introduction to the members of Soulfège; it also provides the listener with a musical idea of what’s going to go on Heavy Structured before everything is said and sung. After the intro comes the focus track of this record, or rather the first incarnation of the focus track. Soulfège regales us with three versions of “Sweet Mother.” The first version which seems to be the original version, and this is a great tune – probably strongest on the album. “Sweet Mother (Radio)” is a punched-up, shorter version of the original. Despite the fact most bands wait until after the record’s released to remix a song, “Sweetremix” provides the listener a different take on an already strong tune, and the results are positive. Soulfège primarily ranges to the world beats, but shows a different side in “A Long Way From Heaven.” This track is the sore thumb to Heavy Structured with its distorted guitars and minor key, but Soulfège bounces right back with one of the “Sweet Mother” incarnations. The resort is bumping and the return trip is free, and you don’t even have to bring Chris Tucker with you. (FAM)

Contact: www.asafo.com

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Music: A wrap-up of '04 & what's on tap for '05
The Somerville News

published: Wednesday | January 26, 2005

Soulfege

Heavy Structured (2004)

In the midst of the winter doldrums, one needs music to shine a light on the snow, sleet and slush outside. Soulfege has provided such refuge. Their album, Heavy Structured is light on inhibitions and heavy on spirit. Rejoice, dear listener, summer is here!

www.soulfege.com
- Various

Winner of First Place in the Rap Category for the 2007 Billboard World Song Contest

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Soulfège nominated for an Independent Music Award!!
Author: ASAFO Media LLC
published: November 2005

Boston/New York – Recognized for their unique fusion of funk, reggae, W. African highlife and hip-hop music is the world-funk band Soulfège, recently nominated for an Independent Music Award (IMA) by the Music Resource Group!

The “Sweet Remix” was chosen as one of the IMA’s best World Fusion songs of 2006, with its infectious combination of dancehall/reggae and traditional W. African melodies and rhythms. Requested and spun around the world, from African radio stations in Canada to reggae music programs in the Caribbean to local hip-hop video shows in the US and more, the sounds and images of the “Sweet Remix” have been embraced by audiences across the globe.

The IMAs recognizes excellence in Music, Music Production, Packaging and Merchandise Design. Co-sponsored by Borders Books & Music, IMA winners are promoted to more than 7 million music fans and industry professionals via print, radio, and online promotions. Unlike any other music industry contest or competition, the Independent Music Awards delivers real career opportunities for indie artists, labels, and releases.

Check www.soulfege.com for more updates on the results of the IMAs
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Soulfège nominated for a Boston Music Award!!
Author: ASAFO Media LLC
published: October 2005

Boston, MA – Funk, highlife, reggae, hip hop fusion band Soulfège has been nominated by the Boston Music Awards for Best World Music Act of 2005!

Building on the success of the music video from their latest single "Sweet Remix," which gained regular rotation across the African continent (via Channel O) and Jamaica (via RETV), and was voted one of the top 4 videos in Ghana, Soulfège is steadily making a name for itself right here at home, gaining one of the top 10 spots on the Boston Block Madness video countdown and high praise from such publications as The Noise and Northeast Performer.

"Being recognized in what I consider my two homes, Ghana and Boston, is truly an honor for me," says Derrick N. Ashong (aka DNA). One of the stars of Steven Spielberg's "Amistad," this Harvard educated Ghanaian-American artist and activist, is the leader of Soulfège. "Both places have been an incubator to the Soulfège sound, which blends different elements and styles from across the Diaspora...kind of like my own upbringing."

And now fresh off the heels of a collaboration with Grammy-award winning reggae artist Bounty Killer, Soulfège is set to rock audiences and airwaves up and down the east coast this fall, bringing its unique brand of "funkadociousness" to the masses!

Celebrating the wonderful music that is produced by artists with strong ties to the Boston-area, the 18th Annual Boston Music Awards will be held on Wednesday, September 28th at the Avalon Ballroom in Boston.

Stay tuned to www.soulfege.com for more information on this up and coming band from Boston by way of W. Africa! - ASAFO Media LLC

Derrick N. Ashong's (DNA) off-the-cuff interview outside of the Barack Obama rally on January 31, 2008 has spread across the internet like wildfire.

With over 1 million views of his initial video as of April 19th, 2008, and close to 400,000 views of his emotional response, DNA has become a media sensation, literally over night.

Initial video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kica8hmSdAM
Follow up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2zO5d-XZWA&feature=related

Highlights:

- quoted in the February 14th edition of The Economist
- featured guest on popular New York radio station 107.5 WBLS
- mentioned in dozens of blogs across the internet including thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com
-NY Times featured article, March 17
-CNN online commentator, March 19
-Boston Herald featured article, March 27

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Hip to politics - Video shows this Barack backer knows his stuff
By Bob Young
The Boston Herald
Published: March 27, 2008

Move over, Rev. Wright. There’s a new star on YouTube who may actually do Barack Obama some good. Even if he doesn’t, unlikely video phenom Derrick Ashong is drawing massive attention to his own Cambridge-spawned funk crew.

Until a few weeks ago, the 32-year-old singer and guitarist - aka DNA - was known primarily as co-founder of Soulfege, a socially conscious hip-hop-meets-world music-meets-funk band formed by Ashong at Harvard.

Now, thanks to a video interview outside a Democratic primary debate in Hollywood in late January, Ashong is known to a million YouTube viewers. Responding to a hostile interviewer looking to expose the ignorance of Obama’s infatuated supporters, Ashong impressively detailed the candidate’s policy positions on universal health care and public-private partnerships, not musings on music or Obamba’s sex appeal.

“This week all of this stuff has been exploding,” said Ashong by phone from Costa Rica, where he was a speaker at an Alliance For A New Humanity conference. “It’s just really funny because it’s all so random. I think it went viral because it captured the Zeitgeist in that there’s been so much discourse about whether young voters are really informed or simply supporting Sen. Obama because they like the idea of a rock star politician.

“The video puts the lie to the idea that we just don’t know what’s going on. (Viewers) have latched onto it as proof that this election is about something serious and here’s an example of how serious we are.”

Ashong didn’t know he was on YouTube until a friend e-mailed him. Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog at The Atlantic picked it up, followed by The Economist, The New York Times [NYT] and others. YouTube viewings are now approaching the million mark.

“It just started going crazy,” said Ashong. “I’ve got hundreds of messages on my Facebook e-mail that I haven’t responded to. I can’t keep up.”

Ashong did make time to create a YouTube video of his own to rebut charges that he was an Obama campaign plant. That video has become a second YouTube hit with nearly 400,000 views.

“People were saying the interview must be fake, a publicity stunt,” he said. “But it was genuine. I’m a citizen like every other citizen expressing my freedom and advocating for my candidate on issues I care about.”

________________
Commentary: Courageous Obama poses Challenge to America
By Derrick Ashong
CNN.com
Published: March 19, 2008

Editor's Note: Derrick Ashong is a musician, activist and entrepreneur. He recently became a You Tube "phenom" after posting a passionate defense of Barack Obama. Ashong identifies himself as an independent.

Like many Americans I watched Sen. Barack Obama deliver his speech titled "A More Perfect Union."

I watched in a state of minor shock, not so much at the deftness with which he defused the sophomoric conflation of his call for national unity with the inflammatory rhetoric of the retired head pastor of his church -- a conflation that would imply that we must each swallow whole the entirety of views expressed by our friends and associates.

It was not his repudiation of small thinking that struck me. It was the fact that here we had an American politician speaking with both candor and compassion about the proverbial elephant in our national living room.

Race is an issue that continues to confound this country. It is an undercurrent that paints our description, understanding and valuation of people in American society whether spoken or not. It is the subtext that places NBA star LeBron James and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen on the cover of Vogue, in uncomfortable caricature of brute and ingénue.

It is in the minds of some the very reason a person of color would even be considered a serious candidate for the presidency of the nation -- never mind that three centuries into the American experiment there has been to date, only one such person.

I watched Obama's speech with a measure of disbelief that he had the gumption to come out and say what we all know -- that the problem of race remains one that we as a nation have yet to conquer. To be sure we have made strides towards reconciliation. But the hard conversations continue to be harder than most are willing to deal with.

Black America has yet to come to grips with its responsibility to tackle head on the problems that plague our communities. White America has yet to acknowledge the fact that here in the "home of the free," true liberty has evaded many for far too long.

Too often these conversations are ended before they've truly begun, due to the ignorance, intransigence or simple unwillingness of people to acknowledge the validity of what the other side has to say.

Who can honestly argue that black America is not today contributing mightily to its own social, cultural and economic decline?

Who can honestly argue that white America has not been willfully blind and too often complicit in the injustices that continue to be visited upon people born with darker hue or stranger accent?

Who will have both the courage and the commitment to the promise of universal justice and equity that undergirds our country, to call upon the nation to move beyond the divisive rhetoric of racial "one-upmanship" and to embrace the challenge of fulfilling that promise?

Apparently a junior senator from Illinois by the name of Barack Obama.

For days pundits have pondered whether Sen. Obama could weather the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racially polarizing comments. The question at this juncture is not whether the candidate will rise to the occasion, but rather, whether America will.

________________
More Than a Sound Bite, This Clip Has Some Teeth
By David Carr
New York Times
Published: March 17, 2008

On Jan. 31, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year-old musician, dropped off his pal, Shaunelle Curry, at the Democratic primary debate taking place at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. After shrugging off her suggestion that he join her in carrying a sign for Barack Obama outside the theater — his band was leaving on tour the next day — he reconsidered and walked back to join her.

Carrying a sign saying “¡Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!), he joined a throng that was milling around in the background of the live CNN shot focused on the anchor Wolf Blitzer. Then a guy named Mike carrying a video camera came walking by and began peppering Mr. Ashong with a series of skeptical and very pointed questions.

“So why are you for Obama?” he asked. It was clear from his approach that he expected a dimwitted answer, an expectation that he was about to talk to another acolyte smitten by Senator Obama’s rock star persona.

But, as it turned out, Mr. Ashong, who was raised in Ghana and elsewhere, was glad to be asked. For almost six minutes — about a century in broadcast television years — Mr. Ashong, who has an immigrant’s love of democracy and the furrowed brow of a Brookings fellow, held forth on universal health care, single-payer approaches and public-private partnerships.

“A lot of these H.M.O.’s are publicly traded companies anyway, but I don’t think we want to create a market for health care per se, like we don’t want to create a futures market in health care,” he said. And so on.

Cute stuff. Highly informative. But not the kind of political discourse that generally captures a wider audience.

But here’s the weird part. On Feb. 2, the interview of Mr. Ashong was posted on a YouTube channel called “The Latest Controversy,” where supporters of both Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Obama are asked very aggressively to justify their choice of candidates. The video blew up, drawing more than 850,000 views. And after that huge response to his policy analysis, Mr. Ashong decided to double down and explain the emotional component of his support for Obama in a follow-up video that was posted Feb. 11 and received 300,000 views.

Taken together, that means a guy who was looking to (anonymously) show a little love for a candidate was able to look into the camera for more than 13 minutes combined and draw in more than a million clicks with an impassioned but reasoned pitch.

At a time when politics and popular culture are still in an awkward mating ritual, Mr. Ashong inadvertently tapped into the youthquake that is shaking up the campaign. While the clip could have been lost among some of the popular rubble at YouTube (“Let me see, do I watch a tutorial on health care or Tori Spelling on ‘Jimmy Kimmel’?”), Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic blogged about it, as did Think on These Things, a political blog. Then The Economist chimed in, which led to an editor at The New York Times hearing about it and — well, you get the idea.

Part of what is under way has to do with a subversion of expectations. Watch broadcast news and you will see any number of man-on-the-street interviews. In this trope, a person with good hair solicits an enthusiastic sound bite from a supporter, pats her on the head and then moves on. But in this instance, neither party played by the rules. The journalist is never seen and is extremely aggressive in asking questions, while the subject, Mr. Ashong, does not so much take the bait as reel in the guy setting it out there.

“What you have here is two amateurs who are not acting like what they represent,” said Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “The ‘reporter’ is very probing, and then the ‘subject’ gives as good as he gets. It is a classic viral moment.”

Since the phenomenon surfaced, some people on the Web have suggested that Mr. Ashong, with the trade dress of a hip-hop star (he is actually an M.C. who performs as D.N.A.) and the predilections of a wonk, was a plant by the Obama campaign or that the interview was a setup. But Mr. Ashong says he had never before seen or talked to Mike, the interviewer behind “The Latest Controversy” (a message left for Mike on his YouTube site was not answered). And Mr. Ashong said he had not been in touch with the Obama campaign before the interview and has not been since.

Not that Mr. Ashong is some sort of naïf. The son of a pediatrician, he grew up in Ghana, Brooklyn, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In addition to performing with his band Soulfège, Mr. Ashong is a public speaker, an actor who had a role in “Amistad” and an entrepreneur who is putting together a media company called Take Back the Mic, which is an effort to use niche marketing to bring music and other media to a global market.

In a tidy bit of coincidence, his spontaneous interview on the street demonstrated the power of viral marketing in a way he is hoping to replicate with his band and his company.

“It’s weird, because right when this happened, our song was named Billboard’s hip-hop song of 2007, but this was so much bigger,” Mr. Ashong said by phone from Costa Rica, where he is speaking at a conference.

“Certain types of discourse are better suited to the Web,” he said. “There has been so much talk about how this campaign is all about style and no substance, and this video contradicts that. There are reasons that we support Obama, and it has to do with the issues. You can’t get that on CNN right now, you can’t get that on MSNBC right now, and young people saw it on YouTube and they took it.”

Mr. Ashong followed up his sidewalk bulletin to the world with a direct address to the camera, an impassioned seven-minute soliloquy about democracy that would not be out of place in the “John Adams” miniseries unfurling on HBO.

“I have a lot of friends who were born and raised here who take what we have for granted,” he said by phone. “Immigrants who come here fall in love with the concepts and principles this country was founded on, even if America does not always live up to them.”

David Burstein, 19, who made a documentary about the current youth engagement in the political process called “18 in ’08,” said Mr. Ashong’s popularity is a vivid reminder that young audiences show up to this election with a different set of needs.

“Now that the campaigns are getting into this back and forth, young people are tuning out all the sniping,” he said. “They want meat and potatoes, and that’s why TV ads have not played as much of a role in this election. They want to see their peers, people who are not part of the punditocracy, talking about what this election means to them. I don’t think the interest in this video is all that surprising.”

Peter Levine, director of Circle, which promotes civic engagement among young people, said a friend of his who is a state legislator was quite taken by the video. “She had an emotional interest in Obama, but she watched it all the way through and took some notes on the issues so she has some talking points to back it up.”

Speaking of subverting expectations, three of the dozen most popular videos on YouTube this month are about Barack Obama, not Paris or Lindsay or Britney. Many long-held beliefs are taking a beating during this election, chief among them the idea that if you want to connect with young people, you’d best keep it short, funny and stupid.

Mr. Ashong, with an audience of more than a million so far, thinks he knows what made the difference for him. “My ears, I have really cute ears,” he said.

They do stick out a bit, along with the space that lies between them.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com
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Who is that guy? Activist blows mind in Obama video
By Alan King
www.Afro.com
Published: March 13, 2008

Derek Ashong did not consider the consequences as he stood outside the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton debated on Jan. 31.

He figured he was just explaining to a cameraman the differences between Obama’s policies and those of the other Democratic candidates.

But what started out as a routine interview ended up being anything but routine as the sharp exchange made its way around the Internet, including a posting on www.Afro.com.

Bloggers and others marvel at Ashong’s grasp of major issues and the inability of the interviewer to ridicule Ashong’s support of Barack Obama.

Mike Cameraman: So why are you for Obama? Why is he the best qualified?
Derek Ashong: I feel like he’s a person who actually represents positive change in society and who can bring together a broad swab of people.

(Click here for the video)

M: How is he doing that specifically? Do you have any specifics?

D: Specifics?

M: Yeah, do you have any technical versus emotional specifics?

D: Here’s what I see on the technical specifics. Technically, Edwards, Obama, and Clinton are virtually identical. There are minor changes and differences in some of their policies, particularly in healthcare.

M: What are their policies, do you know?

D: All of them represent universal healthcare, although Obama’s plan is not exactly universal in the same way Hillary’s is.

M: How will they institute universal healthcare?

D: How will they institute universal healthcare?

M: Yeah. How will they pay for it? How will they socialize it? How will it physically be accomplished?

D: I think that’s one of the big things. The reason why I like Obama’s plan is because it’s one that’s voluntary. So part of the way in which it gets paid for is by both the worker and the employer as opposed to just by the government, which I don’t think is really feasible.

M: Isn’t that what we have now, called voluntary insurance – Blue Cross for 160 bucks a month?

D: We do, but the problem is the costs are too high? So with Obama’s program we have subsidies for people who can’t afford to pay and that is something we don’t have right now.

M: Isn’t that Medicaid?

D: No. Medicaid only applies to small swabs of people, based on age and based upon income.

M: So you would broaden that to cover more people?

D: Exactly.

And that’s exactly the tenor of the entire interview. (Click here for the video)

The Ghanaian-born musician never imagined his video-recorded response would end up on Youtube. Since then, it’s popped up on several blogs, including Myspace and Facebook.

“You won’t believe how many messages I’ve gotten…in particular, from high school kids,” said Ashong, 32. “They believe in the political process in a way that I don’t think members of my generation have in my lifetime.”

The interviewer saw Ashong’s Black face and did not realize the quality of his intellect. Ashong earned an undergraduate and master’s degree from Harvard University and has taken a leave of absence from a joint doctorate program at Harvard in African Studies and music.

In addition to being a musician, Ashong is CEO of a talent agency, ASAFO Productions. He found a new way of licensing music called FAM License, an acronym for “Freedom Access Music,” part of the open software movement.

But it was that famous clip that made Ashong something of a rock star overnight, with phone calls from the press and e-mails requesting him to speak at various functions.

There are more than 620 responses to his video at

http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com.

They range from praising his knowledge of healthcare issues, to criticizing the interviewer many feel was trying to corner him, to offering him marriage proposals.

A post by Cynthia Robinson, of Atlanta, thanked Ashong for representing her generation’s lack of apathy: “You make me proud in every sense of the word. You, the Dereks of the world, are what we are hoping for in our children.”

A post by Lawrence asked: “Have you ever thought about a future in politics?” Ashong laughs off the other comments that suggest he run for vice president with Obama.

“I said to myself years ago that if I had the power to impact the way that people see the world some day, I’m going to use that power to create other leaders,” he said. “I think that that actually is another incredible kind of power in and of itself – the ability to take what you got and make it into more.”

Through takebackthemic.com, Ashong attempts to broaden the voices of engaged young voters through an “Open Mic – Politics” competition.

According to the Web site, participants send video responses to a posted topic that switches every two weeks. The winner, decided through three rounds of voting, will have $100 donated by Ashong to whatever campaign they support.

“This time we’re doing healthcare,” he said. And to the question of motivation, “There’s a lot of articulate cats out there that need to be in the dialogue.”

In the meantime, he still performs with his three-member group Soulfège, a group that recently won the Billboard Song Contest for Best Rap Song of 2007.

According to the group’s Myspace page, their video "Sweet Remix" was aired in more than 50 countries across Africa, the Caribbean & Europe.

“It’s a huge blessing,” he said. “I’ve been very fortunate that I have close people who have been helping me.”

And he has done a lot to help the image of young Black males.





- ASAFO Media LLC