Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
"Adam Chaki returns with Snowcité, a warm, stylistically adventurous album that could pop the Montreal scene's indie-rock bubble." - The Montreal Gazette
"Firstly, his album adds an important stone to the diversity of our
musical landscape. Drawing from many sources, from funk to african
rhythms by the way of Paul Simon, Idan Raichel, Stevie Wonder and many more, Chaki integrates all influences to deliver an album, whose apppeal is both old-school and modern, that charms our ears while captivating us with its lyrics and urging us to shake our behind. An album in its own category."
- Ici Montreal, 04/01/2007
Discography
"No One Knows Where the Hell We Are" Audiogram, 2001
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Listening to Adam Chaki's "Snowcité", riding the gobstopper of surprising flavors and skillful style shifts, you begin to see how pop music can take on vocabulary from all over the world without affectation, without becoming soft and dreadful, without becoming a hippie pastiche.
There are moments when you can imagine Chaki in his teenage years, jumping onstage with a Jamaican dance hall band to replace an absent guitarist and then sticking around for two years. Or running out to
buy a Fela Kuti record the moment he first heard it, certain that his world had forever changed. Or blowing away top Congolese bands with his fluency in soukouss to the point where they chant his name as part of their song. Or raising the eyebrows of griot masters, rasta meditators and hip hop producers with not only the love of their music but the audacity to play it well.
This is American music, American pop music for the radio but made by someone who, like many other Americans, listened to Bob Marley since he was in diapers. And like many others of his generation, he is
yearning to see more diversity in today's popular music.
Chaki first let the world in on this vision in 2001 with the Audiogram release "No One Knows Where The Hell We Are" featuring the unforgettable song "Sonofabitch". After a rupture with his label, he
embarked on a journey to find the resources to produce what turns out to be an epic piece of work, "Snowcité". With no label and from even before its release, this love/hate letter to his hometown has managed attain an almost feverish, and perhaps more impressively, an organic buzz. The Montreal Gazette has picked it as one of the ten records to
look out for in 2007: "A warm,stylistically adventurous album that could pop the Montreal scene's indie-rock bubble" and being the pick
of the year of Ici : "An album, whose flavors are both old-school and modern, that charms our ears while
captivating us with its lyrics and urging us to shake our behind."
Now getting the live angle of his music ready, Adam Chaki will surely include in his line-up the stellar African bassist Paul Zebeyou and one of the album's brillant drummers. We can hardly wait.
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