Mad Professor - Dubbing With Anansi (Ariwa)

Key figure on this album is Anansi, a mythical creature, half human, half spider, from Ghanaian culture. The Anansi-stories appear both in African and Caribbean culture and for Mad Professor is a symbol for the willpower of the African slaves, who, in spite of bans on their music and culture succeeded in saving them for posterity. From a musical point of view 'Dubbing With Anansi' situates itself somewhere between a pure dub and an instrumental album and for the Intros of some of the tracks Mad Professor even called on a number of well-known vocalists (Brother Culture, Vivian Jones, Delroy Williams, Frankie Paul…). 'Dubbing With Anansi' also contains the odd classic riddim: for 'The Sound Tester' the professor recycled Dennis Brown's 'Want To Be No General' and 'Tribal Dance' is a version over the Mad Mad riddim. Yours truly was most taken by 'Lil Lopez' which thanks to the use of the steel drum gets a great Caribbean carnival vibe.