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Baker's Dozen

Top Brass: Theon Cross' Baker's Dozen
Stewart Smith , October 4th, 2023 08:19

Ahead of a special performance at Kings Place’s Luminate festival later this month, London jazz outlier Theon Cross takes Stewart Smith through his 13 favourite records, from Stevie Wonder to Kano via Miles Davis and Lauryn Hill

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Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation of the Rastafari – Grounation

It's an album that I think of when I think of my dad. My dad was a Rasta, or had that in his belief, and that was music I had around me. That was my first exposure to Nyabinghi music which is music from the Rasta community. The heavy drums, the heartbeat drums. That’s music that's been around me since I was quite small. It’s an album where I think of my dad and I think of home, I get into a state of meditation and reasoning. In Sons Of Kemet, it’s an album we all had an affinity with and often we’d go into the Nyabinghi thing, the drums and horns. Listening to that music influenced the way that I perform and in that band everyone – Shabaka, Eddie, Tom – had the same understanding of that album as a reference point. So yeah, it was yes. Grounation is just one of those albums to me. It’s a part of my musical identity.