Soul Village

Soul Village is the band of Paris based hip-hop producer Dela. Formed in 2003 and heavyly influenced by the soul jazz and jazz funk greats that provided the backbone for the golden era sound. Soul Village are paying homage to this timeless sound and vision with their own reinterpretations of classics from "Everybody Loves The Sunshine" to "Funkin' For Jamaica". Soul Village, named after a Walter Bishop Jr. song on Black Jazz, is the band of Paris-based beatmaker Dela. He first caught our attention with his all-played-live-version of "Frontin" on the mysterious Milkcrate label (think Pharrell & Jay-Z doing "MTV Unplugged" with Ramsey Lewis and Yesterdays New Quintet as the backing band). "I've been introduced to Jazz through samples and record digging. I fell in love with the music and started looking for the right musicians with whom I could express my ideas", explains the 21 year old hip-hop-producer from his makeshift studio in Pontoise, a 45 minute drive from the centre of Paris. He had already experimented with live playing on some of his hip-hop productions and was eager to take things to the next level. For a start, the group replayed a bunch of their favourite soul and jazz songs note by note and quickly developed their own style of jamming. Picking up the right track for the first Soul Village 45 wasn't easy but when they showed up with a cosmic (and pretty blunted) take on "Everybody Loves The Sunshine" the choice was cristal clear. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.