Buru Style started as a half-Connecticut/half-Boston based Live Dub group that meditates on ultra-ethereal riddims from the catalogues of Jamaican Nyabingi artists such as Count Ossie and Cedric Brooks, mixes in newer tracks from the likes of Jah Cure and Richie Spice and plays a whole heap of original music as well. Over time the group has grown and is now an all-Wesleyan University affair featuring a mega-lineup with full percussion and horn sections. We started out as an instrumental thing; over time we've also mixed that up. Over the last couple of years we've backed up a large array of stunningly awesome singers and deejays such as Ghanaian Superstar singer Shasha Marley, Toussaint Liberator, Lady Lee, Little Andy, Ajanai, Dion Knibb, and Ras Coley.
In concert, the nyabingi heartbeat pervades; no matter how dense or sparse the melodies and soundscapes in the upper textures become the rhythm section pulses on.
The term "Buru" is taken from a Jamaican music and masquerade tradition. Certain elements of Buru music provided the foundational rhythms for Nyabingi, the traditional drumming of Rastafari. In Kingston during the 1950s and 60s many Jamaican jazz musicians—the Skatalites' Tommy McCook, Don Drummond, and Lloyd Knibb, to name but a few—mingled with Rastafarian drummers at open jam sessions. When these musicians began recording their own music in Kingston's studios they incorporated Nyabingi rhythms (the older musicians still call them "Buru" rhythms) in both subtle and overt manners. Beginning in the early 1970s, actual Nyabingi drummers were featured heavily on reggae recordings and toured with reggae bands. Can't quite imagine what Nyabingi sounds like? Think "Time Will Tell" and "Rastaman Chant" by Bob Marley or Gyptian singing "Serious Times."
We're not Rastas. However, we love and respect this music. We don't try and play it just like they do in Kingston; in fact, we don't even sing the words. The Nyabingi rhythms are a foundation for what everyone in Buru Style does, which is to be themselves and make some great pseudo-original music doing it.
