The Progressive Underground Show 160 feat. OSUNLADE
On this episode we interview deep house innovator OSUNLADE and play our usual selection of exotic music.
On this weekend’s The Progressive Underground, host Chris Campbell interviews global music innovator and iconOSUNLADE and discusses his nearly 30 years in the music industry, his many experiences and collaborations with the top global music artists and the latest happenings with his very own record label Yoruba Records. We also bump the best in deep house, techno, future soul, nu-jazz, b-sides and rare grooves. Join us this Sunday as soul travel through the 4th dimension of sound and explore the deeper side of electronica.
It all goes down this Sunday, March 6, 8:00 p.m. EST on 101.9 WDET and wdet.org.
OSUNLADE BIO
As a youngster, Osunlade’s weekly allowance was “two records per week at the local record store” in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. His burgeoning record collection combined with a purchase of a Korg Poly 61 Keyboard stoked his early forays into music creation. His parents incessant belief in his abilities fostered a very open-minded, supportive and productive creative environment that brought his eclectic music sensibilities to the fore.
His professional journey began in 1987, when at the age of 17, he caught the ear of choreographer/performer Toni “Mickey” Basil during a visit to Hollywood. Toni offered him a key role in the development of musical pieces for several projects, that included work on the seminal children’s television series Sesame Street and a movie score. Toni encouraged him to move to Los Angeles where Osunlade began making his mark on the West Coast music scene.
Shortly thereafter, he produced the very first album for the then independent record label – Interscope Records. One of his first projects for the label was the artist known as Gerardo and their collaboration led to the global music hit “Rico Suave,” one of the first big commercial Latin pop songs.
With a multi-platinum album and four gold singles under his belt, opportunities to master his craft came flooding in. He secured work with artists such as Jazzy Jeff, Roy Ayers and Patti Labelle and many more during this period, building a strong reputation in the process. However, the industry began to chip away at his passion . The constant demand to keep up with disposable music trends and the forced coercion by his label for him to make music that was similar in sound to popular 1990’s R & B/New Jack Swing producer Teddy Riley, proved to be a turning point. Osunlade felt it was now time for a new direction.
He took a 2-year sabbatical, which brought on a series of life-changing decisions. The first was a resolve to no longer work under the the corporate music umbrella, but rather to embrace a more spiritual path in his music. This led him to Ifa, a naturalist ancestral culture based on nature, deriving from the Yoruba tribes of Africa and practiced by the slaves during their forced relocation to America.
This second decision was to move to New York and take a leap of faith and make one of his longstanding dreams come true – to start his own label, Yoruba Records. The label is now recognized as one of the most critically-acclaimed and significant dance music labels in the world.
Yoruba Records is a place for Osunlade to release his own spiritually-infused brand of house music grooves, and introduce fresh new talent to a global platform. In the years since the introduction of his record label, Osunlade has also become an in-demand DJ and taste maker spinning at many of the top global music festivals and performing with his own live ensemble band.
Nowadays, Osunalde resides thousands of miles away from his birthplace on an island in Greece where the population is just 9,000. There he enjoys the space and time to create his music without distraction. While he focuses on new material he also maintains Yoruba Records with a flurry of new releases on tap for 2016, while maintaining a heavy tour schedule.
SOCIAL MEDIA
http://yorubarecords.net/
https://soundcloud.com/osunlade
