Award-winning poet, visual artist, filmmaker Nadeem Din-Gabisi follows up early primer ‘I Land’ with new single, ‘Chariots’.

Newly-signed to Moshi Moshi Records, Nadeem recalls the sharp, truth-telling essence of Fela Kuti and Bob Marley. On ‘Chariots’, the Steamdown Collective member reckons with his Britishness, his place in a hostile land and a calling to honour his forefathers, over the hum and thrum of horns, flute song and a kinetic beat derived diasporic sound clashes.

Of the song’s interplay of humour and commentary, he explains it’s “a krio chorus that is speaking to a child, telling him/her to get up, stand up and see all the adults singing. In some ways I am the adult speaking to my inner child, telling myself to get up, and see what these adults are singing about. In the verses these adults are speaking to the conditions that have placed them in the west, a lot of this album speaks to the atlantic loss, the impact of transatlantic chattel slavery, the loss of a life, the loss of a freedom. The verses speak to a desire to leave a west that has so severely damaged my lineage and return to a literal new land or perhaps create one, one that doesn’t wreak havoc on my bloodline and has ways of living that are in alignment with the survival of the human species as a whole.”

Born in London to Sierra-Leonian parents, Nadeem’s work wrestles with notions of identity, displacement, trauma and struggle. His debut album, ‘POOL’, bridged urban grit with freeform jazz and airy highlife lilts. Din-Gabisi called on friends and fellow musicians Coby Sey and MettaShiba to add character and texture to trenchant cradle songs.

‘Chariots’ comes accompanied with a video inspired by Chariots of Fire (1981), Marathon Man (1976), the books, life story of Dambudzo Marechera and The Roots Manuva video for ‘Witness (1 Hope)’ from 2001. Nadeem adds: “The character I’m playing, Jack Surname George, is running, running on the spot, sometimes toward, sometimes away from something. That something is him, his thoughts, his country, his angels, his demons, his friends. Jack’s run to one of the homes of British academic achievement in Cambridge University and found himself at odds with himself.”

Tune in below.

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