Peep the trailer from the upcoming film about global social change called "The Shift" (www.theshiftmovie.com). You may recognize some of the featured folks as part of the SMT crew.

Check out www.theshiftmovie.com for more info on the project and how you can get involved as it unfolds toward a 2008 release date.

Jonathan M. Gramling, Kelley Nicole Johnson, and Derrick N. Ashong of Soulfege. (Azadeh Khoshnam )

A band's plan to change the world

By Daniel T. Swann, Globe Correspondent  |  June 8, 2007

Six years ago, while visiting Ghana, musician Derrick N. Ashong heard a Ghanaian man use the n-word.

"The American hip-hop scene had not only made it acceptable but had also made it cool," says Ashong, who is a member of the Boston-bred band Soulfege. "[That man's] whole experience of African-America was its MTV and BET videos, music, artists, and movies, so how would he know about racism? How would he know about [US] poverty? How would he know about unemployment?"

The encounter planted a seed in Ashong's mind. Hip-hop, he felt, was teaching Africans that African-Americans were rich and violent; the US media, conversely, was teaching Americans that Africans were poor and helpless. His band was in a position to help change misperceptions on both sides.

Soulfege has one foot in Africa, one in America. Its core members -- Ashong, Jonathan M. Gramling, and Kelley Nicole Johnson -- were brought together by their alma mater, Harvard, where all had been in the Kuumba Singers, a gospel choir. But Ashong was born in Ghana, and many of the band's lyrics reflect a connection to the African diaspora. "Yaa (dis be fo radio)," for example, includes lyrics in Ga (spoken in Ghana), as well as in Portuguese and English.

Bolstered by a traveling ensemble of anywhere from two to seven additional musicians, Soulfege's soulful vocals and harmonies, warm horns, and engaging lyrics have attracted fans from Massachusetts to West Africa. Its members realized they had the platform to reach ears not only with their music -- a fusion of thumping African music and rhythms, sweet reggae breezes, funk, and hip-hop -- but also with their message. The band, which plays Bill's Bar tomorrow night, "believes in things bigger than itself," says Ashong.

And so was born a project Soulfege calls the Sweet Mother Tour, an umbrella title that encompasses efforts as diverse as band-led workshops for students, activists, and entrepreneurs; a website (sweetmother.org ) that serves as a gathering place for people to discuss issues and watch videos; documentary filmmaking; and an international hip-hop competition. SMT, as they call it, takes its name from the traditional West African ballad "Sweet Mother." On its debut album, 2004's "Heavy Structured," the band reworks the song into three different tracks, each a tribute to the loving bonds between a mother and her child and a citizen and his roots.

"Part of the vision behind SMT is that if you can take a kid from Ghana, and through music, through art and culture, connect him with a kid from Roxbury, then maybe he will learn that BET isn't telling him the entire story," Ashong says. "If that kid from Roxbury could meet someone who grew up actually seeing warfare, actually living in a refugee camp, actually grew up a child soldier, maybe that would help both of them see the world differently."

Read the rest of the Globe Article

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Take Back the Mic

Get more info @ takebackthemic.com

The tune "Sweet Mother" is a West African classic. Everybody and they mama knows it (trust me, if you're West African yo' mama will make sure you know it) and it's often cited as the most popular song in the history of the continent. The original was done by a Nigerian/Cameroonian singer named Prince Nico Mbarga and it really set the tone for the next generation of West African "Highlife" music.

Now as some of you know I am part of a Pan-African Hip Hop/Reggae/Funk band called Soulfège. A few years ago I took the band back to my hometown of Accra, Ghana so the could get a feel for some of my own musical and cultural roots. We had a great time and wound up in the studio w/ one of the top producers in the country. One of the tunes we did was a remake of the classic "Sweet Mother" but with a very different groove and vibe. It was still celebratory and fun, but the beat was slowed down, laid back and infused w/ a Caribbean rhythm, and the vocal harmonies built up and accented with horns. We knew we could never outdo the original so we figured we'd completely flip the script (here's the original remake shot in NY & Philly).

Check out this feature on Soulfège & SMT from the ABC Network in Boston.

View and share this answer to the frequently asked question: Why SMT? and then view the rest of our FAQs on the official SMT FAQ page

More Than Words
By: Derrick N. Ashong

It’s thumping. I feel it more than I hear it. It’s so thick you can almost taste it. It’s funky – smells stronger than teen spirit – like the wisdom of ages wrapped up into an incessant, irrepressible, unforgiving beat. It commands you to move, inspires you to dance, but now is neither the time nor the place…

I’m feeling the groove. Then I hear my name emanate from the speakers. “Is DNA in the house?” I stand up and make my way around the crowd towards the patch of dance floor in front of the small DJ-laden stage. The MC greets me with a pound, a hug and a pass of the microphone. I grab the mic and the cipher’s mine.

By: Derrick N. Ashong

“Where does the sun go in times of rain? “

These were lyrics I wrote sitting on the steps of Cape Coast Castle in my homeland of Ghana. It was November of 1995, I was a Junior in college and was in the midst of writing what would become my first musical. Behind me loomed the blind edifice of a structure that had seen more misery than I can imagine. The slave fortress, where for centuries human beings were reduced to mere pawns on their way to becoming mortal property on the other side of the water.

It was a beautiful day to sit in the shadow of the past. The West African sun shone with a familiar determination; her visage unyielding, yet comforting to those who had known no other. People moved dutifully about their daily work – children ran deftly past dried, but open gutters uttering universal giggles into the wind; men greeted each other with open palms as fruit and fish were sold by women who literally carried the weight of their world upon their heads. I sat there in the hot shade of history and wondered if anyone ever thought about the stories within the walls of the structure behind and beneath me.