Friday, July 3, 2015

Fertile Ground





I’ve never heard of Fertile Ground, but DJ Michael Ealey is playing them on Streetwise Radio. While writing this blog I discovered that, the six members of Fertile Ground are a very awesome and creative group. I like them because they have an amazing depth of music that touches on the jazzy, funky soul sound. They mix everything I love.
Fertile Ground started off as a three piece group in 1998, in Baltimore Maryland. The founder was James Collins on key boards, vocalist Navasha Daya and Drummer Marcus Asante. In 1999 the group added Ekendra Das on percussion, Freddie Dunn on trumpet and Craig D. Alston on woodwind. They resided in Atlanta, Georgia until they parted ways in the 2010 to pursue their solo projects. It is a shame because they made some great music.
While they were together they put out several albums. Their first two albums were a compilation called Perception. Seasons Change was their third album. Their last album was called Black Is. With this album they toured from 2004 through 2009 in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., LA, Paris, Tokyo and London. All of Fertile Ground’s albums, happen to combine all my favorite genres soul funk jazz and even hip hop. Fertile Ground is a mix of everything I love. I’m a fan now, if they ever get back together for a reunion tour I hope they come to the West Coast. Anywhere near Northern California, I sure would like to see them live.
Here are some songs that are going on my playlist, “Black Is", “A Blues for me”, “Take me higher”, “Yellow Daisies” “Broken Branches”, “Simple Timeless”, “You”, “Star People” and “Another Day”. There are many more but the list would be too long. So I gave you a little sample of their gift. If you’re not familiar with Fertile Ground, Streetwise Radio is play their songs. You can also listen to Streetwise Radio on iTunes, Pandora, MyGen365, Live365 and Athena365.

LM