groundsound – Working Progress (2024) Album

Label: Equiknoxx Music
Release date: 02/29/2024

Groundsound is a message-driven, Afrofuturist partnership between Gavsborg (of Equiknoxx) and Riddim Writer (word artist & cultural analyst). The duo hope to free-up how listeners hear, think of and understand Jamaica; its people, its music and its culture.

The founding member of the music collective Equiknoxx, Gavsborg has been breaking and disrupting how the world hears Jamaican music for nearly two decades. As a published dub scholar and educator, Riddim Writer has been using her voice to build community and understanding of Caribbean and African diaspora culture. The two first collaborated in 2019 for a single track exploring how African alienation in Jamaica’s hinterlands has survived in both rhythm and memory. There was an easy magic in their synergy, each feeding the other’s aesthetically grassroots musicality. groundsound was born from their mutual desire to make music that would be interactive, social sound art. In September 2023 groundsound played a multi-city tour of Canada at a range of acclaimed spaces in front of diverse audiences, closing Pop Montréal with Lila Iké and PYNE.

This single is the first offering from groundsound. On “trod” the pair artfully explore the heavy weight that they carry each and every day – something inner that is known yet unknown. As Riddim Writer conveys: “ The heaviest burden to carry is the burden of ignorance, of not knowing one’s roots. Carrying the heavy load of an oppressive history of revision and re-naming came crashing down on me when I attempted to trace my own family’s origins. I discovered first-hand just how much history had been obscured from me, so much hidden from us as Africans in the diaspora. Who am I, who are we, who came before? “trod” emerged as a meditation on what the Black soul knows and what the plantation records and ship-logs can never reveal.”

In the spirit of resilience and survival, although the message of the single carries weight, it is also light in its step and allows the audience to walk a steady path on a reflective journey with its creators. Some may even move and sway to the tough drums and uplifting piano as the rolling bassline and soulful vocals cascade with Riddim Writer’s poignant messages as Gavsborg adds “My mother loves dancing to this track.”

Already receiving support from Jamz Supernova who debuted the track on her BB6 Music show.