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Rankin Lele & Papa Leu – Ae tantu tiempu (2023) Album

Label: Adriatic Sound
Release date: 05/11/2023

“Ae tantu tiempu” is the new album by Rankin Lele & Papa Leu, released on May 11, 2023 by their independent label Adriatic Sound. The disc confirms the experiences gained over years of touring, studying and musical productions between Italy and Jamaica, together with Sud Sound System and Richie Stephens, and arrives thirty years after their first performances in the historic Salento dancehalls of the 90s.

There are twelve unreleased tracks, interpreted in Salento dialect, written and composed by Rankin Lele & Papa Leu, recorded in Trepuzzi in the Adriatic Sound and Drumm Studio studios by Papa Leu and Fossa Drummer, arranged together with keyboardist Alessandro Garofalo, saxophonist Luca Manno and guitarists Marcello Leo and Alessandro Tullio Filzi.

The voices of Rankin Lele and Papa Leu create an engaging mix that accompanies the reggae notes of Salento, between ska references and pressing melodies that captivate from the first listening.

“Ae tantu tiempu” is an album “dedicated to lovers of Salento and its music, to those who don’t give up and work hard every day, to those who fight for a better world”, explain the two artists.

The title track “Ae tantu tiempu” is the new manifesto of the genre, an immediate and dynamic song, in which Rankin Lele and Papa Leu retrace their experience in the history of reggae “made in Salento”, through sounds that refer to the classics of the bands reggae from the 80s, and texts full of commitment and social messages, as in “Enough peaks”, a hymn to hospitality, integration and multiculturalism; “Tiempu niuru”, song of fatigue and sweat; “Nu la sai”, a piece in which the greatest of evils, war, is condemned, already released as a single with a video clip. The disc continues with the song “Mesura”, another rub a dub live band in the studio, which evokes truths and knowledge handed down for generations, updating them in messages and warnings for today’s young listeners. Rhythm lovers and sweet melodies instead characterize “Nu me dire no”, where the voice of Papa Leu becomes persuasive in singing and telling love. There is no shortage of contemporary and decidedly dancehall sounds, on which the trepuzzino duo plays with dialect and tongue twisters, a real stylistic figure that emerges with all the verve in “De quai a dhrai” and “Quannu nciole”, on fast metrics, powerful voices and precise and arrangements of great sound impact.

The featuring in the album lead into a family environment, linked to the artistic training of the Salento duo. In fact, there are three singles made with the members of the Sud Sound System, with whom Rankin Lele and Papa Leu have grown up and have always collaborated: there is “Festa ranne”, with the unmistakable “burst” of rhymes by Don Rico, in which people go wild in the streets of the long-awaited “festa de lu paise”; we then find ourselves in the classic Salento dancehall with “Mueite cussì” and the voice of Terron Fabio; and, again, a sincere and hopeful message is launched with “Ce aria tira”, in the company of Nandu Popu, the “conscious” voice and soul of Salento reggae.

Finally, there is “Sa fattu tardu”, with the intro by Supa Hype, Jamaican DJ and radio host, in collaboration with the great Richie Stephens, one of the most famous Jamaican singers, with whom Adriatic Sound founded the Ska Nation Band, Italian-Jamaican ensemble that debuted in 2015 with the album “Internationally”. In 2018 the band received an invitation from the Jamaican Ministry of Culture to participate in the Grand Gala of the Celebrations for the 56th anniversary of Jamaica’s Independence. On the occasion Richie Stephens & The Ska Nation Band receive the “National Awards” for the revaluation of ska music.

“Ae tantu tiempu” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

The disc is launched by the single, the title track “Ae tantu tiempu”, accompanied by a video clip, born from an idea of Rankin Lele and Papa Leu with Moses Ferrari, made with Giulio Barbetta, in which they wanted to “tell”, in a sequence of video fragments, the thirty-year “reggae life” of Rankin Lele and Papa Leu, between stages, dancehall and studio, in the company of many friends and colleagues. All punctuated by the sounds of the song that refer to the classics of the 80s reggae bands. Starting, of course, from the recording moments of “Ae tantu tiempu”.