LISTEN TO EMURGENCY!

WATCH VISUALS FOR LOVE SONG, WHICH WAY,  OSHUN AND ESHU

RELEASE SHOW AT SMALL WORLD MUSIC CENTRE  IN TORONTO ON DECEMBER 9 - TICKETS

TORONTO, ON – November 25, 2022 – Today, Toronto-based group and movement, Amai Kuda et Les Bois, proudly deliver the long-awaited digital release of their album, EmUrgency!, available across all music platforms. EmUrgency! features album highlights, Love Song, Which Way, Oshun and Eshu; with the last three singles accompanied by animated videos co-produced by Nigeria's Spoof Animation. The videos are also trailers for a full animated series being developed under the album's title. "EmUrgency! is both an act of healing and an act of resistance," says Amai Kuda et Les Bois. A collection of prayer songs, war chants, lullabies and love ballads for our times, the project was composed over two years, with co-writing and production contributions by Amai's now 18-year old son, Imoja. EmUrgency! addresses issues of colonization, police brutality, parenting Black youth in a racist world, the protection of the environment, reclaiming African spirituality and decolonization. Listen to EmUrgency! here and watch the visuals here.

On December 9, Amai Kuda et Les Bois will celebrate the release with hometown Toronto audiences with a special concert at Small World Music Centre - tickets and information can be found here. 

The event will also be raising funds for Amai's initiative, the Sankofa Maroon Village (SMV), a physical and metaphysical space for African descended folk to rebuild healthy, rooted, sustainable community.   While working to establish the first Black eco-village in Canada, Sankofa Maroon Village have already provided low or no-cost healing and education to over 100 Black community members, despite having had no funding. You can find out more and support this powerful project here, and support here GoFundMe page.
 
To further explore the album's themes and educate audiences about African spirituality and history, Amai Kuda et Les Bois are collaborating with Spoof Animation, part of Africa's rising animation industry, for EmUrgency!'s visual series of the same name. Like the album, the animated videos for EmUrgency! engage with timeless themes found in traditional stories as well as issues of our times like racism, the legacy of colonization, environmental degradation, and ongoing movements to decolonize. Amai is committed to addressing the need for more Black animated content, and more popular media that portrays African spirituality and mythology in a positive, engaging format. "After 500 years of colonial genocide designed to erase us, I think that remembering and reclaiming who we are is, in fact, the most powerful way to fight back" she says.

Songs have been featured on the playlist, Ones to Watch, as well as several Spotify editorial playlists, CBC's Big City Small World, CBC's Fresh Air, Tinnitist, Rhythm Passport and Wildfire Music.

EmUrgency! Track Listing:
1. Sewing Seeds (Opening Prayer)
2. Which Way
3. Listen Child
4. Ecouché
5. Mother's Home
6. Warriors Gather (Prayer)
7. Eshu
8. Love Song
9. Oshun
10.Better Day
11. Granny Gets the Last Word (Closing Prayer)

DOWNLOAD – Press Photo by Samuel Engelking

DOWNLOAD – EmUrgency! Album Art

About EmUrgency!
EmUrgency! was recorded, mixed and mastered at Quantum Vox Music with co-producer, Jimmy Kiddo, and reflects Amai’s vast influences: Afrohouse, Motown, alt rock, hip hop and downtempo, with inflections of Amai’s Trinidadian heritage and Toronto upbringing in the mix. The album speaks to the struggles, wisdoms, and joys of Amai’s journey, being guided by ancestors and Orishas, and staying true to her calling as mother, healer, warrior and artist, despite the many obstacles facing Black, queer women in the music industry and society at large. On the songs, Amai delves into African Indigenous spiritual traditions, connecting with gods and deities of Yoruba cosmology, the anti-colonial war for survival, unconditional love, honouring elders, as well as the inner child and how to preserve it in times of struggle.  

About Amai Kuda et Les Bois
Amai Kuda et Les Bois don’t fit into the usual boxes. Breaking boundaries is part of their superpower. Not a band or a solo act, they prefer to call themselves ‘a movement.’ Led by Amai Kuda, their shows and albums always begin with the pouring of libations and the invocation of ancestors. This spiritual element weaves its way throughout all their music, whether that be soothing acoustic ballads, dancy electronic grooves or alt-rock-hip-hop-infused political tracks. Ecouché, for example, the “stunning new single” (Indie88) off the new album EmUrgency! is sung entirely in a language of ancestral communication and can’t be delivered the same way twice. It embodies what NOW magazine has called the group’s “tantalizing Afro-soul” fusion sound, "earthy and rootsy and good for your ears" (Errol Nazareth CBC in reference to AfroSoul Volume II: MaZai). Indeed, it is the genre-defying nature of their work which led their debut album, Sand from the Sea, to be named “one of the year's most exciting discoveries” (Nicholas Jennings - Canada's foremost music journalist).

Since that early accolade Amai Kuda et Les Bois have slogged away in Toronto’s music scene, performing at venues like the Jane Mallett Theatre, Harbourfront, The Rivoli, and festivals such as Luminato, Kultrun, and Small World, as well as at venues and community centres on four continents. Amai Kuda et Les Bois have certainly paid their dues, and they haven’t gone unnoticed. They’ve been featured in NOW magazine and on CBC’s Canada Live and Big City Small World, while a single from their 2019 release with Version Xcursion, Holding Back, premiered on Strombo Show. The group also won the Best Folk/Roots award as well as placing second for the Best Song at the Toronto Independent Music Awards. They’ve opened for Joel Plaskett, Kellylee Evans and Sarah Slean, and collaborated with M1 of the legendary Hip-Hop duo, Dead Prez on a call-to-action song called We Can Do It. 
 
All that said, the group is acutely aware of, and quite angered by, the glass ceiling in the music industry that keeps artists like themselves from reaching wider audiences. Their new album, EmUrgency! is largely about pushing back against this, and in the coverage it’s received thus far (The Strombo Show, CTV National News, RX Music Live, UMFM and CJRU), they’ve made a point of talking about it. For Amai Kuda et Les Bois, music is about healing - ourselves, our society and the earth, and that can’t happen unless we listen to the voices that have for too long been ignored. It is truly a ‘listening EmUrgency!’