Onilu is an all-percussionist trio utilizing the extensive family of drummed and tuned percussion instruments to deliver beautifully composed, arranged and executed small ensemble music. Nothing about this all-percussion band feels rarified, or missing anything musical. To the contrary, Onilu create a soundworld where nothing is missing, and everything is musical -- defying the stereotype of modern percussion ensembles as esoteric or academic pursuits, reaffirming the powerful social and sacred musics made in African diasporic communities and across cultures by drum and percussion groups since the beginning of human time. The members of Onilu are: Kevin Diehl, leader of the enduring Philadelphia-based Afro-Cuban Yoruba free-jazz ensemble Sonic Liberation Front; Chad Taylor, Artistic Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and esteemed drummer of long standing in many scenes. Highlights of Taylor's recent history include his work with James Brandon Lewis, Jaimie Branch, Marc Ribot, Rob Mazurek, and with Joshua Abrams in the duo Mind Maintenance-. Taylor was part of the community of young Chicago-based musicians organized around Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge in the 1990s that included Abrams, Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, and Matana Roberts, among others; living legend Joe Chambers, who began his illustrious career as the drummer on now-canonical early Blue Note recordings by Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Sam Rivers, Wayne Shorter, and Mccoy Tyner. A 1970 founding member of Max Roach's pathbreaking percussion ensemble M'Boom, Chambers continues to record percussion-centered music as a leader for Blue Note records. After nearly three decades working with such historic drummers as Denis Charles, Walter Perkins, Sunny Murray, Hamid Drake, Milford Graves, Susie Ibarra, Charles Bobo Shaw, and Han Bennink, it is Eremite Records' joy and honor to give the drummers not some, but ALL the spotlight. From Dana Hall's liner notes: "These three artists are master musicians and the music they present here is masterfully conceived. The drum, and its entire global family of membranophones, shakers, and idiophones, are conduits for their collective creative voice. In addition to drummers, they are also composers, and their works here represent a synthesis of ideas, concepts, and their individual dialectics on the language and syntax found in much of African and African Diasporic musics. A music that uses call and response. One that honors the past while looking forward to the future. A music that is principally concerned with feeling, mood, and storytelling. One that eschews frivolity and the baroque. A music that swings and grooves. I found myself dancing to this recording. Trust me, you, too, will find yourself rightfully and unapologetically dancing to this recording." First Eremite edition of 999 copies pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140-gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, from Kevin Gray/Cohearent audio lacquers. Recorded by Michael Richelle, Philadelphia. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Queens, NY. Hand screen-printed insert by Alan Sherry, Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico.
