14/04/23

A record about identity, ancestry, heritage, inspiration, history and divine healing

Today, Dave Okumu & The 7 Generations release the final musical chapter and film from a four-part series titled “Cave Of Origins” which features the new single “Eyes On Me”.

Both releases are from Okumu’s project I Came From Love which is also out today via Transgressive Records. The album is a tapestry of the Black experience that explores ancestry, the legacy of slavery, what it means to exist in an unjust society, and Okumu’s own family history.

On Okumu’s new project I Came From Love, he calls on a star-studded array of guests, including Grace Jones, Eska, Kwabs, Wesley Joseph, Robert Stillman, Anthony Joseph and Raven Bush. Rather than release solely under his name, Okumu has chosen the moniker ‘Dave Okumu & the 7 Generations’, which Okumu sees as “my actual ancestors, the ancestors of others, my musical ancestors, and my descendants”.

The album is a body of work presented in chapters; “You Survived So I Might Live” [tracks 1-4], “The Intolerable Suffering Of (The) Other” [5-8], “Seduced By Babylon” (9-11), and “Cave Of Origins” (12-14). Each chapter is accompanied by a short film directed by Nicolas Premier, who worked across all the visuals on the project. The fourth and final film to be released is “Cave Of Origins”.

On the new chapter Dave says, “Following the journey through so many stories, it was only natural to find a landing place. In order to locate that space, there needed to be an acknowledgement of how challenging it can be to hold multiple perspectives, to articulate one’s own metaphysical travels. The struggle to articulate what we’re going through. Abaka’s story of reclaiming his ancestral name and rejecting that of his slave owner provided a route to the album’s closer, A Paradise. Through this piece of music, carried by the intergenerational vibrancy of Grace Jones, Eska and Wesley Joseph, my hope is that we can be returned to the whole, the naturally occurring state. I came from love, and there shall I return: to paradise.”

Listen to the album I Came From Love HERE and watch “Cave Of Origins” HERE.