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Diaspora On Disc | Now that recording and releasing Jali Vol. 1 is over with, Marlon Wilson’s big challenge is getting the contributors together again for a CD release party.

As a black kid growing up in Alberta, Marlon Wilson wasn’t much interested in learning piano, guitar, or drums. That’s not because Wilson, who would grow up to become one-third of the Edmonton hip-hop group Politic Live, thought they were lame, but because few of the artists he listened to during his formative years played them.

“I was a hip-hop kid,” Wilson explains. “If you grew up a hip-hop kid, instruments really weren’t pushed on you, and the rappers you were listening to didn’t play any. Before The Roots hit the scene, there wasn’t much live instrumentation in the music. I really didn’t have anyone to look up to.”

This lack of musical role models for African-Canadian youth is why Jali Vol. 1, which was initially conceived as Politic Live’s third album before it morphed into something much bigger, features an all-black roster. The lineup, which goes by the name Mahogany Public, includes not just rappers like the Politic Live MCs and their friends, but also saxophonists like Brett Miles and multi-instrumentalists like Oozeela, who produced the album.

“We wanted to encourage black musicians,” Wilson says. “I think it’s important for kids in music to actually know how to play instruments and the theory behind the music. We wanted black kids to pick up the CD and see a black drummer, guitarist — whatever."

“Just to be able to see someone who looks like them and who play instruments is huge,” he continues. “They might start to realize that while rock ’n’ roll music might have a white face on it now, it’s something that they should still be able to relate to — not just because music is universal, but because it came from their bloodlines.”

Jali — the title derives from a West African term meaning “holder of oral traditions” — fuses together a number of genres and styles found today in Edmonton’s African-Caribbean community, from hip-hop to reggae, soca to Afrobeat. This community did not simply influence Jali; it literally assisted in the creation process. Politic Live spent months interviewing friends and family in order to capture their thoughts, both positive and negative, about their diasporic lives in Alberta.

“We found ways to structure the interviews into song lyrics,” Wilson says. “If you were to listen to the interviews and compare to them to the verses on the album, you’d notice that sometimes we lift things almost verbatim from the interviews.”

An ambitious project like Jali presents its own unique set of challenges, the biggest being simple logistics — it’s a difficult task to get this many people in the same place at the same time. That’s why, while the album is now available for purchase, there has yet to be an official release party. (One is in the planning stages, though — Wilson hopes it’ll happen sometime this fall.)

“People have other responsibilities and projects they’re working on,” Wilson says, “so I’m kind of amazed that the album even got finished. It was a nightmare at times, but totally worth it in the end.”

Mahogany Public’s Jali Vol. 1
is in stores now.