Album Notes

This CD, NEGRO YANGA is the third CD that is available here on CD Baby from Roots And Wisdom. When The CD "Bicycles for Rastas Mayas" was released by the band in early 2000, it marked an important phase in the production and marketing of Roots And Wisdom music. Instead of being marketed exclusively as an African act, this band has encorporated most of the music on NEGRO YANGA as a tribute to a rising co-operation between the band and the Afro and Mayan regions of Latin America. Basically operating from Mexico, the band has built an international following, and as such, has built a Center for African and Mayan cultural studies, in the Yucatan penninsula of Mexico. This CD, Negro Yanga, celebrates this culture, and the history of black people in Mexico, especially in the state of Veracruz, where Yanga was the first black slave to be given his freedom in the Americas, and was allowed to found his town "Yanga" for his freed black people in Mexico.

But the name "Yanga", also is a popular word used in Nigeria, Africa to describe people who are extremely proud and showy. This was exactely what influenced Wisdom Ogbor, the Musical Director of Roots And Wisdom to take interest in producing this CD.