This is The Charles Gené Suite: spearheaded by Njabulo Phekani and Noah Bamberger, the (currently) seven-piece outfit was formed circa 2018 as a family-esque collective of the entire creative sphere as an experiment of sorts.
Family is really the operative word here. An ever-expanding, broad-reaching conglomerate of creative humans co-creating across borders and genre-lines. Their latest release – which comes as the lead single off their upcoming debut album Suite Nites – is a broad-spectrum amalgamation of jazz, soul, hip-hop and neo-African proclivities, rolled into a six and a half minute journey of sound.
“I Don’t Sleep Anymore” features Rāms, Laliboi, Mangaliso ASI, SOMESAY- FEDI (all on vox), and Muhammad Dawjee (sax), to bring them in as keynote collaboraters of the Suite at large. At its core, the track is a testimony to achieving your goals: an ode to making it happen – and to keep it that way, there’s something in there for just about everyone.
For the most part it’s stripped and simplistic, a mic-trade of genres and sounds pivoted off an unambiguous backbone. Off-kilter jazz inflection, R&B vocals, orchestral strings, slickly dropped hip-hop bars, crooning choral breaks – they’re all there, and there’s more.
And while it may err only on the basis of length, “I Don’t Sleep Anymore” is varied and deeply nuanced – a cohesive compilation of artists carving their own niche, with a zealous collaboration gone quite right.
