No Guns, No Ho?s: Hub Afro-funk Band Fights To Send A Positive Message

You won’t find Derrick Ashong and his band Soulfege checking out the new 50 Cent movie. They’re too busy making music with a message they feel is the polar opposite of the rap star’s.

“To me, music should be helping us as opposed to destroying us,” said Jamaica Plain-based singer, guitarist and keyboard player Ashong.

Judging from Soulfege’s growing international fan base, more than a few listeners agree. The video of the single “Sweet Remix,” a shout out to mother Africa, received steady play in Poland, Mexico, Jamaica and more than 40 countries in Africa, reaching No. 4 in Ghana, behind R. Kelly, Beyonce and Usher.

Back home, Soulfege was nominated for a Boston Music Award for Best World Music Act of 2005. Thursday it shares a bill at the Middle East with the Foundation, led by Eroc and Optimus, in the debut of what they call the Diaspora Funk Movement.


“Everything doesn’t have to be about guns and ho’s,” said Ashong, a 30-year-old native of Ghana. “If you really want to see what a hard life is, I’d like to take any of these so called thugs back to Ghana. Let them survive dealing with malaria and open gutters and the reality of life of truly impoverished communities.

“People who live with those realities don’t want to sing about death. They want to sing about life, and that’s what we represent.”

Ashong, Jonathan Mark Gramling and others started Soulfege after meeting in Harvard’s gospel-influenced Kuumba Singers. Later, they decided to mix hip-hop, funk, reggae and doo-wop harmonizing with African pop. Ashong took half of the band to Ghana in 2003 and that sealed the deal.

“We collaborated with a producer who’s got one of the sickest musical crews and is one of the founders of a movement called hip life, a fusion of hip-hop and traditional Ghanian high life. I was like, ‘Yo, this was a sound we could relate
to.’ ”

The band’s “Heavy Structured” CD, recorded in Ghana and Boston, has a theme that runs through the lyrics: Stay uplifted.
“African youth are heavily influenced by Western popular culture,” said Ashong, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. from Harvard on the influence of music on youth. “But I think a lot of the culture we’re marketing today is very negative and very degrading to people of color, young people and people in working-class communities.

“The music celebrates and glorifies violence and materialism. So you have youth over there who don’t realize that the way those artists live or portray themselves is not actually representative of the reality for most Americans.”
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For Ashong, the question was, “How do we make music that’s uplifting to the human spirit as opposed to degrading, that’s not corny or preachy, and that’s musically dope?” The answer: by being themselves.
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“We reflect a positive vision of the world,” said Ashong. “As part of the Diaspora Funk Movement we want to make music that moves heart, body and soul and uplifts the spirit of people who hear it.”