Africatown, AL Ancestor Sounds is an album of recordings featuring the residents of the Africatown community, including descendants from the last slave ship brought to America, the Clotilde.

Produced by Grammy-winner, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Zomba Prison Project) and his wife, Italian Rwandan filmmaker/photographer, Marilena Umuhoza Delli, the project features musical accompaniment from the local community as well as ambient recordings from the factories that surround and pollute the community from all sides.

Meant as “an impressionistic document, rather than a definitive historical narrative,” all recordings were done on-site as 100% live, first takes. The outdoor nature of the recordings “graphically renders the encroaching and ominous industrial sounds, documenting the environmental racism that’s plagued the community.”

Years before, in rural northern Ghana, Brennan had been struck by a handpainted “Alabama Barbershop” sign he spotted. Likewise, later, a local Blues musician in Mobile, Alabama pulled out the northern Ghanaian instrument, the Kologo, an instrument which he knew by another name. These surprising “ancestor sounds” resonate on this album.

Proceeds benefit the Africatown Drummers, LLC and various other local organizations.