Kassa Overall and The Boomroots Collective

We are sorry to report that this show has been cancelled.  Kassa Overall is still performing at the Outpost on October 26.  Sorry about any inconvenience.

Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. He previously released four critically acclaimed projects: I THINK I'M GOOD, Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz, Shades of Flu and Shades of Flu 2.

On Animals, his Warp Records debut, Kassa pushes his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further. He layers Roland 808s against avant-garde drumming in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart, the latter of whom he studied with at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Virtuoso musos appear alongside rap poets, including Danny Brown, Wiki, Lil B, and Shabazz Palaces. Top-flight jazz improvisation weaves in and out of orchestral string arrangements by Jherek Bischoff. The album's diverse, all-star roster of collaborators includes several of his close friends, like vocalists Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Francis and the Lights, and jazz stars like Theo Croker and Vijay Iyer.

Animals pushes Kassa's message further too, the title a loaded metaphor for the paradoxes of his life as an entertainer and as a black man in America. Animals is the sound of an artist aware of the cost of embodying one's natural self in the public eye, a deep reckoning with the two-sided truth that to perform one's freedom for an audience can mean succumbing to life inside a cage.

The Boomroots Collective is a dedicated and talented band of conscious artists who bring a unique mix of musical genres to the stage. Their brand of progressive reggae fusion and hip-hop music has been described as "The Boom of Hip Hop and the Roots of Reggae."

The Boomroots Collective has been performing for 14 years. The band continues to appear at a variety of musical venues both in their home base of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, throughout the Great Southwest—and beyond.