Soul Motivators Keep Funk Alive

Here’s some Deep Funk to spruce up your Monday morning for you. A 9 piece Funk outfit, The Soul Motivators have been steady filling dance floors since 2011. Comprised of veterans of the Toronto, CA underground music scene that include Lydia Persaud on vocals, James Robinson on keybaords, Voltaire Ramos on guitar, Marc Shapiro on bass, Doug Melville on drums, Nigel Pitt on percussion, and a three person horn section ( Nathan Dell-Vandenberg trombone, Thomas Moffett trumpet, Dominique Moirier sax), the Soul Motivators bring fresh sound to the masses. Carrying on the tradition of their influential legends such as The Meters, Headhunters, and James Brown, while adding the flavor of their contemporaries such as Speedometer, El Michels Affair and others, The Soul Motivators make no apologies about their high energy output. Their original music is littered with classic Funk breaks, horn stabs, and nods which most of us diggers think of as second nature. I always make that mistake, thinking when I hear a sample, that everyone else knows it. Take, for example, the Ann Robinson “You Did It” horns from the track below, “Gravy Train”. As soon as I heard the riff, I thought, Ann Robinson, Fat Boy Slim, now The Soul Motivators. Cool. However, most of the public just hears some catchy horns. This band is giving the audience not just an entertaining, sweat filled, dance frenzy night, but an education and a history lesson of Funk and Soul riffs as well. Following the same path as a band like Breakestra, they fuse the old sounds with their new Deep Funk sound and it’s definitely a good thing to hear.

If you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future, and TSM stick to that formula, keeping the old sound alive while injecting a bit of their own philosophy into the music. Both ways are funky as it can get. Well known on the Jazz festival circuit as well as Canadian radio, The Soul Motivators look poised for moving to the next level. It looks like Detroit’s Funk Night Records will be releasing their first 45, “When The Sun Goes Down” (not to be confused with the Lack of Afro cover of Arctic Monkeys 45) early this Summer. We will be definitely looking for that slice of 7″ heaven. Stay tuned.

“Razor Blade” from their soundcloud page.