New York guitarist Charlie Apicella’s musical voice runs historically deep, with his seven recordings to date highly focused on celebrating the elders of jazz, R&B, and the Blues.

His band, Iron City, has been with him the whole way, providing a base context for all of his projects. With Destiny Calling, this hard bop rhythm section drives headlong into the future as the elder masters of The Griots Speak draw from a lifetime of experience in communication with the ancestors.

Trail blazing percussionist Juma Sultan formed the Griots with saxophonist Daniel Carter, bassist William Parker and Apicella to help celebrate a patriarch of New York’s ’60s loft scene.

Simultaneously fluid, extroverted, light, confrontational, and meditative, their music is poetry in motion. They create spontaneously, as they move between instruments, including a variety of indigenous instruments which convey a pan-ancestral tapestry at the core of their sound.

For Apicella, it’s the realization of lessons learned through his studies with Yusef Lateef and the opportunity to further amplify the legacy.

1. As the Sun Rises
2. Titan Vs. Sphinx
3. Juma’s Song / Maliki Melasha
4. We’re All Here in Spirit
5. It’s Alright to Run
6. I Heard in Passing
7. If You Know Where to Look
8. Where Do You Find These People?
9. Sparks

On what is a humble, and quite elegantly crafted new recording, the first track is the wistful As The Sun Rises and that is followed by the upbeat, joyously soaring Titan vs. Sphinx, and then we get the mysteriously-hued Juma’s Song / Maliki Melasha and the deliciously smooth, funky grooves within We’re All Here In Spirit.

Along next is the methodically cultured It’s Alright To Run and the skedaddling, late night back alley, frenetic drums and percussion that make up I Heard In Passing, and they are in turn backed by the low slung, cool cat If You Know Where To Look, the recording rounding out on the introspective Where Do You Find These People?, closing on the studio jam piece Sparks.

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