Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari – Tales of Mozambique 2LP Soul Jazz Records

**Ltd Purple Vinyl Repress

Following on from the recent super-deluxe box set edition of The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari’s ‘Grounation’, Soul Jazz Records are releasing a limited one-off purple vinyl edition of the group’s celebrated ‘Tales of Mozambique’. Sleeve design also comes as a new purple version. // Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelation’s seminal 1975 album comes in an expanded double album format, fully remastered and including two bonus rare single-only tracks, full sleevenotes, exclusive photographs and interview. // Count Ossie is central in the development of Rastafarian roots music, nowadays an almost mythical and iconic figure. His importance in bringing Rastafarian music to a populist audience is matched only by Bob Marley’s promotion of the faith internationally in the 1970s. // Count Ossie’s drummers performed on the first commercially released single to integrate Rastafarian traditional music with popular music: the vocal group The Folkes Brothers’ groundbreaking song ‘Oh Carolina’, recorded for producer Prince Buster in 1959. In 1966 his drummers greeted the momentous arrival of Haile Selassie at Kingston airport. // His legendary jam sessions up in his Rastafarian compound in the hills of Wareika, Kingston, are famous for the many Jamaican musicians who attended including The Skatalites players and many others. // The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari formed in Kingston in 1970, a union of Count Ossie’s Rastafarian drummers and the saxophonist Cedric Im Brooks’ horns group, The Mystics. // They are the defining group in bringing authentic Rastafarian rhythms into the collective consciousness of popular music, at once rooted in the deep traditions and rituals of traditional drumming and chanting alongside a forward-thinking, even avant-garde, artistry influenced by the likes of John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders and other pioneering African-American jazz artists charged by the civil rights movement. // Tales of Mozambique is a truly unique and ground-breaking album.