Opis
Strange Disc Records proudly presents the original soundtrack to one of THE
groundbreaking films of African American cinema, Ganja & Hess
(1973).
Ganja & Hess is a seminal work of African American cinema,
flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror cinema, Bill Gunn’s
revolutionary independent film is a highly stylized and utterly original
treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity.
Starring Duane
Jones (Night Of The Living Dead) & Marlene Clark (Midnight Cowboy, Enter The
Dragon) as the leading roles.
Ganja & Hess was honored as one of the
ten best American films of its decade by the Cannes Film Festival but was barely
distributed to American audiences.
Commissioned at a time when
Blaxploitation’ movies like Shaft’ played as blockbusters in African American
neighborhoods, it was suppressed in the United States because it did not turn
out to be the Hollywood genre film the producers intended, so Ganja & Hess
was withdrawn the when Gunn went beyond the vampire genre and turned in an
original product.
The original cut was donated to the Museum of Modern
Art (MOMA) whose restoration work & screenings helped build the film’s
reputation as a neglected classic of independent African American
cinema.
The restored version later received a superior DVD & Blu Ray
release through Kino Lorber and in 2014 the film was remade by Spike Lee as ‘Da
Sweet Blood of Jesus’.
The soundtrack to this exceptional film was
composed Sam Waymon, a creative legend who has contributed to local, national
and world culture.
Born in North Carolina, Sam Waymon began his musical
odyssey playing along with his sister, Eunice.
His sister left North
Carolina in the ’50s and traveled north to pursue her career. Along the way she
dropped her given name and became one of music’s most influential and
independent musicians, known as Nina Simone.
Sam performed with and wrote
music for his sister for over ten years but finally broke away to develop a
style of his own that combines gospel, R&B, blues and jazz.
Sam went
on to record for record labels like: RCA, Polygram, and his own label Resolution
records.
He has worked side by side with legendary artists such as Miles
Davis, Donnie Hathaway, Roberta Flack, The 5th dimension, and the list goes on
and on.
Even more haunting than the film is its music, Sam Waymon created
an innovative, ahead-of-its-time mixture of soul, tribal chants, gospel and
trippy, dissonant experimental cues that makes for the strangest score for a
vampire film.
Now, for the FIRST TIME ON VINYL (or on any format) Strange
Disc records proudly presents a deluxe color vinyl edition (with insert
containing exclusive liner notes & rare photographic
materials).
Curated and supervised by composer Sam Waymon himself, this
release is strictly limited to 1000 copies worldwide.
