Consultants.

Rhoda Dakar began her musical career as lead vocalist with all female 2Tone band, The Bodysnatchers in 1979. She went on to record with The Specials, The Special AKA and Madness, along with her solo work. She has 7 gold albums and 1 silver covering these and other recording projects. Rhoda is also a respected DJ and toured the Americas and Europe as support to The Selecter in 2019 and The Specials in 2016 as special guest.

Rhoda has a five-piece backing band, The Lotek Four, and has once again begun to play live. In the past few years, Rhoda has also played with pick up bands in the USA, the Czech Republic,Germany and Australia.

Recently, Rhoda has released a series of four singles on Sunday Best Records with artwork designed by renowned Sheffield artist Pete McKee. Her most recent single, a Reggae cover of As Tears Go By, got a Twitter endorsement from none other than Elvis Costello! He called it a “beautiful, trippy rendition of the mighty melancholia of Jagger/Richards”.

Rhoda’s latest collaboration is with US Ska Punk band The Interrupters, who have recently blazed a trail through Europe and the US. They asked her to contribute to a track on their new album, In The Wild. The track called As We Live also features Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and was released as a single in August. Rhoda was delighted to join them onstage during their headline UK tour in Nottingham (Rock City) and Brixton (O2 Academy) in the summer.

Back in 2020 Rhoda collaborated with the Dub Pistols on a track about unity, Stand Together, with a US civil rights themed video released coincidentally at the height of the Black Lives Matter worldwide protests. Back in 1982 her track about date rape, The Boiler, was released just as a nationwide news story broke about that subject. Coincidence and perhaps a little prescience, Rhoda maintains that songwriting is about paying attention.

Other projects include a radio show called Pork Pie & Mash Up, which began on Totally Wired Radio but is now exclusively on Mixcloud. A mash up of music from her eclectic taste often including an interview with friends and/or 2Tone luminaries. There is also a large Facebook group themed around the show.

Rhoda also writes sleevenotes, most recently for Trojan Records’ release, Love Is All I Bring, a double album showcasing female vocalists. Still a campaigner and local activist, she is a patron of the Music Venue Trust and a board member of their offshoot Music Venue Properties, Chair of a local community squash club in Brixton and a former governor of an NHS Mental Health Trust, responsible for four hospitals.

rhodadakar.tmstor.es

Tony Minvielle currently hosts a nationally networked Sunday daytime show on Jazz FM and has produced radio documentaries for both Jazz FM and Absolute Radio. Other broadcast experience includes being a host on jazz station WCLK Atlanta.

Over his 40 year career as a broadcaster, writer and selector he has worked with many musical greats such as Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott Heron, Roy Ayers, David Crosby, De La Soul, Gregory Porter, Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, George Benson, TLC more. Originally from South London he established a home for the burgeoning soul jazz scene in the UK Midlands as a dj and promoter and his residencies have included London’s Jazz Cafe, Ibiza’s seminal Cafe Del Mar and multiple festivals.

He is a staff writer with the ground breaking 'Straight No Chaser Magazine' and he has released two successful music compilations ‘Into Somethin’ Volume One and Two’.

He’s a judge for the Radio Academy Aria Awards, the Audio Production Awards and the Doc n Roll film festival and he recently hosted a series of orchestral concerts in he UK celebrating composers David Axelrod and Charles Stepney and over the years has contributed to various books, documentaries and magazine articles. He also created and oversees the curation site Grand Selects a project dedicated to celebrating culture in all its forms be it music, art, literature, or film and contains playlists and interviews from the great and the good.

Throughout his career he has never lost sight of his core aim to give help to new artists where possible and to use his platform to ultimately inspire, educate and entertain.

tonyminvielle.com