This month we sat down with Derrick Ashong of Soulfege to discuss his newest CD Afropolitan in preparation for his major show taking place on February 9th in New York. Ghanaian born Derrick Ashong is a product of the Afropolitan experience that he sings about. Born in Ghana, West Africa, Derrick spent most of his growing years in different parts of the world, taking in cultures, traditions and ways of life which he pours into his day to day life as well as his music. Soulfege, a band headed by Derrick Ashong is a perfect example of 'Afropolitanism', as each member of the band brings in different cultures and tones to their music. Perfectly symbiotic. Read More This CD took about two years to create. The band started working on this CD in 2009 and finally completed it in 2011. The reason this CD took so long to create was because they wanted to explore a little more and try new things. Before this CD, Soulfege's music explored three genres of music - Hip Hop, Reggae and West African Highlife but with this new CD, they are exploring Latin Soul, Blues, New Orleans Sounds. They chose to expand musically to explore their realities as Afropolitans. Moving away from what everyone considers as being their sounds is often times, a musician or musical band's fear. They don't want to seem too different, they don't want to loose their core fan base as they introduce themselves to a new set of people. But, so far, this move has worked for them. They've only gotten positive reviews from many that have gotten a chance to listen to their music. This has encouraged them to actually start up the million download challenge. This is a special campaign to give away a million downloads of the album by the end of the year 2012. The plan is that you download the record from derrickashong.com and pass on this information to others. This is based on the concept of sharing. -------- (go to pamelastitch.com)