Basque Dub Foundation

Here is a great interview and write-up by Ray Hurford about our good friend Inyaki and the Basque Dub Foundation…

Up until around 2000, London was still regarded as the home of reggae in Europe. It was around this time that many big Reggae festivals started to take place in every major European capital – except London! This was followed by European Reggae labels. The most recent development are European Reggae producers. One of the first is Inyaki Yarritu from Spain – founder of the Basque Dub Foundation or BDF. This is his story.

Q: When did you get into Reggae?

A: First time I heard Reggae was in 1978, I was 14 then. Some Bob Marley & The Wailers album like “Kaya” or “Exodus”. There was no Reggae at all in Bilbao (a small city in the Basque Country where I’m from), apart from BMW, and the other artists on major labels like Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Toots & The Maytals, Third World, Inner Circle, etc… that’s pretty much all the Reggae one could hear then and I thought that was it! I became a lifetime fan. I didn’t know much about Reggae but I was certainly obsessed about knowing. It took me a few years to realise there was a whole world of Reggae, a whole universe in fact, that existed apart from the stuff on major labels… hundreds, well more like thousands of Reggae artists and labels! A few years later I got some UK magazines like NME and thru that I found Small Axe (around 1983) which was a huge discovery for me! (My everlasting respect to your work!!!!) Also asked friends, who were coming to London, to buy me records. I made lists from reviews on Small Axe, Reggae Quarterly (fantastic Canadian magazine), even the NME had a reggae chart which was very useful to know which artists were popular, cause I didn’t know much! After my first visit to London in 1985 (where I bought many books, magazines, records, etc) I decided to start a radio programme as nobody was playing any Reggae on the radio in Spain. I used to come to London to buy records.

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Keep your eyes and ears open for new stuff from Basque Dub Foundation, including a forthcoming melodica version of Yabby U’s “Walls of Jerusalem” on 7″.

Also check these two 7″s which are available for purchase now.

Little Roy “Disasters & Signs” / BDF “Melodica Signs”