* Tumi Molekane, the South African Star of Spoken Word, Poetry and Hip Hop Otherness is back with his 3rd full-length album

* The new album sees the band widening the borders of their genre and celebrating their love for the song, still offering conscious lyrics and a powerful blend of funk and afro-jazz

* Tumi appeared live on stage with Shakira at the official “kick-off” FIFA World Cup 2010 opening concert in South Africa

* The band played live with K’Naan, The Roots, Talib Kweli, Saul Williams and many others

* The band is on tour in Europe from June 2010. Concerts in Germany in October 2010

Amidst the frenzy of the first ever African World Cup, the South African band Tumi And The Volume set out to garner some excitement for their come back album. After 2 years of concerts, encounters and rich exchanges, these perennial champions of Hip Hop Otherness are today at the summit of their art.

Pick a Dream, their 3rd album, is paintbrush fodder for the eager hand. At times it is dancefloor marvellous Afrobeat, other times it is the melancholic poetry of questioning lyrics, moving into a forceful hip hop exhibit.

The album opens with ‘La Tête Savante’, a song about one’s journey to the self, inspired by the amazing cover art of graphic artist Hyppolite. The next couple of songs remind you that this is a hip hop album without ever losing the class and dynamism associated with Tumi And The Volume. On songs such as ‘Limpopo’ and ‘Play Nice’ one hears of a South Africa played and spoken about with such fine acumen. “We reserve the right to be insightful or incitable, spirited or subtle, political or playful” proclaims Tumi.

The artists that assist Tumi And The Volume achieve this agenda represent it in their own careers, Zubz the Zimbabwean MC lends his power to ‘Asinamali’, Fixi from Java continues to fly the flag for french multiculturalism with a stunning accordion feature on the sportive ‘Reality Check’. The Canadian singer Zaki Ibrahim makes an appearance on this colourful album weaved together by the engineering wizard Laurent Dupuy. And hidden in the last minutes of the album is a special creole ballad featuring the beautiful singing warrior Danyel Waro from Reunion Island.

Tumi and his crew, Paulo, Tiago and Dave are intimately linked to this island in the Indian Ocean. Tumi announces, “between Danyel, Maloya, squid and Sakifo, its hard not to call Reunion home.” It should be easy to say that Sakifo Records, the young label created out of the eponymous festival, is a haven for Tumi And The Volume’s creative excursions. There, an atypical universe is created, a sort of great Indian Ocean, nomadic a mix (métissé) where the artist souls are tangled : Bazbaz the lunar bard, Nathalie Natiembé the laughing princess and her rythmic madmen from Bumcello, and the Australian Jeff Lang, are now the partners of Tumi And The Volume’s label with whom new frontiers, very much moving and glittering, are being modelled.

And what about this World Cup? “South Africans expect greatness from themselves and that is amazing considering how seemingly isolated we were. The World Cup will be magnificent”, concludes Tumi. Like this album so well named, Pick a Dream.