Welcome to the official site of the Urban Gipsy: Bai Kamara Jr. In this newsletter, you can find: the latest info, live concert listings & tour dates, tug merchandise, record and music info, booking information & anything else you want to know. Hear mp3 excerpts of his new album "Living Room" or order the CD online. Read the biography of this talented Brussels based soul musician from Sierra Leone (Africa), from his early days with the funk band Odex Protocole and his work with Youssou N'dour and the Refugee Voices for the UNRC, up to his solo career as the Urban Gipsy, playing basement blues, rock and jazz (with bands like Valve, featuring Joe Higham on saxophone, Freddie Donche on piano and bass player Vincent Noiret & Thierry Rombaux). He signed with Universal and performing. Singer-songwriter Morlai Bai Kamara Jr. was born in Bo Town, Sierra Leone on December 2nd 1966. He grew up in Africa and in the United Kingdom. In Manchester he wrote his first songs. He arrived in Brussels in 1990. He formed Odex Protocole, featuring. The sound was inspired by R&B, soul, funk and rock. He performed Jazz Rally/Marathon and the international worldmusic festival, Couleur CafŽ. He toured Italy and Germany, supporting acts like Terence Trent d'Arby, the Neville Brothers, Youssu n'Dour and Zucchero, and made it to national and international TV shows. Their first EP got recorded in 1996, produced by Mel Gaynor, drummer of The Simple Minds. In 1998 they worked with Dan Lacksman (Deep Forest) to record their debutalbum Delivery Day. Around that time, partly due to miscommunication with the managment, the band started slowly falling apart. Eventhough they never really split, everybody seemed to have gotten more and more involved in their own projects. On of the side-tracks Bai had been working on around 1996, was a blues funk project called Aramakiab. He recorded an album in his sister's basement, supported by 17 different musicians. With three of those musicians, he started playing an adaptation of the song in the Brussels' bar and club circuit. Aramakiab recorded another album in 1998, called New Rules, which never got officially released; by the time a record company was interested, Bai "lost the vibe" and the band quitted the scene. After Odex and Aramakiab, Bai started doing more and more solo gigs in the Brussel's club circuit. Also he got contacted by the UNHCR (UN Commission for Refugees), who put a show together for their 50th Anniversary. Originally Bai was supposed to be in the choir, but he ended up doing the leadpart, performing in Geneva, Montreal and London. Out of that show, he got chosen as one of the 13th artist to go to Senegal, to work with YoussouĠn Dour on a project called Refugee Voices, recording the CD Building Bridges Already before, with the money he earned from his intensive performing in the Brussel's bars, he started recording his songs. Originally the plan was to record a small demo, but it ended up in recording a whole album, called Urban Gypsy. The demo got picked up by Universal Publishing, with whom Bai signed a publishing deal in June 2001. Four tracks of this album, got mixed by Brian Pugsley (Bjšrk, Stone Roses) in Amsterdam, the rest is waiting to be released. Bai also moved towards the jazz circuit, playing an adaptation of his songs in a quartet called Valve. Meanwhile, he launched himself already on another project, reflecting the work he had been doing for the past couple of years: playing accoustic songs. In Februari 2002 he started recording these songs and made a deal with Progress Music to release the record, called Living Room/Intrinsic Equilibrium, which will be coming out in May.