Heavy Friends
Saturday May 23rd, 2026 with Heavy Ben
JJ Whitefield: 52 tracks in a stacked deck

52 tracks from 52 different releases from the German guitarist, bandleader and soundscape architect JJ Whitefield. This includes 6 new releases from 2026! Jan Weißenfeldt (better known as JJ Whitefield) was born in 1969 in Munich, Germany. Whitefield grew up immersed in the "Golden Era" of hip-hop during the late 1980s. Rather than just listening to the contemporary rap tracks of the day, he and his friends became DJs and obsessed over tracking down the samples. As a teenager, Jan began hunting down original, raw 1960s and 1970s American street funk, soul, and rare groove records that hip-hop producers were sampling. This obsession culminated in 1991 when, in his early 20s, Whitefield co-founded The Poets of Rhythm. They are widely recognized by music historians as pioneers of the modern retro-funk and soul movement, recording gritty, raw, fully analog deep funk long before it became a global trend. This paved the way for labels like Daptone, Colemine / Karma Chief, Stones Throw / Now Again, Big Crown, and Funk Night. The ensuing 35 years have been astonishingly prolific and diverse for Weissenfeldt with recordings as The Poets Of Rhythm, The Whitefield Brothers, Karl Hector & The Malcouns, Rodinia, collaborations with Connie Price & The Keystones, Ebo Taylor, Embryo, Janko Nilovic, Lyrics Born, Witch, Woima Collective and countless aliases. RIYL afrobeat afro-cuban jazz ambient breaks cinematic ethio-jazz electronic experimental filipino funk fusion hip-hop/rap improvised jazz jazz rock jazz-funk krautrock library music meditation music modal jazz psychedelic rare groove soul spiritual jazz zamrock (to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")