DJINA JONES- Vocals
		Was born in Er-Rachidia at the foot of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, into a family known for providing the community with healing and music and was drumming with her grandmother from a very early age. Work later took Djina’s family to Sale, across the river from Rabat and there Djina took up singing, particularly admiring fabulous spiritual singer Oum Kaltoum and learning much from her father, renowned Malian oud player Assad Abdelkadir Mamadu As a teenager Djina was also inspired by such artists as Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner and dreamed of one day having a band playing some sort of roots-based pop/blues music. In the mid 1980s, Djina came to live in London and almost immediately became involved in organizing and performing at local and community events. She became well-known as an exponent of Moorish roots music, particularly hand drumming and her drumming workshops have encouraged large numbers of people to take up and enjoy drumming as a way of experiencing group empathy and spiritual healing. During the 1990s, Djina was raising her children and continuing her workshops and performing at venues all over London, meeting a wide variety of musicians from all corners of the Earth along the way and by 1999 had formed a group called Najat, which consisted of six drummers/singers and an electric bass, playing Moorish roots music and sung mostly in Arabic. Then in 2003, Djina felt the time was right to get her dream band together to perform songs she had written, so she called Ricky Rankin; Andy Gibson; Bob Staunch and Pete Phillips, all good friends for several years, who were all very excited at the prospect of starting up Djina’s long talked of group and met for a jam in March 2003. It went spinetinglingly well and they were soon joined by Spike and Adjete and together they all spent an extremely enjoyable summer creating and rehearsing a set. Djina Jones is a force of nature and with Najat her hope is to perform, share experience with and excite as many audiences as possible