Power to the People

Album: Junto (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • Basement Jaxx has a deep connection to this song, which represents their core beliefs. "That's a really empowering song about humanity and for singing our connectivity and our interdependency with other human beings," Felix Buxton of the duo said in our 2014 interview.
  • Basement Jaxx have worked with big-name singers like Lily Allen, Dizzee Rascal and Kelis on their previous albums, but they deliberately avoided the familiar names for Junto. For this track, the Basement Jaxx pair of Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton enlisted a group of children who'd been hanging around in the car park near their studio to provide the vocals.

    "The idea was to get back to the beginning of Basement Jaxx and just have everyone singing songs," Buxton told The Observer. "If music is real, not manipulated and manufactured, it needs to speak from a real place."
  • The album title, Junto, is the Spanish word for "together." It is pronounced "hoontoe."
  • Basement Jaxx released six new versions of the song on September 21, 2014 as part of International Peace Day, with proceeds going to charity. As part of a larger initiative, they made stems of the track available on the website powertothepeople.fm, where anyone can make a mix of the song. Artists and dancers were also invited to participate by contributing visual interpretations.
  • Niara Scarlett is the lead singer on this track, and is also credited as a co-writer. The UK singer has lent her voice to songs by Mel Blatt, Prophets Of Sound and many other acts.

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