"Amazing stuff! A mad mix of insanity and wisdom, with enough violent clashes of culture to shake anyone up. Funk, soul, poetry and righteousness blend into a great batch of tracks! Includes groovy cuts like 'Lilly Done the Zampoughi...', 'The Dozens' and 'Sera Sera Jim'. Crazy!" (Dusty Groove) Never before released on CD, this is the collectable debut album from African-American Poet, musician, film director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, composer Melvin Van Peebles, recorded for A&M Records in 1968. Titled after Van Peebles' nickname, Brer Soul is an album of street jazz and social poetry, pre-empting Rap and Hip-Hop. For Brer Soul, Van Peebles utilized the 'sprechgesang' form of songwriting, where the lyrics were spoken over the music, which he learnt translating Mad magazine in France in the mid-1960s. The album boasts an array of jazz talent, including pianist/conductor Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, bassist Herb Bushler, drummer Warren Smith and guitarist Carl Lynch.