The Ghetto Fighters
The Aleem twins…
AlBERT and Arthur Allen – aka Tunde Ra and TaharQa Aleem – met Hendrix in the early ’60s, when they were asked to evict a squatter from a girlfriend’s house. “We had no idea who this was, we just had to get him out the apartment,” says TaharQa. “As we approached, we could hear this guitar. This amazing music led us to the apartment we were targeting. It was mesmerising. We rang the doorbell, the music stopped and Jimi opened the door.”
The trio became friends, even living together for a time in a house in Manhattan. After Hendrix left for london in 1966, the Aleems lost touch as they began to make their own entrance into music. When Jimi returned to New York in 1968, he reacquainted himself with the twins. “When he came back in ‘68,” says TaharQa, “there was a physical and spiritual difference. He had found his look, his style, and it was completely different from the look of the time. He was the first person we knew who had stepped outside of the status quo. He had an original look that represented the spirit of that music.”
Hendrix asked the twins to help him make contact with the black community, and the twins took him to Harlem clubs and to meet prominent black radio DJs. Hendrix also recorded with the Ghetto Fighters, who contributed backing vocals to a number of Hendrix songs including “Freedom” and “Dolly Dagger”.
“He didn’t reach the black community as he didn’t have what they wanted,” says TaharQa. “He had to find out what he needed and it was starting to work with Band Of Gypsys. We did a show in Harlem, things with more groove like ‘Freedom’ and ‘Dolly Dagger’. That’s where The Cry Of Love and Rainbow
Bridge were coming from. He was learning to appeal to black and white. He didn’t have long left, but he did a damn good job in the year or so he had.”
Following Hendrix’s death, the twins maintained a career in music as the The Fantastic Aleems and worked with luther Vandross and Rick James. They ran studios, labels and nightclubs while managing and producing artists. Tunde Ra died in 2014. TaharQa has since written a book, Jimi Hendrix & The Ghettofighters: In Harlem World (www.niaentertainment.com).