Royal Groove

Another place which is on my ITunes downloads is Royal Groove.

Royal Groove started in 1997 as a regular radioshow at a local station in the Netherlands. With an unlimited enthusiasm, a couple of selfproduced breakbeats and a bunch a funk and soul records Gibbs & DeLuca made a weekly show that had at least one dedicated fan -the infamous dr Orion- tuning in every Tuesday night.

With the arrival of the internet Gibbs and DeLuca thought it was the opportunity to reach a much bigger audience, and so the idea of Royal Groove Webradio was born.
At the end of 1999 the release of the first edition of the Royal Groove website was a fact. Soon after the of the websiterelease the worldwide audience started growing, and the Royal Groove-crew started producing show after show. Beside the usual hour of funk and soul music -with a jazz-tip- the site offered interviews and record reviews. This all based on the philosophy that there is a truth to find at flea-markets and recordstores all over Europe.
Royal Groove also invited guests to make shows in the genre of funk and soul. The show by the legendary Ed the Man for example, called Cut-2-Chase, is still in the minds of many funk-fans.

In the beginning of 2003 the site went down and for along time there was not a single sign of life. People started to worry about Royal Groove and its founding fathers. Untill the autumn of 2003. The Return of the Groove was unexpected, but because of that probably even nicer.
Originally focusing on funk and soul music, Royal Groove has grown to encompass all types of black music, historical and contemporary, starting with funk and soul, and going from jazz to bossa nova, from hiphop to latin, afro-beat and everything in between. The idea behind Royal Groove however, will be the same: utilize mass media to spread funk, soul and jazz music.