RUBY SINGH & THE FUTURE ANCESTORS TO RELEASE CELESTIAL LIBATIONS, A GRIOTIC ODYSSEY INTO DIVINITY, DIASPORA AND THE BLUES FEATURING ARTHUR FLOWERS - OUT NOVEMBER 21, 2025
RUBY SINGH’S BLADED EDGE BETWEEN, A COLLECTION OF POEMS AVAILABLE NOW
WATCH / SHARE “DOWN HOME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “DOWN HOME” HERE
BUY / STREAM CELESTIAL LIBATIONS HERE
Ruby Singh + Arthur Flowers - Photo Credits : Dessmin Sidhu
(Ruby Singh) Caliegh Mayer (Arthur Flowers) // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
This Friday, multi-award-winning and JUNO Award-nominated ‘polymath’ Ruby Singh and the Future Ancestors will release their new, powerful offering: Celestial Libations, a genre-bending Blues / Gospel / Hip-Hop / Griotic album that summons myth, spirit and a future-facing reverence for the past. In this “ineffable” collaboration, Singh is joined by Arthur Flowers— 73 year old renowned Memphis-born griot, novelist, and Hoodoo practitioner.
Today they share the album track “Down Home”. With “Down Home,” Ruby Singh & The Future Ancestors bring the Celestial Libations journey full circle: from invocation to reckoning to radiant release. Featuring the thunderous storytelling of Arthur Flowers and the deep soulful harmonies of Khari Wendell McClelland and Holly Eccleston, the track rides a rhythm that shakes the dust off despair and reminds us that joy, too, is sacred work.
Rooted in the Blues, blooming through Hip Hop’s fire, “Down Home” is a celebration of resilience, a song that turns pain into motion and mourning into dance, taking us on a raucous stomp through the storm. ‘Folk think the blues’ about feeling bad—au contraire! The blues’ about gettin’ through the blues ’ about turning trial and tribulation into art’ states Flowers in the opening of the track. The Future Ancestors conjure a world where rhythm becomes prayer, laughter becomes resistance, and music becomes medicine.
“‘Down Home’ is a return to the source, to the deep well of music as a way of surviving and transforming the pain of being alive,” says Singh. “We wanted to make something that swings hard and still aims to heal, that reminds us to find joy even when the sky’s falling. The laughter that carried this song into being is the same laughter that keeps us going. It’s a hymn for hard times, and an invitation to dance our way free.”
WATCH / SHARE “DOWN HOME” HERE
BUY / STREAM “DOWN HOME” HERE
Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
MORE ABOUT BLADED EDGE BETWEEN
Recently, Ruby Singh also released Bladed Edge Between, his new collection of poetry available via Next Page Press. Bladed Edge Between navigates intersections of memory, sound, and survival. This collection unfolds as a sonic archive of longing, belonging, and becoming. Anchored in the sacredness of place, diasporic grief, and mystical remembrance, the poems move through ecological resonance, spiritual inheritance, and intergenerational healing.
“Marked by a yearning for one’s ancestral roots in the Punjab, as well as a deep reverence for the foremothers whose protective prayers sing through time, these poems guide us, no matter what our respective origin story is, closer to the healing power of remembering, of music, of language,” writes Faisal Mohyuddin (author of Elsewhere: An Elegy and The Displaced Children of Displaced Children).
Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry Cecily Nicholson adds that, “Ruby Singh’s poems navigate the loss and thrash of mortality, where winged forms lift, and the mother tongue finds a vessel. Attuned to cellular vibration, the rhythm of snowflakes, and the sonics of constellations, Bladed Edge Between is illuminated by lamplight and dances in the celestial glow. Beautiful.”
For more information about Bladed Edge Between visit Next Page Press.
CELESTIAL LIBATIONS LAUNCH EVENT (VANCOUVER)
Nov 22 - LOBE Studio - TICKETS
PURCHASE BLADED EDGE BETWEEN HERE
MORE ABOUT CELESTIAL LIBATIONS
Their creative kinship began in a moment of instant recognition of each other's work in the world: two artists from distant lineages, linked by a deep respect for ancestral craft, future seeding and storytelling as ritual. What followed was an unfolding of trust, laughter, improvisation and kinship with story, poetry, rhythm, and prayer woven into a living tapestry.
“I’d been wanting to work with Arthur for years, since we first met at the Indian Summer Festival in Vancouver and thankfully the stars aligned! I can’t believe this incredible man's work has never been recorded and released, so we wanted to make all the room on this album to celebrate this story slingin’ hoodoo man! His love and dedication to the craft in service to the greater world is deeply inspiring” says Singh. “Then I knew my brother, Khari Wendell McClelland, had to be a part of dreaming this album into existence; his voice, his spirit, his friendship and his songwriting have always enriched my life. The project had an undeniable pulse, we just kept following the signals, and through a lot of joy and kinship, this album was born.”
WATCH / SHARE “WHEN THE HAMMER FALLS” HERE
BUY / STREAM “WHEN THE HAMMER FALLS” HERE
Celestial Libations is a mythic journey, a sonic offering, and a conjuring of what feeds the spirit. An album made in reverence and resistance—born of collaboration, rooted in tradition, and reaching toward what’s possible. It doesn't look away from grief or injustice, but leans into them with rhythm, rhyme, and spirit. The album brings together the rawness of blues, the urgency of hip hop, the griotic traditions of myth and the uplift of gospel. Blending hip hop, blues, gospel, and griotic traditions, Ruby Singh & The Future Ancestors ft. Arthur Flowers pour songs and stories like libations—rituals to remember, rhythms for resistance, and spells to seed the world to come.
“I’ve been psychically wrestling with the state of the world, a live stream genocide, climate crisis, the purposeful destruction of human life and our future on this planet, all for profits of those that already have too much… really makes me question my faith in humanity and divinity. When we first started meeting, we were in deep conversation about the state of the world and the rising powers of oligarchs and facism. We knew we wanted the music to not just be responsive but generative toward the world we wanted to see. Arthur, in his wisdom, knew that we could probe these issues through one of the oldest ways humans always have: story. His griotic gifts act as a guide through the album and waters the seeds in the dry garden of the human heart” says Singh
Each track is a call across time and lineage: a prayer, a praise-song, a blues-spun incantation. With booming beats, illuminating rhymes, and soaring harmonies, the Future Ancestors summon liberation, longing, grief, divinity, and becoming.
WATCH / SHARE “GOOD GOD” HERE
BUY / STREAM “GOOD GOD” HERE
“When I first met Ruby Singh I detected his magical nature, but little did I know just how much of a dream weaver he is until he, Khari and Holly wove dreams I didn’t even know I had into realities, so fine they glow like stars in the firmament.” says Flowers
Ruby Singh brings his composition and lyricism —drawing on ancestral memory and future vision. His voice moves from grounded spoken word to explosive rhyme, always with heart, always in service of something greater. The legendary Arthur Flowers, the blues doctor himself, brings his Hoodoo storytelling—tales of Br’er Rabbit, Sister Beetle, and the Monkey Doctor—braiding together trickster myth and wisdom with his conjuring ways. His presence is both invocation and blessing. Khari Wendell McClelland, of the Sojourners, lights the way with his gospel-infused melodies and songwriting brilliance, delivering lines that rise like fire towards the night sky. Together, this trio holds the core of a work rooted in reverence, kinship, and sonic healing. Joining this sacred constellation are Holly Eccleston (Vocals), Gordon Grdina (oud and guitar), Kenton Loewen (percussion), Paul Finlay (DJ), and Karlis Silins (upright and electric bass).
The album lives in relationship with Singh’s forthcoming poetry collection, Bladed Edge Between. A parallel offering, the book moves through themes of memory, sound, and survival—intergenerational grief and becoming as a spiritual act. Like the album, it is a cartography of diasporic longing, radical joy and mystic understanding that maps personal and ancestral memory across music, ritual, and migration. The book will be accompanied by a limited spoken word release. Both projects ask: What are the stories we carry? What will we leave behind? What might we become if we truly listen?
Celestial Libations draws a ceremonial circle with stardust, incanting the names of the many, for a mythic remembering. It’s blues as ceremony, hip hop as spellwork, gospel as uprising—a testament to the sacred work of becoming.
The album will premier at LOBE Studios in Vancouver on November 21st and 22nd by way of a launch and listening party with a tour planned for the summer of 2026.
