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.
The song originated from a King Creole loop, which Basement Jaxx's Felix Buxton had in his back pocket for a long time. He'd tried various people to provide vocals before eventually settling for Scottish rapper Patricia Panther.
Basement Jaxx's Simon Ratcliffe explained the song title to Edge of the Net : "It's a good summery vibe and it's always been called 'Summer Dem' because it felt like a summery track. When we came to think of a title for it, we thought let's leave it at that. 'Summer Dem' is its working title really."
Basement Jaxx' Simon Ratcliffe wrote this song for his daughter. He recalled to Artist Direct : "I had a vocoder I was singing through. We got Sam Brookes who sang on another song. The melody of the vocal is almost country. He suited it perfectly."
