Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 02:24:05 PM

Login with username, password and session length

African music for the people!

Started by The Mollusk, January 10, 2022, 01:12:48 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

The Mollusk

You might know this already since I post about it here a fair bit, but in the last couple of years I've been steadily getting into a lot of stuff via fantastic labels resurrecting buried gems, like Analog Africa, Ostinato Records, Awesome Tapes From Africa to name a few. Irresistibly joyous energy, high life music, afrobeat, and incorporating all sorts of western influence from soul to disco to psychedelia. I find it impossible to not fall in love with and it so frequently has me beaming from ear to ear.

Let's hear your favourite songs, albums, compilations, playlists, whatever!

Possibly the best work of a single group I've heard is "Homowo" released by Ghanian group Basa Basa in 1979 and lovingly restored by the great Vintage Voudou label. 8 songs, 40 mins, but I could easily listen to double that in one sitting. I often just play it twice to squeeze every drop of satisfaction I get out of it. Trippy high life grooves that takes influence from disco beats with weirdly haunting and enchanting synths floating over the top. It's kind of loose and sloppy sometimes but this just bolsters the charm of it, and I particularly love how strong the hi hat is in the mix. Such an infectious rhythm! I find myself spellbound by this every time I hear it, it's beguiling in a sort of melancholic way - maybe western ears aren't accustomed to this since it's beautifully uplifting too and the message of the music is overwhelmingly positive. I treasure these songs.



Also from Ghana and also irresistibly groovy but in an altogether different way is Ata Kak and his self-released 1994 cassette "Obaa Sima", dug out of a crate by yer man from Awesome Tapes and cast out into the adoring embrace of the wider world. I don't think I've ever heard anything like this and it certainly seems like AK was just doing whatever felt good to him at the time - throwing down fat, dusty hip hop drum machine beats with idiosyncratic and ridiculously catchy hooks and barking out an extremely eccentric vocal style. It's rap which hasn't taken the time to refine itself and find a measured, cool delivery and so it's vibrating with a mad childlike energy that's so contagiously fun it often has me laughing at just how fucking free and original it is. It's such a rudimentary effort musically but it hits the right vibe from start to finish, which is ultimately the sound of an artist breaking out (he used to play in reggae house bands but became restless with their cover songs and lack of interest in ever writing their own stuff) and having an absolute whale of a time.



Will post some more (non-Ghanian) stuff later!

Sebastian Cobb

I like that Ata Kak record, the Awesome Tapes From Africa release I fell in love with was Professor Rhythm's Bafana Bafana.


The Gumba Fire compilation is good, specifically looking at South African Bubblegum pop.


imitationleather

Chalk me up as another that digs Ata Kak. I listened to that album a lot when I first heard it.

I look forward to going through the other recommendations in the thread.

Petey Pate

Awesome Tapes From Africa is indeed great and it's wonderful how something that began as a hobby has revived careers and exposed people who never would have expected to reach a global audience.

chutnut

Probably posted some of these in the fela kuti thread a few weeks ago







Awesome tapes from Africa was playing at a night I went to a few years ago, was pretty buzzing but the room he was supposed to be in just had shit house playing all through his set time, dunno if he didn't turn up in the end or what

The Mollusk

Looking forward to checking out these reccz, cheers all.

This week I've been getting into Francis Bebey, a futurist musician, author and philosopher whose work with electronically distorting the sounds of the kalimba and incorporating synths into traditionalist African music styles just slightly predates the efforts are more popular contemporaries Konono No. 1 and William Onyeabor respectively.

He was a definite trailblazer and his then-controversial attitudes towards creating a harmonious bond between African music standards and the progressive electronic instruments and production methods on the rise in the late '70s was a pioneering force and a defiant kick against the norm, both from stubborn African critics wanting to keep things traditional and narrow-minded Western pricks getting into world music and wanting it to remain as outsider art rather than unite with the rest of the world.

His synth stuff is great but I've become really engrossed in the "Psychedelic Sanza 1982-84" compilation. The tracks are stripped back, mellow and deeply hypnotic in their simplicity. The fuzzy kalimba/sanza vibrations feel as though it's being played right next to your ear and the music sounds like it's genuinely emerging out from deep inside a forest. Beautifully entrancing sounds.


Kankurette

Wiyaala. Love her. She's from Ghana.

chutnut

Not heard that Francis Bebey track before, sounds pretty nice! Definitely the kind of thing you'd hear Lexx or some other balearic DJ play

Just remembered this gem

Also got about 4 different versions/copies of this banger
although to be fair the guy who wrote it (Ralph MacDonald) is American rather than African



jobotic

Got lots to post once I get my laptop back*


*from my isolating son, not the police. No no.

Poobum


Fulu Miziki Kinshasa's music warriors.

willbo

I keep meaning to get into African music. I want to start with a good compilation. I like Fatou.


There was an episode of Karl Pilkington where he went to Africa - I think it was Uganda - and there was a young man playing and singing a gentle, minimal folk song as he arrived - I always wanted to hear more stuff like that

Kankurette

Found this little beauty on one of those Rough Guide CDs when I worked in an Oxfam shop and we sold them. It's by a Senegalese singer called Fania. She's singing in Wolof, I think?


chutnut

Strut put out quite a few compilations (and represses)
https://www.discogs.com/label/1213-Strut
There's some awesome ones and they're basically the only way to get a copy of a lot of this stuff in the UK (legally anyway), even some of the compilations go for silly money now


Geoffs~Cape

Yes Strut pretty much kick started the whole Afro funk reissue scene with their Nigeria 70 comp. It was compiled by Duncan Brooker I believe who was travelling around West Africa digging up so much previously ignored stuff. At the same time he put out another comp titled Afro Rock which is well worth checking out. Soundway and Analog Africa followed suit soon after and dug even deeper. Strut have also put out some really good new albums by the likes of Pat Thomas and Ebo Taylor.

willbo for more acoustic stuff you might want to check World Circuit records, releases by guitarists Ali Farka Toure and Afel Bocoum. You may also like some acoustic African instruments. The kora is one of my favourites, such a beautiful, calming sound. Any album by Toumani Diabate or Ballake Sissoko is well worth a listen. Also Bassekou Kouyati, master of the ngoni stringed instrument.

Here's just a couple of songs I really love. This one has been reissued by Syllart which is an absolute treasure trove of a label. I just love the cascading guitars and the horns, the instrumental passage from around 1:30 onwards is heavenly:

This one is much more recent, from 2016. I don't know much about it but it found it's way into a playlist I have of Senegambian music. Again it's the dreamy, lilting instrumentation that does it for me. So lovely:


Shit Good Nose

At the risk of being "a bit mainstream", this Osibisa (yes, I know they were effectively a British band by then) performance from, of all things, Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine, is amazing (starts at 8:07):
https://youtu.be/xmqZYY71gJM?t=488

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on January 14, 2022, 03:34:55 PMAt the risk of being "a bit mainstream", this Osibisa (yes, I know they were effectively a British band by then) performance from, of all things, Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine, is amazing (starts at 8:07):
https://youtu.be/xmqZYY71gJM?t=488

If British-African acts are allowed then Ibibio Sound Machine are deserving of a mention.

Some lovely 80s synth-poppy stuff:




Something a bit more traditional sounding (but also new), saw this album get a bit of mainstream coverage last year and it's just beautiful:


chveik

angola music doesn't get much exposure but it's ace


fuji from Nigeria. love those synths


chimurenga (zimbabwe)


willbo

thanks everyone, loving the stuff on this thread

WhoMe

This is a from a collaborative album between a Malian kora player and a chamber/classical musician. Really nice and they've done loads more together. The kora is a wonderful instrument, sounds ace on good speakers/headphones somewhere between a harpsichord and an acoustic guitar.


Balimaya Project - big west-african influenced Jazz ensemble based in London.


Electric Jalaba - Another collaborative effort between Moroccan and Italian/British musicians and really lovely


All of the above I came across on Sarah Ward's show on Jazz FM on Saturday night, her shows are a goldmine sometimes.


Twit 2


kalowski


willbo

Ibibio Sound Machine's latest album Electricity is a good buffet of Nigerian folk sounds mixed with modern pop

holyzombiejesus

#26


This is ace.




As is this, really nice acoustic stuff.

willbo

i heard that Saturno one on Bandcamp for a while

Dex Sawash

Might be like posting Shaggy in a reggae thread but love this song that may be at a minimum Africa adjacent



The Mollusk

Couple of banging records I got into this week:

Yasimika is an album by Djeli Moussa Diawara whose band plays hypnotic Mande music with a kora, a balafon and a guitar. The harp-like kora and the wooden xylophone balafon do a lot of the heavy lifting, and when they're not taking turns going off on fantastic solo excursions, they're drifting skyward and weaving in and out of one another in beautiful repetitious harmonies. Diawara sings stories and a backing chorus of three women back him up between verses. At just 33 mins, I feel like I could listen to each of its 4 songs for at least twice as long. Bright, warm and mesmerising music.



Marijata were an Afro-funk band who released very little music, but what exists is absolute fire. Their 25-minute album This is Marijata is bursting with irresistible energy. Serious fucking grooves all the way. The drummer is an absolute demon.