African Music

[Stefan Wood]

More purchases from DG:

Beautiful highlife music with gorgeous singing.

Just when you think they have mined all the goodies here comes this firey compilation of heavy afro funk and high life music. Recommended!

Best album yet by this French group, this time playing with a master African musician. Steady and intelligent afrobeat with a rootsier, bluesy sound.

If you like Guelewar, you will freak out over this album, by two members of that band -- Karantamba's "Ndigal," a live performance from the 80's that is an acid guitar and percussion masterwork -- fans of the Congotronics series should seek this out; this album predates all of that, and exceeds it. From Teranga Beat records.

Another excellent rare Mali record from the late 70's, featuring electric guitar and hevay vocals.

[Stefan Wood]

More from DG:

Funky and jazzy.

This is a gorgeous album, rootsy and yet modern. He began as a percussionist, then moved to kora. Very unusual, and excellent music!

Will get to this one next.

Outstanding.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I thought I'd list the most played African artists in my collection for 2012. (The numbers in brackets are their positions in the whole collection.)

1 (2) Bembeya Jazz National (Guinee Conakry)

2 (3) Gnonnas Pedro (Benin)

3 (18) Youssou N'dour (Senegal)

4 (19) Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey (Nigeria)

5 (24) Laba Sosseh (Gambia)

6 (33) Super Diamono (Senegal)

7 (35) Les Ambassadeurs (Guinee Conakry)

8 (36) Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe (Nigeria)

9 (40) Atakora Manu (Ghana)

10 (41) Kerfala Kante (Guinee Conakry)

11 (45) Sekouba Bambino Diabate (Guinee Conakry)

12 (46) Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister (Nigeria)

13 (47) Ouza (Senegal)

14 (50) King Sunny Ade (Nigeria)

15 (51) Kouyate Sory Kandia (Guinee Conakry)

16 (54) Orchestre Baobab (Senegal)

17 (57) Ganda Fadiga (Mali)

18 (61) Ami Koita (Mali)

19 (65) Ucas Band Jazz de Sedhiou (Senegal)

20 (68) Fode Baro (Guinee Conakry)

21 (69) Aminata Kamissoko (Guinee Conakry)

22 (71) Super Negro Bantous (Nigeria)

23 (73) Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo De Cotonou (Benin)

24 (75) Fatou Laobe (Senegal)

24 (75) Jerry Hansen & The Ramblers (Ghana)

26 (77) Super Cayor de Dakar (Senegal)

27 (82) Peacocks Guiter Band (Nigeria)

28 (82) Kine Lam (Senegal)

29 (85) Abdoulaye Diabate (Mali)

30 (90) Fela Kuti (Nigeria)

30 (90) Thione Seck (Senegal)

All of these artists are, of course, highly recommended

MG

[jostber]

Your posting this sent me off to Amazon UK to see if I could get one there. Yes! Many thanks - I din't know this had been reissued.

That sent me off to the Kindreed Spirits site, to see if the firm had issued any more material from the Mali Kunkan label. They have.

This is a compilation of 'Super Biton National de Segou' Mali Kunkan KO77.04.13 plus 3 of the 5 tracks from 'Super Biton National de Segou' Mali Kunkan KO77.04.14. BRILLIANT music. If anyone hasn't got this stuff, get on yer bike!

Also, and even MORE BRILLIANT!

Orchestre Kanaga de Mopti - Mali Kunkan KO77.04.15.

This is effin' INCREDIBLE music!!!!! Buy immediately!!!!

MG

Thanks for the tip on these! Gotta check these out.

[Stefan Wood]

The Kanaga cd is simply amazing.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The Kanaga cd is simply amazing.

I wonder if Julius Hemphill heard it?

MG

[ejp626]

The Kanaga cd is simply amazing.

I wonder if Julius Hemphill heard it?

MG

Don't know about that, but I am currently listening to Abdulah Ibrahim's The Journey with a frontline of Hamiet Bluiett and Don Cherry (true, this would best be classified as African jazz music).

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

The Kanaga cd is simply amazing.

I wonder if Julius Hemphill heard it?

MG

Don't know about that, but I am currently listening to Abdulah Ibrahim's The Journey with a frontline of Hamiet Bluiett and Don Cherry (true, this would best be classified as African jazz music).

That's kind of interesting. Don Cherry and Hamiet Bluiett are American. But so is Roy Ayers and, if he can make an LP with Fela Kuti and it's African, they can surely make one with Ibrahim and it's African, too. I guess the crucial point is who's in charge and what are they trying to do?

All the Ibrahim I've got, whether it was recorded in South Africa, America or Europe (have I any from Europe? not sure) sounds to me like a somewhat sophisticated version of the township jive material that's been heard from fifties kwela bands to Robbie Jansen now (and that music has been getting more sopphisticated without becoming disconnected from its roots in the townships). So I reckon it's African. More African than Blues, soul or jazz, say. But to deny that Ibrahim plays jazz is silly. And the same is true for Jansen, Masekela, Rachabane, Masilela, Zacks Nkosi and the Elite Swingsters. Calling it African jazz music doesn't get it for me, because Super Biton, Bembeya Jazz, Mystere Jazz de Tombouctou, Momo 'Wandel' Soumah play very different kinds of music that can also be described, and some of it has been described (not terribly inaccurately if not terribly helpfully), as African jazz music.

So I don't know what the answer is, but it's interesting.

MG

[ejp626]

The Kanaga cd is simply amazing.

I wonder if Julius Hemphill heard it?

MG

Don't know about that, but I am currently listening to Abdulah Ibrahim's The Journey with a frontline of Hamiet Bluiett and Don Cherry (true, this would best be classified as African jazz music).

That's kind of interesting. Don Cherry and Hamiet Bluiett are American. But so is Roy Ayers and, if he can make an LP with Fela Kuti and it's African, they can surely make one with Ibrahim and it's African, too. I guess the crucial point is who's in charge and what are they trying to do?

All the Ibrahim I've got, whether it was recorded in South Africa, America or Europe (have I any from Europe? not sure) sounds to me like a somewhat sophisticated version of the township jive material that's been heard from fifties kwela bands to Robbie Jansen now (and that music has been getting more sopphisticated without becoming disconnected from its roots in the townships). So I reckon it's African. More African than Blues, soul or jazz, say. But to deny that Ibrahim plays jazz is silly. And the same is true for Jansen, Masekela, Rachabane, Masilela, Zacks Nkosi and the Elite Swingsters. Calling it African jazz music doesn't get it for me, because Super Biton, Bembeya Jazz, Mystere Jazz de Tombouctou, Momo 'Wandel' Soumah play very different kinds of music that can also be described, and some of it has been described (not terribly inaccurately if not terribly helpfully), as African jazz music.

So I don't know what the answer is, but it's interesting.

MG

I'm certainly not an expert on Ibrahim. I would say that his earlier work, perhaps through late 60s is a bit of Highlife mixed with Duke Ellington, and then from the 70s onward it has been more traditional jazz (and plenty of suites in the Ellington tradition). The middle track on The Journey (recorded in 1978 in NYC incidentally) are largely free jazz whereas the last track Hajj feels more like a fusion of jazz and African rhythm (and is certainly the track I like best). The first track (Sister Rosie) actually does have just a bit of Highlife flavor to it that I missed on first listen (distracted by the middle track I guess).

Out of curiosity, I wonder if Ibrahim and Randy Weston recorded any duets. That might be interesting -- or too much of a good thing. As far as I can tell from a quick search, they have not.

I should have mentioned that in addition to a bunch of other musicians on the CD, Johnny Dyani is on bass (and Roy Brooks on drums). I've been trying to track down the recording he (Dyani) did with Mal Waldron and think I finally have a source that will ship to Canada.

Edited January 23, 2013 by ejp626

[kh1958]

Sekou Batourou Kouyate Et Sa Cora.

A pretty short CD (only 28 minutes), but very nice solo kora, recorded in 1976.

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=rcrcw2jshv&ref=featured.php&refQ=cat%3D32

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Sekou Batourou Kouyate Et Sa Cora.

A pretty short CD (only 28 minutes), but very nice solo kora, recorded in 1976.

http://www.dustygroo...php&refQ=cat=32

Brilliant album!

I got this a few weeks ago

Probably recorded in the late 70s/early 80s. One track in which Soundioulou's wife, Maa Hawa Kouyate sings, the rest is all Soundioulou, some vocal, some not. Wonderful!

Download from Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Folklore-du-Senegal/dp/B003FBVP6Y/ref=sr_shvl_album_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359124080&sr=301-1

MG

[seeline]

South Africans see their "jazz" (I mean the popular music that started back in the 50s, with groups like Father Huddlestone's Band and the Jazz Dazzlers, African Jazz Pioneers, etc.) as jazz - their own adaptation of American music. Abdullah Ibrahim comes from that - and I do think he is both a "jazz" player in the S. African sense, as well as a musician who plays "jazz" in the US/international sense as well - but it's all driven by his immersion in the S. African pop and jazz scenes of his youth, as well as Ellington, like ejp said. (I hear a lot of Ellington in his more recent work, not just his older material, but it's definitely his take on Ellington - or maybe transmutation of some aspects of Ellington is more accurate?)

TMG, I have my doubts as to whether a lot of the West African bands with "jazz" in their names were/are playing jazz, though equally, I think there's a lot of jazz influence there - along with Cuban, NYC Latin pop music (from the 50s-60s onward), etc. EMI sold tons of Cuban recordings all over Africa, and I know that Francis Bebey (the late Cameroonian musician, writer, ethnomus guy) said that Cuban music was everywhere when he was young - inescapable. He is of the same generation as the original Bemebeya Jazz lineup, and the other bands you've mentioned as well.

The thing is... people in Africa (and Brazil, and Puerto Rico, and...) take in influences in stride, but they end up adapting them to suit their own tastes and preferred musical styles. So I'm hesitant to want to label anything, really, though with someone like Johnny Dyani or Abdullah Ibrahim, I think you can fairly say that American jazz has had a lot of influence (since it took root in southern Africa in a way that it didn't in other parts of Africa), but still - they play it in their own way. Americans can learn from that and even imitate it, but there's no way - imo - that someone like Blueitt is *ever* going to sound like he's African-born.

Though all bets are off for those who were raised in Africa, regardless of their national origins. (This is also a very interesting thing re. music from Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique - and even parts of Nigeria and Benin, because people who had been enslaved in Brazil often repatriated to those countries - there was a Brazilian section of Lagos back in the 19th century, for example, and I've read statements by Nigerian musicians re. how that community's music - which they say was quite distinct - influenced indigenous styles, even juju.)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

TMG, I have my doubts as to whether a lot of the West African bands with "jazz" in their names were/are playing jazz, though equally, I think there's a lot of jazz influence there - along with Cuban, NYC Latin pop music (from the 50s-60s onward), etc. EMI sold tons of Cuban recordings all over Africa, and I know that Francis Bebey (the late Cameroonian musician, writer, ethnomus guy) said that Cuban music was everywhere when he was young - inescapable. He is of the same generation as the original Bemebeya Jazz lineup, and the other bands you've mentioned as well.

There's an enormous degree of jazz influence in a lot of the Guinean and Malian big bands of the 70s/80s. That doesn't quite make it jazz, but it doesn't make it NOT jazz, either. I'm sure you've heard Momo 'Wandel' Soumah's version of 'Afro-blue'. That seems to have little Guinean influence. Compare it with his recording of 'Tam tam sax', on the Syliphone album 'Musique sans paroles', which is kind of half and half (Momo played with Keletigui & ses Tambourinis).

Where South African music resembles black American music is in the ghettoisation of both communities in their respective countries and enabled all forms of black American music to form a template with which South African blacks could identify very clearly. This didn't happen in other parts of Africa to anything like the same extent because European colonisation didn't go so far elsewhere as in SA and create townships.

But you can HEAR the difference between all kinds of American black music and any kind of SA black music quite clearly. To me, it's as big a difference as between the Malian/Guinean big bands and American jazz. But maybe I'm more hung up on the way music sounds than on what the musicians are doing to get them.

MG

[seeline]

SA music was much more influenced by American jazz than is the case in other African countries - and I'm not talking politics here. They grabbed onto the beat and incorporated it into their own music and then spun new music out of it.

And yes, I agree that some W. Africans could, did and still can play what we'd think of as "pure" jazz, but even with that, those big ensembles like Bembeya were - to my ears - playing something other than jazz. Is it jazz-influenced? yes. Is it Cuban and Nuyorican-influenced (in the use of horns, etc.)? Absolutely.

Sylla produced a couple of killer "Afro-charanga" albums where he got some of his crew together with top NYC Latin (Puerto Rican, Cuban, etc.) musicians back in the 70s. If you don't have them, I think you should hunt them down, because they literally are fusion music (where African musicians play with musicians whose styles are African-derived, but definitely "diasporic") and it all works beautifully. Cuban violinist Alfredo de la Fé (who mostly played plugged-in back in those days) was one of the many luminaries who played in those sessions.

The albums are titled "Afro-Charanga" (with, iirc, the numeral 2 or II for the second one). *Way* more successful aesthetically, imo, that what Ry Cooder did with the BV Social Club albums. (While I love the Cuban artists on those recordings, I don't like the way Cooder tried to graft his own musical sensibilities onto Cuban music... but that's just me.)

Edited January 25, 2013 by seeline

[seeline]

Again re. SA music, did you know that some of the members of the earliest lineups of the Fisk Jubilee Singers went to SA to teach singing, choral conducting and arranging?

SA (also Zimbabwe) has a long history of its own styles of choral singing (both small and large ensembles) as well as all-male and all-female singing groups that did close harmony work (like the Manhattan Brothers and Miriam Makeba and the Skylarks). That stuff was *big* back in the 50s and 60s, even with the rise of maskanda and other styles.

But I am absolutely *not* an expert on SA music, and would rather someone like the gent who runs the Matsuli Music blog (and who is currently involved in getting some real SA treasures reissued) take over from here... (I wonder if he knows about this forum?)

Another thing to keep in mind is that SA doesn't have the big percussion ensembles that you find in, say, Guinea, Mali and Senegal, as well as in former British colonies like Ghana and Nigeria. (Though marimbas are big these days in Zimbabwe.) SA, Botswana, et. al. have a different aesthetic re. percussion than I've heard in most W. African music. So that makes for a big difference as well, and is, imo, one of the reasons that even the earliest SA jazz (popular) groups took to the kind of 4/4 beat that you hear in American popular music of the period (including jazz).

Edited January 25, 2013 by seeline

[jostber]

Anyone heard of this fella?

Koo Nimo - Highlife Roots Revival

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Highlife-Roots-Revival-Koo-Nimo/dp/B0087W2HTA/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1359153437&sr=1-1

[seeline]

Yep - he's really good!

an old palm wine-style player from back in the day.

[seeline]

Where South African music resembles black American music is in the ghettoisation of both communities in their respective countries and enabled all forms of black American music to form a template with which South African blacks could identify very clearly. This didn't happen in other parts of Africa to anything like the same extent because European colonisation didn't go so far elsewhere as in SA and create townships.

Also re. this, "coloured" people were township-ized, too... sometimes together with people who were classified as "black" under apartheid, sometimes not. One thing that the SA government did several decades back (prior to the end of apartheid) was to deliberately destroy - as in, physically demolish - neighborhoods where black and coloured people lived together and force them into other, more segregated, neighborhoods.

*That* did a lot to destroy peoples' lives (and friendships) as well as their culture. And it really is varied - we don't get to hear much music from, say, the Cape Coloured community (which is how they still refer to themselves), or from black people from the Cape... but it's a different world to what's been made and played in Johannesburg, in many respects. I *have* founds some folk and pop music (other than Cape Jazz) from the Cape on emusic.com, but am blanking on names and other details right now. Will add them to this post (or to the thread) if/when I can dig them up.

Edited January 25, 2013 by seeline

[seeline]

I normally hate linking to Wikipedia, but this article is very good!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_jazz

And this one, titled "What is Cape Jazz?" might be helpful, I'm thinking...

http://www.jazzrende...?artcl=00000029

Series titled "The Development of Jazz in South Africa" - looks very comprehensive -

http://www.jazzrende...e2006062701.php

More from Cape Town - on local goema music and goema + jazz - check the vid at the bottom of the page; at the end there will be links to lots of other vids -

http://www.capetownmagazine.com/news/Hello-Cape-Town-tell-me-how-youre-grooving/10_22_17567

Edited January 25, 2013 by seeline

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Anyone heard of this fella?

Koo Nimo - Highlife Roots Revival

http://www.amazon.co...59153437&sr=1-1

I must get that one. Thanks for the info.

ALready have this

and it's damn good!

MG

[Blue Train]

An incredbile blog that I have discovered an amazing amout of musicians I have never heard about previously.

http://www.muzikifan.com/

Take for example this band. One of the many I discovered just from his Best of 2012 list.

They're street musicians from the Congo. Half the musicians were effected by polio. The other half is abandoned street children. The lead guitar sound is a one string lute made from wood and empty fish can that's hooked up to an amp. Both their records are recommended.

Edited January 30, 2013 by Blue Train

[Blue Train]

This is someone I knew as Zeb (Moreno Visini) who now goes by The Spy From Cairo. Had no idea he was recording under that name until that blog.

No youtube for the latest record.

But if you're interesed in mashups you will like this.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Amphetamine407/videos?query=Secretly+Famous

Not from Africa, but Columbia, but still damn good.

[John L]

An incredbile blog that I have discovered an amazing amout of musicians I have never heard about previously.

http://www.muzikifan.com/

That is interesting that he has written up a discography of Docteur Nico.

[Blue Train]

An incredbile blog that I have discovered an amazing amout of musicians I have never heard about previously.

http://www.muzikifan.com/

That is interesting that he has written up a discography of Docteur Nico.

That's how I found the blog. I came across a used vinyl of Docteur Nico. I googled to see if there was anything else, and found the wiki on him. The Discography of Docteur Nico link lead to the blog. Listening to yet another find from the blog. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba's I Speak Fula.

Edited January 30, 2013 by Blue Train

[Stefan Wood]

Sekou Batourou Kouyate Et Sa Cora.

A pretty short CD (only 28 minutes), but very nice solo kora, recorded in 1976.

http://www.dustygroo...php&refQ=cat=32

Bought this as well. A beautiful album!