Afrika 101

jon abbey · Post by **jon abbey** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:13 pm

listening to this one this afternoon, pretty solid:

brinybrush · Post by **brinybrush** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 6:09 pm

Clay wrote:
Hamza El Din - Escalay: The Water Wheel
East African Witchcraft and Ritual Music

east african witchcraft music is great, but i haven't heard the other one. could you say something more about it?

also a great release on nonesuch explorer is zimbabwe - shona mbira music, which i've enjoyed a lot. all tracks are performed by hakurotwi mude, there's a calm cheerfulness to it. there's another mbira record on nonesuch explorer, zimbabwe - the soul of mbira, which is more upbeat, with more singers joining in, other percussive instruments, clapping.

Franz Bieberkopf wrote: i'm looking for more quiet... perhaps a bit more intimate recordings... most of the stuff we've talked about so far is pretty upbeat, and i dig a lot of it... but i've heard some amazing stuff lately on the radio , that was a lot more soft-spoken... and i really need to hear more... preferably proper albums as opposed to compilations... can anyone help me out?

you might like the first one i've mentioned above, and also two guitar records from hugh tracy's collection: the legendary george sibanda and forgotten guitars from mozambique.

user_1498 · Post by **user_1498** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:19 pm

One of my all time favourites, highly recommended:

bombinthebeehive · Post by **bombinthebeehive** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:35 pm

weberc wrote:One of my all time favourites, highly recommended:

oh shit, totally forgot about this thread.
and oh shit, i just discovered this record recently. SO GOOD!

Lucy Lamingtons · Post by **Lucy Lamingtons** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 9:03 pm

lots of great stuff in here. bembeya jazz national and orchestra baobab to anyone into the more jazzy stuff.

vegetable mind · Post by **vegetable mind** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 11:15 pm

jon abbey wrote:a wave of new archival releases, three nigerian ones on soundway as well as the analog africa label, so I thought it was a good time to bump this.

Yea, the analog africa one (African Scream Contest) is great, very psyched out funk rock, extremely enjoyable. I haven't heard the last soundways comp yet but the first two(nigeria special and disco funk special) have been great

dustbowl · Post by **dustbowl** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:49 am

This thread went for long without mention of Ali Farka Toure, the Malian king of what they called 'desert blues'. I like everything except the last years. when its gotten all watered down, and almost New-Age towards the end. The last album i liked was Niafunk?. I highly recommend the self titled one from World Circuit and Talking Timbuktu with Ry Cooder are particularly fabulous. Anyone can easily go with The Source or The River or one of the earlier ones, Radio Mali, Red & Green all are great.
Another musician I want to mention is Mahmoud Ahmed of Ethiopia. Incredible voice and music, for people looking for a moody sound. Jazz, dark Psychedelic Roch, Ethiopian folk its all there.
The musicians of east Africa often don't get much mention, there's a great music scene of Somalia and Sudan.
Sudan is a meeting place of many different cultures (being the biggest country in Africa). Particularly its a meeting place of Middle Eastern and African cultures. Because of the political situation there and the 30 year civil war in the south, many people of culture went to exile, mostly to the Middle East and Europe but nevertheless. I'd recommend checking out Nubian singer Mohammed Wardi (its hard to find his stuff, though there's plenty of material on youtube), bandleader Abdel Gadir Salim, Singer Abdel Aziz El Mubarak and poet & composer Abdel Karim Al-Kabli. I recommend getting The Rough Guide To The Music Of Sudan. Also Sudanese-American Jazzman Ahmed Abdul-Malik who played extensively with Monk and the Monk-Coltrane band standing for the Bass. He also made highly original records as leader, some of the earliest experiments in fusion of Jazz and Afro-Middle Eastern music playing Oud & Bass. He also played bass on Hamza El-Din release debut Music of Nubia.

user_4645 · Post by **user_4645** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:30 am

On a quiet side: Toumani Diabate - "Kaira" (Rykodisk) - just the man with his kora and voice. Beautiful stuff, easily available too.

http://www.myspace.com/toumanidiabate

dustbowl · Post by **dustbowl** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:36 am

Also since someone mentioned Hamza ElDin earlier I'll give a mention to another Nubian-Egyptian great, Ali Hassan Kuban.
Along with Hamza he's considered the great reviver of Nubian music but he did it quite differently. He was more open to many diverse genres and sounds (he had the 'Kuban' added to his name as you could figure out what its reference to). And employed trumpets, electric guitars, and later on even sequencers.
I'll name two albums, one that represents early experiments "From Nubia To Cairo" and gradually the synthesis he developed later "Walk Like A Nubian".

user_649 · Post by **user_649** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:49 pm

Drums of Death: Field Recordings in Ghana
Afro Baby: The Evolution of the Afro-Sound in Nigeria, 1970-79
T.P. Orchestre Poly-rhythmo de Cotonou - The Kings of Benin Urban Groove, 1972-1980

user_4956 · Post by **user_4956** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 9:33 am

http://awesometapesfromafrica.blogspot.com/" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

frozen reeds · Post by **frozen reeds** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:55 am

http://voodoofunk.blogspot.com/" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false; is not to be missed.

user_5396 · Post by **user_5396** » Wed Apr 30, 2008 3:19 pm

Continuing the bloggage: African Music Treasures
http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/blog/" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

Stevo · Post by **Stevo** » Thu May 01, 2008 5:13 am

Any thoughts on Toubab Krewe? Just heard them for first time today & enjoyed. Cross between west african stuff & more r'n'r. I think I'm hearing bits of Link wray etc in there. Come from North Carolina and are all instrumental using slightly augmented standard rock instrumentation.

Other than that Tinariwen are a band I've really enjoyed over the last year. come from mali though their sound is more arabic or something, assume this thread is more sub-Saharan?

& I finally got a cd of Shirati Band who play Benga which I thought was unique to my Dad's tribe the Luo. somebody listed a Benga compi called Kicking it Kikuyu style which surprised me. Kikuyu are a different one of the 17tribes of Kenya. Although title could be reference to Maumau practice. Just always heard Benga was a Luo music so was proud i had some link to it.
Good to see it's getting compiled anyway. The Shirati Band cd I got was from late 80s & had to be looked for across a couple of different Amazons. I'd just grown up with a single by the band which I think is incredible.

jon abbey · Post by **jon abbey** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:10 pm

up, just because people seem to be talking a lot about this stuff lately on SLSK and this thread is helpful...

vegetable mind · Post by **vegetable mind** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 8:27 pm

curious what people have to say about this stuff: http://www.geocities.com/fbessem/frames ... earls.html

haven't heard them mostly due to price, but they look enticing, and i've heard a lot of good talk about the congolese rumba rock one.

dave quam · Post by **dave quam** » Sat Dec 27, 2008 11:02 pm

listening to the mali one right now. It starts off kinda plain, but then it gets really good after about 3 tracks
The track im jamming right now has the weirdest flutes

NotReallyDamo · Post by **NotReallyDamo** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 11:48 am

vegetable mind wrote:curious what people have to say about this stuff: http://www.geocities.com/fbessem/frames ... earls.html

haven't heard them mostly due to price, but they look enticing, and i've heard a lot of good talk about the congolese rumba rock one.

I was just going to mention these, the ones I've heard so far have been great. For some reason I have been totally addicted to the Congolese rumba stuff for about six months now - Franco & OK Jazz is the name most people will have heard, but I think some of the stuff by his brother Bavon Marie Marie is better still. There's loads to go at from both and so long as you stick to pre-80s/drum-machine stuff you can't really go wrong. It can get pretty samey, but for some reason I just never get tired of it.

Tabu Ley is another guy I really like and have been meaning to investigate further.

Also, unless I've missed it, nobody's mentioned much Senegalese stuff apart from Orchestra Baobab. Etoile De Dakar were an amazing band with a rawer sound than Baobab, and when they split they produced two more great groups: Super Etoile (still going, though very much Youssou N'Dour's backing band now as far as I can tell) and Etoile 2000, who made some particularly raw and fuzzy recordings (possibly unintentionally, since their stuff is all live recordings originally issued on cassette.)

Haven't heard the Senegalese edition of African Pearls, looks like none of the Etoile bands are on it. Anybody got an opinion on that one?

onthestrip · Post by **onthestrip** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 1:35 pm

I saw Eténèsh Wassié et Le Tigre Des Platanes a couple of weeks ago .. french jazz band with Ethiopian singer Eténèsh Wassié playing ethiopian jazz. I don't know anything about african music but just loved this. I recently downloaded their album Zeraf! on slsk. Some songs are on their myspace: http://www.myspace.com/tigredesplatanes

p_ano · Post by **p_ano** » Sun Dec 28, 2008 1:56 pm

thanks for the bump. just now digging through this thread. great stuff.

ihatemusic

Afrika 101

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