October 8th, 2009
Since it is widely accepted logic around these parts that Fela Kuti is the G.O.A.T., I’d be remiss not to mention the Felabrations being held in 15 cities across North America over the next month. According to the flacks, “the original Felabrations date back to the early 1970s when Fela and his band took over the courtyard of the Empire Hotel in Lagos, Nigeria, and performed several nights a week to thousands of worshipping fans.” Last time I checked, those are called concerts. However, the Felatiasts (someone had to go there) are also giving away a free MP3 of “Zombie,” the incendiary 1977 masterpiece that triggered the tragic attack on the Kalakuta Republic that ultimately took Fela’s mothers life. One of his most powerful and caustic songs, “Zombie” equates the fierce drones of the Obasanjo military with zombies, which mysteriously caused his invitation to the President’s House to get lost in the mail. You want this song in your life, if nothing else to wash out the bad taste left by the Cranberries.
Download:
MP3: Fela Kuti-”Zombie”
Posted in African Music | 1 Comment »
October 8th, 2009
Poor “Jacobim” Mulatu Astatke–the man rivals Haile Sellassie for popularity in his native Ethiopia, and domestically, he’s still mistakenly conflated for the designer from Zoolander whose fashion aesthetic resembled a gay Colonel Sanders. I imagine I am the only one who thinks this. Regardless, it’s been a good year for the father of Ethio-Jazz, with his Mochilla Timeless performance garnering unanimous raves and his Strut collaboration with the Heliocentrics, Inspiration Information, putting a new twist on his classic discography and expanding on his his estimable legacy. If you’re still unaware of said rep, this interview should fill in the preliminary gaps.
Now Strut, who let it be said, I almost universally ride for (save for the new Grandmaster Flash record that unconscionably included a song named “Swagger”) have compiled a fairly definitive compilation of Multatu’s legendary work from 1965-1975, the Golden Age of Ethio-Jazz. Documenting an even earlier sample of work than the previous must-have Ethiopiques anthology, the collection includes Mulatu’s years in New York, where the lingering effect of his Duke Ellington worship met the salsa and jazz-rock fusion then enveloping the Apple. Of course, it captures the bible material cut under the waning years of the Selassie dynasty, most notably immortalized in Broken Flowers. Like all great crossroads music, Ethio-jazz bears a syncretic and seamless blend of influences, and the Boston and Britain-schooled Mulatu is the most polyglot ambassador the genre has. I’m also a fan of his work in Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Amazon: Mulatu Astatke-New York City-Addis–London: The Story of Ethio-Jazz (1965-1975)
Download:
MP3: Mulatu Astatke ft Frank Holder-”Asiyo Belema”
MP3: Multatu Astatke-”Shagu”
Posted in Mulatu Astatke, African Music | No Comments »
September 24th, 2009
When I first heard Fool’s Gold in May of this year, I pigeonholed them as trend-hopping Echo Park poseurs who decided to play afro-pop following a weekend of smoking cotton candy kush, snorting Dexedrine, and listening to “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” on repeat. As you can see from the video above, they seemed too happy, too healthy, too Caucasian–particularly in contrast to the other bands playing that night at The Dub Club: Extra Golden, The Meditations, and Yousouppha Sidibe. As I am wont to do, I made a snap judgment and pledged that for all eternity when someone asked about Fool’s Gold, I’d make some snide remark involving pyrite, alchemy, and the great Rift Valley. It probably wouldn’t be funny.
So when Paul Tao, half of the pair behind IAMSOUND, told me his label had signed Fool’s Gold, I kept my mouth shut because no one really wants to be told, “sorry, you just invested in fool’s gold.” However, I downloaded the album and threw in into the vast churning miasma that is my hard drive, next to the hundreds of Gigabytes of African music I own made by actual Africans, ostensibly never to be heard. About a week later, with iTunes on shuffle, an absurdly funky slice of soukous guitars came on. I checked to see who it was by. Uh-huh.
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Posted in Fool's Gold, African Music | 1 Comment »
September 21st, 2009
Off their new album, Imidiwan, another classic aptly described by guitarist and vocalist Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni as “a faithful record…a good rendition of our sound at its most natural and most ‘easy’…but a difficult album to make. We wanted to record in the desert because that’s where we feel most relaxed and happy. “But it’s also where we’re most distracted. We’re like a herd of animals in the desert, always wanting to go off left and right, each one to mind his or her business. Jean-Paul the producer always had to herd us back into the studio to make music.”
Thankfully, Jean-Paul did, making him the first Jean-Paul since Sartre to successfully corral a large group of people to do anything other than drink expensive coffee and smoke gaunt cigarettes. As I said in May, this is Malian gangsta’ rock: no-frills, warriors disguised as musicians, the type as likely to carry guns in their guitar cases, offering dirges to the desert and the dead bodies lost along the way. Gorgeous desolate noise. I’m patiently waiting on the Freddie Gibbs collabo.
Buy: Tinariwen-Imidiwan
Download:
MP3:Tinariwen-”Lulla”
MP3: Tinariwen-”Chegret”
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September 13th, 2009
My ardor for Ethio-Jazz is well-documented, so it’s little surprise that I find Oh No’s latest sampledelic opus sensational. Not only is this preaching to the choir, it’s serving it kitfo, tej, and injera. Like his last album, Dr. No’s Oxperiment, the greatest Michael Jackson still standing excavates ultra-rare samples from the crates, in the vein of his older brother Otis. Fans of the Ethiopiques series will likely be enamored with Dr. No’s Ethiopium, but don’t expect any of the more well-worn Tlahoun Gessessee or Mulatu samples. Instead, Oh No digs deeper, unearthing deliriously funky grooves and breaks. Head-nodding basement blunt-lit banger after banger, heavy heavenly horns–31 minutes, 18 songs, ideal for the ADD age. Cop this, head to Merkato, make a night of it.
Download:
MP3: Oh No-”The Pain”
From Dr. No’s Oxperiment
MP3: Oh No-”Heavy”
Posted in Stones Throw, African Music | 3 Comments »
September 4th, 2009
Fridays are for Fela.
Download:
MP3: Fela Kuti-”Kalakuta Show” (Left-Click)
Posted in Fela Kuti, African Music | 3 Comments »
August 14th, 2009
For those whose knowledge of African hip-hop is limited to K’Naan and that song where ?uestlove samples Fela Kuti, this absolutely awesome and extensive overview of the first ten years of Nigerian hip-hop is essential reading. This is the sort of stuff the Internet was made for–that and pictures of rotund cats wearing tuxedos.
Download:
MP3: Wale-”Cuz I’m African”
Posted in African Music | 1 Comment »
July 23rd, 2009
Sach O thinks more emcees should spit over Afrobeat
Want me to write about your new movie? Make it a Franco-African neo-Blacksploitation flick featuring a killer soundtrack, hilarious starring turn by a shit-starting French emcee, tons of explosions and a trippy psychedelic action sequence on the back end. You get all of that and more in Pierre Laffargue’s new film Black, which thoroughly blew me away at its North-American premiere last night in Montreal. A light-hearted heist flick proving that French cinema doesn’t need to include a bunch of old people smoking Gitanes, Black won me over the minute Fela Kuti’s Zombie played as the “crew” landed in Dakar. Former stick-up kid MC Jean Gab’1 delivers the performance of a lifetime as um…a small time stick-up kid attempting a big score in the motherland. It’s not a big stretch but the movie wears its wink-wink charm on its sleeve, landing somewhere between a budget Oceans film and Shaft in Africa. If you see it at a local festival, give it a shot, it’s two hours well spent.
Also of note, the film’s title track features Gab’1 rapping over none other than the legendary Tony Allen’s drums and production. The verses land closer to Isaac Hayes style monologues than proper rhymes, but it’s hard to get mad over a rhythm track this blazing. Why hasn’t ?uestlove forced the Roots to record an album’s worth of Afrobeat yet?
MC Jean Gab’1 ft Tony Allen - Black
Posted in African Music, Sach O | 2 Comments »
July 22nd, 2009
It’s impossible to explain talent like Amadou and Mariam. “Gift from god” is the trite tag to trot out, but that’s too easy. Not to play dime-store deist, but no beneficent higher being would shutter the lids of two preternaturally gifted musicians just cuz. So, it’s something else. Perhaps overcompensation from the sense of sound. Or some Outliers RX of 10-years with gruel, water and guitar picks. Or maybe that’s just how things are and I should just shut the fuck up. Let’s do that.
So OK–Malian blind blues legends, Amadou & Mariam. Right. Their latest album, the compilation, The Magic Couple, manages to successfully validate the absurdly bold title. Is it stupid to call yourself the magic couple? Yes. Except when it’s true. The 50-something husband and wife duo, who met at Mali’s Institute for the Young Blind, might be known as master practioners of Afro-Blues, but this sacred earth opus tilts towards Tuareg guitar influences too, with added Afro-Beat, Indian, Arab, and R&B flourishes. In year when the token Pazz and Jop African diversity vote has stiff comp from Mulatu Astatke and Heliophonics and The Very Best, Amadou and Miriam should deservedly rack up Harry Potter numbers.
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July 13th, 2009
Cynics can cluck all they want–there’s certainly room for reactionary scorn on Esau Mwamwaya’s duet with head Weekend Vampire, Ezra Koenig, the latter of whom name-drops “Hip Hop Hooray” and Electric Light Orchestra, in a matter of seconds. Yet the titular track from the Very Best’s Warm Heart of Africa, might be the album’s stand-out. If you dislike this, there’s a chance you listen to music with your brain rather than your ears. Even if this were Graceland redux, “Warm Heart’s” hyaline melodies, elastic vocals, and baked alaska buoyancy, make this an ideal summer jam. Just be glad it’s too warm to wear scarves.
Download:
MP3: The Very Best ft. Ezra Koenig-”Warm Heart of Africa”
Posted in African Music | 5 Comments »
