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.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in African Music | No Comments »
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 »
June 18th, 2009
Information on Smahila and the S.B.’s is D.B. Cooper-scarce. Save for a few entries on Discogs.com, and a paragraph or two gleaned elsewhere, my knowledge about the group is essentially limited to: they’re a Nigerian afro-beat band with a Fela Kuti fixation, who released the sublime African Movement/Natural Points in 1977, on British imprint, RAS (Rogers All Stars (Nigeria) Ltd.).
Few groups managed to appropriate Fela with such funk or fidelity–this might be the best 18-minutes of movement ever to not involve Ya Kid K.
Download:
MP3: Smahila & The S.B.’s-”African Movement” (Left-Click)
Posted in African Music | 1 Comment »
May 20th, 2009
Somewhere in a dazed diatribe, I recall mentioning the revelation of Tinariwen at Coachella. The notes I took during the performance are crude and cryptic. Bear with me. The gist is that the set was one of those times when a battery of hallucinogenic ideas infect your head–the notion of what it means to be swallowed whole by music. To an inveterate cynic, that’s a tough glass of Tuareg tea to sip. But this is sacred sun and sand music that cuts to an atavastic core. Songs that emerge from the water, air, fire, and ether. If you can’t feel it, you might be hollow.
Tinariwen make gangster music. Not like the coke-tasias spouted by your favorite trappers rapper*, but exile, rebel music. Nomadic warriors from Mali, banished from their homeland to drift across the desert, recruited by Kadafi to turn their Kalishnikovs on their countrymen. In the blazing bronze Mojave sun, they seemed at home, subduing the 100 degree heat with white headwraps and hand-drums, floor-length robes, and resurrected guitars tilting towards infinity, dancing slickly with no sweat, thanks to thick Bedouin blood.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in African Music | 2 Comments »
May 13th, 2009
In my quest to redeem that last lost post, let me invoke the name of half-Kenyan, half-American benga band, Extra Golden. Among the premier practioners of contemporary afro-beat, they’re living proof that the American legacy of Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, and D.O. Misiani, isn’t entirely the province of a bunch of pencil-necked geeks rocking Lacoste and loafers.
In advance of their show tonight at the Echo, I spoke with guitarist Alex Minoff about the band’s alternately uplifting and tragic history, African music, and the difficulty of getting an American visa. If you’re still looking for tickets, Duke at You Set the Scene still has a pair to give away. Extra Golden will be playing alongside reggae legends, The Meditations. If you don’t want to go, you deserve to watch comical cat videos for the duration of your existence.
LA Times: Extra Golden on African Music, Obstacles, and Obama
Download:
MP3: Extra Golden-”Anyango”
MP3: Extra Golden-”Ok-Oyot System” (Left-Click)
MP3: The Meditations-”There Must be a First Time”
Posted in African Music, LA Times | 1 Comment »
May 5th, 2009
Alemayehu Eshete, also known as the Ethiopian James Brown. Proof positive of the Godfather’s maxim that if a man has good hair and teeth, he’s got it all.
Download:
MP3: Alemayehu Eshete-”Tèy Geryèlèshem”
Posted in African Music | 1 Comment »
