Awadi - Presidents d'Afrique (2010) - Senegal

Colonialism in Africa...

... is not responsible for genocide. It is not responsible for dictators. It is not responsible for fanaticism. It is not responsible for the corruption, prevarication. It is not responsible for waste and pollution…
The tragedy of Africa is that the African man has never really entered history. The African peasant who for centuries has lived according to the seasons, whose ideal is to be in harmony with nature, has known only the eternal renewal of time via the endless repetition of the same actions and the same words.  In this mentality, where everything always starts over again, there is no place for human adventure, nor for any idea of progress.

Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, speaking in Dakar on July 26th 2007

Presidents d’Afrique is an African response to Sarko from the highly influential and musically respected Francophone Hip-Hop artist, Didier Awadi.

It has taken me a while to open up to rap & hip-hop.  But not being fluent in French means being able to completely ignore what's being said, and maybe that's what helped a genre-newbie like me take notice instead of the way it's put together - the architecture, the construction, of elements assembled and stitched into the weave of a whole sonic fabric.

But if I never saw art in the genre before, I sure noticed its status as international medium for the dispossessed.  And what’s being voiced here comes from the long history of struggle against colonialism which marks past and future right across the continent.

Awadi’s assemblage takes excerpts from speeches by black leaders like Thomas Sankara, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Cheikh Anta Diop, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, sets their statements to music, and then blends rappers from across Africa, the Caribbean and America, to create a profound monument to revolutionary leaders who gave their lives for a Pan-African ideal of unity, independence and pride.

Some say that we don’t have a sense of history and memory in Africa. With this album we will make them think again…

Didier Awadi, Dakar, 2010

Awadi - Presidents d'Afrique - PLUS

121.3 MB

https://mega.co.nz/#!mcRH0ApQ!Iya15BTIzefOGD9VkPPtGZz8ruQORaa-tqwEwhZ17yo
A couple of the tracks sound like they cut off too early and abruptly.

In compensation, extra tracks from elsewhere are included.

Tabu Ley Rochereau - The Voice of Lightness

"Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu (13 November 1937 or 1940 – 30 November 2013), better known as Tabu Ley Rochereau, was a leading African rumba singer-songwriter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was the leader of Orchestre Afrisa International, as well as one of Africa's most influential vocalists and prolific songwriters. Along with guitarist Dr Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley pioneered soukous (African rumba) and internationalised his music by fusing elements of Congolese folk music with Cuban, Caribbean and Latin American rumba. He has been described as "the Congolese personality who, along with [the dictator] Mobutu, [most] marked Africa's 20th century history." He was dubbed "the African Elvis" by the Los Angeles Times.After the fall of the Mobutu regime, Tabu Ley also pursued a political career.

During his career, Tabu Ley composed up to 3,000 songs and produced 250 albums." more @ wiki

Samba Mapangala and Orchestre Virunga - Malako

Soukous originated in the Belgian and French colonies of Congo, influenced by the Cuban Rumba styles so popular in the ‘40s & ‘50s.  It is known as “Congo” in West Africa because of it.  In Zambia and Zimabwe it is called “Rumba” still; in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania it is “Lingala” after the native Congolese language of the lyrics. Borne across to the east African coast by people on the move, the songs were sung also in Kiswahili, common to people of central and eastern Africa.

Samba Mapangala’s path was similar.  Originally from a port city on the river Congo, he left Mobutu’s Zaire in 1975 and travelled with other musicians to Amin’s Uganda, where they formed a band called Les Kinois (The Kinshasans), eventually reaching Nairobi in 1977. The band enjoyed great popular success there in Kenya but disbanded in 1980.

Mapangala formed Orchestre Virunga in 1981, and recorded “Malako” the same year.  Four tracks of sinuous molten vocals over hypnotic interlocking guitar lines on fluid dancing bass patterns, percussion fast & light, sweet saxophones, beautiful harmonies, and brilliant solos.

Similarly to the Orchestra Baobab happenstance, cassette copies circulating around the expatriate communities of Europe became highly sought-after cult items that reached the attention of the burgeoning “World Music” industry.  

The Earthworks label re-released it in 1990 (with a couple of extra tracks to boost the product to acceptable CD length) and broadened the Virunga audience enough to justify tours through Africa, Europe and North America.  After a final Virunga tour in 1997, Samba settled with his family in Washington D.C.

The band name is taken of course from the volcanic mountain range in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, the place where Dian Fossey introduced the world to the mountain gorillas.

Orchestre Virunga - Malako (1982)  87MegaBytes

http://www.mediafire.com/download/8t95o694uqxmcll/Malako.rar

Lágbájá - Nigeria

Before chancing on a random torrent a few weeks back, I had heard none of this music, and the artist name of Lágbájá was new to me.  But I am now a fan and, out of the selection available to me for listening and study, these are the 26 tracks which hit me the best and the sweetest and the most serious.

Here’s what I have learned:

Our most effective English translation of the Yoruba “lágbájá” would be “anonymous”. Lagos-born Bisade Ologunde adopted it as his name on behalf of the faceless and voiceless, and performs in a mask to underline his identification as: 'The man without a face who speaks for the people without a voice'.

Like his old friend Fela Kuti, he presents political and social comment using a colloquial urban blend of English and Yoruba, adding costumes and production design that make connections to the ancient tradition of Egungun – the ancestral spirits who guide the people towards peace and truth.

The music uses singers and western horns, with guitars and keyboards, over a central percussion ensemble of traditional drums, and mixes traditional Yoruba music with Afro-pop styles of juju, west-coast high-life, and Fela’s afro-beat, all blended together with large dollops of funk and jazz.

Also like Fela, Lágbájá plays saxophone – only much better.
(Thankfully.)

And I greatly respect and appreciate the triumph of Yoruba roots and the rhythm culture of interlocking interdependence over the simplifying tendencies of western pop, and how – even in his most contemporary incarnations of Quincy-Jones-standard modernity – the traditional remains central.   “Konko Below” for example, which I think for some reason might be the most recent track here, is one which flirts easily with a style cliché or two out of rap/R&B convention, yet still it is impossible to deny the Yoruba drums pulsing at its heart.

But it seems as if the current ascendancy of the hip-hop aesthetic, driven by the rise of Naija nu-stars like 9ice or 2 Face Idibia or Terry G, may have re-cast the masked-one now as old-hat.  A musicologically principled distance from the more faddishly en vogue currents, together with his pecuniary frustrations over the encroachments of technology and free-downloading, might help explain why he seems to have released little these days.

With performance success in Ghana, France, Brazil and Britain, a chance for the international market that all African artistes hunger for, and an AllMusic.com biography which has him “based in Manhattan”, he has been subject to critique based on an expatriate absence which he denies, claiming to be always home in Lagos where - also vaguely reminiscent of Fela - he has a club.

His club-concept is named Motherlan’ and aims to follow village-square traditions of being a community gathering-place for a range of artistic and devotional events like dance, and story-telling, and ceremonies in the moonlight.

There is YouTubery under the same name.
You should check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Motherlan

Lazz’s Lágbájá Collection (at a dissatisfying mixture of low and lower kbps, but the brilliance of the music still shines through) 
187.2 MB 
https://mega.co.nz/#!WVAB3a4A!B9o3vg9Kh9Xai6MIPD-Q1IMQEyooh6y5zwQJUGnHkio

Orchestra Baobab - Senegal

Orchestra Baobab was the multi-ethnic house-band of the Baobab Club in Dakar right from when the elite room opened in 1970 until the joint went dark in 1979 – by which time they were established as Senegal’s most popular band.

Sounds and styles from the Caribbean had already been embraced throughout west Africa since the ‘50s, and the special accent of Orchestra Baobab came from their adoption of Cuban instrumentation and rhythmic styles parsed through the individual roots and origins of a polyglot membership.

Balla Sidibe and Rudy Gomis, for example, are from the southern forest region of Casamance and harmonise in Portuguese creole, while the northern Wolof griot vocal style of Ndiouga Dieng replicates that of his predecessor Laye M’Boup, killed in a 1975 car crash,  and Medoune Diallo’s is the voice we hear singing in Spanish.  Sax-player Issa Cissoka and drummer Mountage Koite are both from Mande griot families - Cissoko from Mali, and Koite from eastern Senegal – and bassist Charlie N’Diaye is from Casamance in the south.  On lead guitar, Barthelemy Attisso is from Togo, and rhythm guitarist Latfi Ben Geloume is from a Moroccan family exiled to Senegal’s Saint Louis.   Baro N'Diaye, the original saxophonist-leader of the group, seems to have been plain ordinary French-Senegalese – as was singer/percussionist Mapenda Seck.

“Baobab à Paris” is indication of the reach of their appeal into France, where there is a large expatriate community - and yet, shortly after the Baobab Club’s closure and then on through the ‘80s, audience tastes back home in Dakar began turning to the grittier sounds of bands like the Etoile de Dakar (featuring a young Youssou N'Dour) and the popularity of Orchestra Baobab began to wane.

In 1987, the band split up.

“Pirates Choice” was recorded in 1982 and released on cassette.  A vinyl version was later released in France and quickly became a sought-after cult rarity which came to the attention of the World Circuit label, who re-released it in 1989 as a double CD packaged with extra tracks.

The solid success of the re-release right across the label’s niche network meant there was an audience for live performance strong enough to sustain international touring if only the band were still in existence.  African performing artists all desire to achieve success on a world stage, though – so perhaps it was not really very hard at all, especially with the intercession and support of Youssou N’Dour, for World Circuit in 2001 to persuade the band to reform for tours of Europe and the United States and a new CD.

“Specialist In All Styles” was released in 2002 – twenty years after “Pirates Choice”.

The band are still the same guys.  Pretty much.  Thierno Koite, perhaps a relative of the drummer Mountaga Koite, replaced Baro N'Diaye, the original sax-player.  And Assane M’Boup, who may similarly be kin to original singer Laye M’Boup, replaced Mapemda Seck.   Only two personnel changes between them.  Plus, on the new one, we have guest performances from producer Youssou N’Dour, from Ibrahim Ferrer, and from Thio M'Baye on sabar drums.

The singing is beautiful and all of the music is absolutely made for dancing.

Baobab à Paris Vol 1 On Verra Ca (1978) - 320kbps 52.4 MB
https://mega.co.nz/#!7RIGzb5B!1SLPrClFptq_dDd-mC9-qInaDUgE2DzI89QVyrb7Ioo

Baobab à Paris Vol 2 Africa '78 (1978) - 320kbps 52.4 MB
https://mega.co.nz/#!PFZG2BYJ!cgvL31u96DqQddDQB-QP-B3iHKWn-smoadQXiJ3cZdQ

Pirate's Choice- The Legendary 1982 Session Disc 1 (1982) - 320kbps 94.7 MB
https://mega.co.nz/#!XMoU3A7Y!oK4QbcDB_LdgjQuYzrHArogOOYZsVuOeeT0BLs1huM0

Pirate's Choice- The Legendary 1982 Session Disc 2 (1982) - 320kbps  94.0 MB
https://mega.co.nz/#!fEBzxJRA!urO-vZH3lbge5xNcCCdRXTN1EVNQzrGGzujA7grB-1g

Specialist In All Styles (2002) - 192kbps  68.5 MB
https://mega.co.nz/#!acJxXQjS!wi1byg77U_CaMLpqUCUuauZtJ9qV2wtw8j8WQnSTeGg

Tony Allen - Film Of Life

"For his tenth album, Tony Allen, the co-creator of Afrobeat, has pulled out all the stops. At his side are French producers The Jazzbastards and fellow world-class musicians including Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, The Good the Bad & the Queen, Blur). With Film of Life, Allen has produced an album that has the ring of a true self-portrait, offering an overview of his rich and exemplary career that brings together bebop, Afrobeat jazz and psychedelic pop."

" A sleek, sensuous, wildly diverse album from an old master. Building from the old Afro-Beat sound he helped create, Nigerian-born drummer Tony Allen shifts and arcs into heavy dub and clubby funk, off-kilter pop and artsy, Eno-esque electronica... It's smooth, multi-textured music that feels in turns joyful and dark, playful and forboding, and consistently wickedly creative. Currently pushing 75, Afrobeat elder Tony Allen is still very much in the groove, and this is a fine album, very listenable and enticing. Recommended! (DJ Joe Sixpack, Slipcue Guide To World Music)"

Ebo Taylor - Love and Death

Much of the story of African popular music since World War II concerns African-rooted musics from the New World coming back to the Mother Land and inspiring Africans to fuse these sounds with their own traditional musics.   The sound of hard funk, as developed by James Brown and Sly Stone in the 1960s, became hugely popular in West Africa.   Afrobeat was essentially created by the great Fela Ransom Kuti, a Highlife band leader from the South West of Nigeria, who spent time in the US in the 1960s absorbing and integrating the Brand New Bag with Highlife.  There exist fascinating recordings from this period that illustrate the sound in embryo.

Afrobeat quickly moved from Nigeria to the neighboring countries of the Benin Republic, Togo, and (especially) Ghana.  Ebo Taylor was one of the first Ghanian artists to popularize and develop Afrobeat in that country, adding to that his own distinctive mix of fusion of Highlife with Funk and Jazz.  He established that sound not only through his own recordings, but through producing many other top Ghanian artists. 

Ebo Taylor is still alive and very much active.  This is his seventh decade of activity!  He was already a working professional musician in the 1950s, and was already leading his own band in the early 60s.  He first came into contact with Fela Kuti in 1962 while residing temporarily with his band in London.   His classic recordings from the 1970s and 1980s were reissued not long ago on a highly recommended package: Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980.  

Following this period, Ebo Taylor kept a rather low profile on the music scene for a while, but became active again in the first decade of the new century, culminating in his triumphant Love and Death album, which is posted here.  This is pure Ebo Taylor with a crack band.  Fine music!

Ebo Taylor moved to London a few years ago to pursue his career further there.   When I moved to Nigeria, he was still working and playing the clubs in Accra, Ghana.   I had a chance to see him and meet him there, and the experience was unforgettable.  Enjoy!


  






  

African Brothers Dance Band (International)

Perhaps Preslives can tell us more, but this seems to be a seminal 'Highlife' album. The band formed in the early 60's as teenagers and went through many transformations prior to this, their first LP. They were one of the first African bands to tour the U.S. and Canada in the same year (1970) that they did this album.
read a more extensive history here

Thanks to Daver88 for the link to the groups' site.

King Sunny Ade' - The Best Of The Classic Years

"King" Sunny Adé (born Sunday Adeniyi, 22 September 1946) is a Nigerian musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and a pioneer of modern world music. He has been classed as one of the most influential musicians of all time.

Adé was born to a Nigerian royal family in Ondo, thus making him an Omoba of the Yoruba people. His father was a church organist, while his mother was a trader. Adé left grammar school in Ondo under the pretense of going to the University of Lagos. There, in Lagos, his mercurial musical career started.

Sunny Adé's musical sound has evolved from the early days. His career began with Moses Olaiya's Federal Rhythm Dandies, a highlife band. He left to form a new band, The Green Spots, in 1967. Over the years, for various reasons ranging from changes in his music to business concerns, Sunny Adé's band changed its name several times, first to African Beats and then to Golden Mercury.

In the 1970s and 1980s Adé embarked on a tour of America and Europe where he played to mixed (both black and white) audiences. His stage act was characterised by dexterous dancing steps and mastery of the guitar. Trey Anastasio, American guitarist, composer and one of his devout followers, once said, "If you come to see Sunny Adé live, you must be prepared to groove all night."

After more than a decade of resounding success in Africa, Adé was received to great acclaim in Europe and North America in 1982. The global release of Juju Music and its accompanying tour was "almost unanimously embraced by critics (if not consumers) everywhere". Adé was described by The New York Times' as "one of the world's great band leaders", and in Trouser Press as "one of the most captivating and important musical artists anywhere in the world"...wiki

Soul of Angola 1965-75

"...Pushed by a lot of energy, the new Angolan music had in that period an incredible development. In the musseques, the sand subburbs of Luanda, in Sambizanga, Marçal, Bairro Operaio e Sao Paulo, local genres like semba and rebita, already contaminated by the Portuguese melancholy of the fado, would mix up with the sounds of the Brazilian samba, with the Congolese rumba and rock. They were young urban bands like Kiezos, the Gingas, the Jovens do Prendo, the Ngoleiros do Ritmo and Bongos. Although most of this music incarnated the fever of the Angolans for independence, for some strange reason its rise was favoured by the paternal politics of the despot.

It was on this scene that artists like Teta Lando, Artur Nunes, Bonga, Urbano De Castro, Oscar Neves, Avozinho, Minguito and many other heroes of Angolan music exploded. They compose the wonderful mosaic of the double CD Soul of Angola – anthologies de la musique angolaise 1965-1975, released by French Lusafrica in 2001. There are no words to describe the vitality, the flow, the joy and the melancholy of the voices and electric guitars of this music which vividly talks about a dream never came true and of ideals destined to disillusion for a long time."  T.P. Africa read more

Baaba Maal - Djam Leelii & Mi Veewnii

"Baaba Maal (born 12 November 1953) is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. He is well known in Africa and internationally is Senegal's most famous musician. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary.

Baaba sings primarily in Pulaar and is the foremost promoter of the traditions of the Pulaar-speaking peoples who live on either side of the Senegal River in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro.

Baaba Maal was expected to follow his father and become a fisherman. However, under the influence of his lifelong friend and family gawlo, blind guitarist Mansour Seck, Baaba devoted himself to learning music from his mother and his school's headmaster. He went on to study music at the university in Dakar before leaving for postgraduate studies on a scholarship at Beaux-Arts in Paris.

After returning from study in Paris, Baaba studied traditional music with Mansour Seck and began performing with the band Daande Lenol. Baaba's fusions continued into the next decade with his Firin' in Fouta (1994) album, which used ragga, salsa and Breton harp music to create a popular sound that launched the careers of Positive Black Soul, a group of rappers, and also led to the formation of the Afro-Celt Sound System. His fusion tendencies continued on 1998's Nomad Soul, which featured Brian Eno as one of seven producers. In addition to his various solo releases, he was featured on two tracks, "Bushes" and "Dunya Salam", on the concept album

In 1998, Baaba recorded "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" for the Red Hot Organization’s compilation album Red Hot + Rhapsody a tribute to George Gershwin which raised money for various charities devoted to increasing AIDS awareness and fighting the disease. In 2002, Baaba again worked with the Red Hot Organization, recording "No Agreement" alongside Res, Tony Allen, Ray Lema, Positive Black Soul and Archie Shepp for the tribute album to Fela Kuti, Red Hot + Riot..."

Yinka Ayefele - Everlasing Grace

It's gospel Sunday time!   Given our current detour into Africa, we decided to rock your church a bit differently this Sunday.

One of the most amazing experiences of my years living in Nigeria was going to Redeemed Church on Sundays.   The church would be packed full of people in the most immaculate homemade colorful outfits that you could imagine.   A full band, choir, and Nigerian drum section would occupy the left side of the stage.  The Pastor would come forward and say something like, "I know that some of you have been shakin' it for the Devil all week.  Now is your chance to shake it for the Lord!  Let the Almighty see what you got!   The music would start and every one of the 100s people would move, and I mean MOVE.  If you couldn't feel the spirit in the midst of all that, I don't think that you ever could.

Yinka Ayefele is one of the most popular gospel singers inside Nigeria.   He didn't start singing gospel until he experienced a near fatal accident in 1997 that confined him to a wheel chair and gave him spiritual awakening.  Yinka Ayefele is a Yorbua from the South West of Nigeria (Yorubaland), and the music that he plays is distinctly Yoruba.  Those of you who have listened to Yoruba traditional music, or the popular genres of Juju and Fuji, will find musical familiarity here.   This music also shares with current other Nigerian pop music of today the current trend of very fast rhythms that supports the latest dance steps.

So I hope that this helps you feel the spirit this Sunday, and don't forget to shake it a bit for the Lord!

Zimbabwe Frontline

"Thomas Mapfumo, the pioneer of Zimbabwean electic mbira (kalimba) music, is the most recognizable name among those included on this compilation of native chimurenga ("liberation") songs. Though played largely on electric guitars, the riffs recall the mbira, and the songs are augmented by traditional instruments like the marimba and rattles." AMG (JA)

African Scream Contest

I've been getting a little bored lately, time for a detour!

"The subtitle here, intriguing as it is, isn't completely accurate, since the emphasis is actually more on soul and funk than raw garage rock and psychedelia. Indeed, there's a strong James Brown fixation for many artists here, and Roger Damawuzen should have won an award (or a lawsuit) for his uncanny imitation of the Godfather of Soul. It does get a little wild at times, as with "Congolaise Benin Ye" from Le Super Borgou de Parakou, but one thing that never falters here is the groove. Once a band latches onto it, they don't let go, keeping it rock-solid, but with plenty of poly-rhythms happening as part of it, giving it a wonderful, flexible feeling. There's no a bad cut here, and it's obvious that this is the result of a labor of love -- the result of two-and-a-half years work and nine trips to the countries. It may be the Francophone influence that steers the musicians away from the more obvious English and American rock sounds, although you can definitely hear the Afro-Latin percussion of Santana in the mix (and the fiery guitar work, too, at times). But whatever the artists are doing, they thankfully never try to ditch their Afro roots -- which, of course, are the bedrock of soul and rock. This all takes it in another, fabulous direction. In many ways it proved to be a bit of a dead end historically, but the music that came out of it is nothing less than sublime. And keep the player going after the last track for the hidden bonus. It's worthwhile." AMG