African Music Show #2: West & Central Africa (1984)

Here we go with Tony Hunter's second African Music Show broadcast on 3RRR radio in May 1984, with a two-hour sampler of Zairean (Congo Kinshasa), Ghanaian,  Nigerian and other classics from the 1980s and earlier. In addition to talking about the country's and their music scenes, Tony mixes it up, dropping in  James Brown to then mix into Fela Kuti, You will also encounter Franco, King Sunny Ade, Eric Ageyman, Prince Nico Mbarga, Manu Dibango, Benny More, and Tabu Ley.

You can read here  how Tony Hunter landed up teaching, travelling and collecting records in Africa in the first part of the 1980s. 

Tony picks up his story :

click here to go to radio station

There wasn't much Congolese or West African music in Zimbabwe when I lived there and I wasn't very familiar with the genres before arriving. But I did pick up a copy of a Franco album with a song that absolutely captivated me - Princess Kiku. The slow build up of the vocals ,the brass , the glorious seben.  I was hooked and from then on Kinshasa was on the list. 2 other album were Fela live with featuring ginger Baker on drums and the classic Black President.

So when my friend Jan and I finished our teaching contracts we travelled overland via trains busses and ferries intended to take in as much music as we could. Zambia, Rwanda, Burundi ( not much music in those 2 places pre the genocide, very sombre) then onto Mobutu's Zaire. We stayed at an acquaintance's apartment and took in the chaos of Kinshasa. Of course, music abounds but there were 2 highlights. Strolling downtown past the Town Hall I saw a concert was advertised and all these well-heeled families since kids were pouring in. So in I went ,and it was Mpongo Love who was good but the highlight was some youngsters, sapeurs...spats and everything. They were hot ,faster and straight into the seben, in other words soukous. They had  a charismatic young singer who I thought may have been Papa Wemba but so many years later, I am not sure who they were - but they were bloody good.

Congolese sapeur

Objective #1 was Une Deux Trois club to see Franco. Glamorous people alighted from Mercedes and BMWs as the evening went on but alas , we were advised that Franco was in Belgium with his other band. Quelle domage! But all was not lost, his Kinshasa-based band led by Josky Kiambakuta was on and these 18 or so musicians were superb. I'm not exaggerating to say the music never stopped all night. Musicians would just take a rest and others would step up. After dancing til 4 am under blue neon lights  in a palm-lined we left with the music still going.

Cameroon was a hard place to find music so we headed to Nigeria via northern Cameroon -an area these days inhabited by Boko Haram. Catching a lift into Maidiguri , the vehicle travelling at very high speed on a freeway lined with wrecks and Fela blaring out. I believe that you best appreciate a style of music when you hear it in its native environment and Afro Beat sure is Nigerian. Similarly sitting under a tree in sipping a coke with a caravan of camels crossing a bridge across the Niger is a pretty good time to first here a kora being played live. 

We had Ghana  and Senegal earmarked too but after trekking through Chad and Upper Volta  I ran out of puff in Cote D'Ivoire literally due to bronchitis so we flew to the Canary Islands and Morocco for some R and R.

I still look at Ghana and Senegal on the  map and think you aren't crossed off yet.

Mediafire download:

Tape 1 here

Tape 2 here

Ghana Highlife rarity from Janet Osei

Information on Janet Osei is hard to find, except to learn that this album is pretty rare. The fantastic highlife blogspot Osibisaba has the following to say about the few women who were highlife singers:

"I am rather fascinated by old-time highlife music featuring female singers, perhaps because these recordings are so difficult to come across. Female highlife singers in Ghana were largely marginalized through the first half of the 20th century due to social taboos and public perceptions of sexual promiscuity and impropriety. To quote concert party pioneer Bob Johnson, "A girl on stage would be branded a girl without morals." So, male actors took on the role of the female impersonator in the concert parties, while male "treble singers" strained to reach high, female-like vocal ranges. The few female singers who did make successful careers for themselves in the 1950s, '60s and '70s included Julie Okine, Charlotte Dada, Adwoa Badu, and Janet Osei, and these women surely faced some tremendous adversities".

The songs featured on this album were all written by Osei. The backing band members were all stars in their own right, and here they provide some truly stretched out mid-tempo 70s electric and sometimes wah-wah guitar highlife that occasionally ventures into shades of afro-beat.

Rapidshare here

Mediafire here

Rambling to a different time in Ghana

Our Ghana highlife detour week continues with a rich and exotic afro-latin tropical highlife buffet -  a unique 1971 offering from the Ramblers Band International. As an added bonus, do come back this weekend to enjoy a rare album from one the few and most successful women singer-songwriters of Ghanaian highlife,  backed up by the fine musicianship of Pat Thomas, Papa Yanson, Eddie Donkor and Eric Ageyman.

For today: the Ramblers’ “Doin our own thing” is a wonderfully diverse album with twelve tracks in multiply different tempos that invite you to find a comfortable shady spot and allow yourself to be transported by the many possibilities and timings of the big band brass and mesmerising congas on offer. 

The Ramblers Dance band was formed in 1962 and thrived into the 1980s. In the 1950s tenor saxophonist Jerry Hansen was a key member of the Black Beats, featured in earlier postings here and here, before taking nine band members with him in 1962 to form the Ramblers. This 15-piece big dance band was highly successful for more than twenty years.

"If one finds some similarity (however remote) in rhythm style to the music of Soul, Jazz and Afro-Cuban artists one needs to remember they were weaned from the same breast as the music of The Ramblers” (writes Frank Hayfron in the sleevenotes).

For my tastes, this album offers up the best version of “Grazin in the Grass” that I have heard - moody and rich in texture. And if you thought Afro-Cuban music climaxed with Africando, give the two Puente compositions on this album a listen. In-between, band-leader, arranger extraordinaire and saxophonist Jerry Hansen treats us to four of his compositions. If I was forced to keep only one Ghanaian record in my current collection - this would probably be it.

Rapidshare here

Mediafire here (correct link now)

Highlife 'n' Piano

Something quite different today. This is from the same batch of Ghanaian LPs some of which were shared earlier at electricjive. Aside from the sleevenotes on the back cover not much more information has been forthcoming and so, without a deeper context, we invite you to have a listen and tell us what you think or to fill in the gaps for our readers.

RS/ MF

Viva Black Stars!

We interrupt normal programming to salute Ghana's Black Stars for being in tip top form and reaching the top 8 section of the world cup. To celebrate we bring you Pat Thomas with his very popular early LP Wednesday at Tip Toe.

New Link (30 Dec 2014) : Mediafire here