#west african music

[nofatclips]

Fantasy by Niniola featuring Femi Kuti - Directed by Sesan

[chroniclesofnadia111]

Rest in Peace to the wonderful Malian legend Toumani Diabaté, the king of kora 🇲🇱👑🖤

You will be so missed.

[bonewhiteglory]

Kalan Nege - Issa Bagayogo

[nofatclips-home]

Afrika by Dobet Gnahoré

[dustedmagazine]

The Narcotix — Dying (Self-Released)

“The Maiden” is Dying’s longest and most astonishing track.  It starts in disembodied, wordless vocal sounds, a three-some of “la-la-lah”s breathed first by one vocalist, then joined by another.  Their notes play tag with one another, overlapping and darting in and over and around, all by themselves until a malleted percussion instrument joins, plunking out silvery tones in conversation but not synchrony with the voices.  The song picks up other instruments as it goes, a syncopated funk bass, a trebly, twitchy highlife guitar.  A tropical heat and humidity permeates the sound — you might flash on Flora Purim in full skittering fusion-jazz flight — but it is also cerebral and clean.  At least it is, right up to the moment when one singer, Esther Quansah I believe, intones “Someone told me to make an impression/someone one made me…” and then a wild cacophony of voices and drums and guitar tumble down in a swirl.   

The Narcotix is a Brooklyn band centered around two female singers, both striking in their distinct ways.  Esther Quansah wields a jazzy melismatic alto, an alto sax of a voice if you will.  Becky Foinchas, who also plays keyboards, sounds more like a trumpet, producing clear, bell-like tones that ring out against the baroque squiggles and flourishes of her partner. 

The two of them are both children of the African diaspora.  Quansah’s family is from the Cote D’Ivoire, Foinchas’ from Cameroon.  You can hear that West African influence in many of these cuts, in the warmth and clarity of the guitars and the syncopation of the percussion.  Yet The Narcotix’s music has a theatrical sweep and neoclassical precision.  It reminds me a lot of Ohmme’s complicated pop, though with a bit of world music penciled in. 

Thus while the early single “Mother,” glitters with bright, pizzicato keyboards and throbs with luminous synths, its focus remains on the two women, Quansah singing low and fluttering over the notes in syllable stretching free play, Foinchas dipping in and out of the main melodic line with airy descants and counterpoints.  The words disappear into the pure sonic pleasure of dizzying vocal interplay, rising to the surface occasionally in French and then in English to ask “What’s the meaning of time?” and then later answer “Time means nothing, nothing at all.”   

This is the Narcotix’s first full-length following a 2021 EP called Mommy Issues, and it is extraordinarily assured given the early stage in the band’s development. The Narcotix already has its own enveloping and idiosyncratic sound, an aesthetic that touches on West African forms without recreating them, and a command of complicated, multi-voiced song structures.  Nothing else sounds like The Narcotix at the moment.  Don’t miss it. 

Jennifer Kelly

[mywifeleftme]

284: Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National // No Condition is Permanent

No Condition is Permanent Celestine Ukwu and His Philosophers National 2022, Mississippi Records (Bandcamp)

Celestine Ukwu was an Igbo highlife singer from eastern Nigeria (the region briefly known as Biafra) who became a significant star in the late ‘60s and ‘70s by turning the genre’s broad gestures inward. Highlife’s clean and nimble guitar work, jittering rhythms, and splashy horns have always made for ebullient dance music, but the selections on No Condition is Permanent find Ukwu abstracting the genre into something dreamier and more contemplative. The comparison is probably inane, but if highlife were alternative rock you could think of Ukwu as sort of a Jesus & Mary Chain or Yo La Tengo figure. You can certainly still dance to his music, but even as it evokes the sweet sensations African guitar pop is known for, it also feels blue, like a grown man reflecting on the music of his youth. Lyrically too, the music is concerned with tribulation, a philosophical acceptance of suffering, and the certainty of redemption. I’m not sure I’ve heard anything quite like “Okwukuwe na nchekwube” (“Faith and Hope”), which moves like shadows cast by a flickering bonfire, all weeping slide guitars, shuffling percussion, and jazzy horns with a North African/Andalusian flair. Nearly as good is “Onwunwa” (“Light”), which has some exceptionally moving guitar playing, a twinkling verse figure that gives over in the latter half of the song to a staccato solo that puts me in mind of the stop-start tempo of a hand writing a passionate love letter—“Life comes like the world / is blessed. Life comes like / the world ends,” Ukwu muses in Igbo.

No Condition is Permanent is a short compilation at just 32 minutes—jealously, I’d have liked another song or two from the three albums it surveys (True Philosophy [1971], Tomorrow is So Uncertain [1973], Ilo Abu Chi [1974]). Despite this, the folks at Mississippi Records (and Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Sound) have done a spectacular job with the remaster and pressing, and it’s a compilation I can easily leave on my table for ages.

284/365

[katiajewelbox]

I LOVE the music of Amadou & Mariam! This music video shows the amazing imagination of kids living our their dreams and imagining the boundless possibilities of the future. The lyrics are in French (Mali was once a French colony) and warn about the dangers of lies and division among community, a relevant message for our troubled times. Something I like about West African music is that it’s insanely catchy and ear-appealing but features lyrics with serious messages and social criticisms with rousing calls to action, instead of vapid sexual innuendo and drug references like a lot of western music these days.

[nedison]

A little S.E. is all I need to get me through the week. Mississippi Records really went all out on these compilations-- I give them my highest recommendation!

Just lookit that beautiful reproduction label!

[bun-lapin]

Currently working on Leona's one shot and taking this opportunity to listen to some Ali Farka Touré. I feel like desert blues is a good genre for Leona <3

[cavedwellermusic]

United Freedom Collective - Am Ta and Space Intention (2022 & 2023)

Two amazing EP's showcasing various genres from around the world

UK based global folkloric entity United Freedom Collective have created a stunning and powerful collection of tracks over the span of two EPs. The collective uniquely blend diverse folk influences from around the world, electronic elements, classical and jazz instrumentation, plus dub, soul, indie, hip hop and funk elements into a cohesive free flowing output; and the spiritual and philosophical inspiration behind the music give it additional depth and power. This is music to be experienced.

[theparanoid]

Various Artists - Music From Saharan WhatsApp

(2022 compilation)

Youtube Playlist | Bandcamp | Spotify

[West African Music, Tishoumaren, Minimal Synth, Tuareg Music, Mande Music]

[nofatclips]

INNOCENT (FAGBO) by Niniola from the album Colours and Sounds - Video directed by Adasa Cookey

[chroniclesofnadia111]

💃🏾✨🌹🖤

[lesafricainescharmantetfraises]

Beautiful African smile and 🤭 ass are dancing in Nigeria

[sonicandvisualsurprises]

70's

Biography excerpt from Last.fm :

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou is arguably West Africa’s best-kept secret. Their output, both in quantity and quality, was astonishing. During several trips to Benin, Samy Ben Redjeb managed to collect roughly 500 songs which Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou had recorded between 1970 and 1983.

The cultural and spiritual riches of traditional Beninese music had an immense impact on the sound of Benin’s modern music. Benin is the birthplace of Vodun (also Vodoun, or, as it is known in the West, Voodoo), a religion which involves the worship of some 250 sacred divinities. The rituals used to pay tributes to those divinities are always backed by music. The majority of the complex poly-rhythms of the vodun are still more or less secret and difficult to decipher, even for an accomplished musician. Anthropologists and ethnomusicologists agree that this religion constitutes the principal “cultural bridge” between Africa and all its Diasporas of the New World and in a reflection of the power and influence of these sounds many of the complex rhythms were to have a profound impact on the other side of the Atlantic on rhythms as popular as Blues, Jazz, Cuban and Brazilian music.

[mywifeleftme]

235: Pierre Akendengué // Afrika Obota

Afrika Obota Pierre Akendengue 1976, Saravah

Gabonese icon Pierre Akendengué doesn’t have the same level of international notoriety as many of the other West African stars of the mid-‘70s and ‘80s, perhaps because he didn’t play Afro-funk, highlife, or any of the electronic-tinged dance music that gets collectors hot under the collar. His music rather anticipates the “world music” sound as it existed by the end of the 1980s—smooth quavering vocals in a mix of native and colonial languages (here Myene and French), with laidback Afro-Cuban beats, softer synth tones, and a dash of influence from easier-listening Western genres (in Akendengué’s case, French chanson and jazz fusion). Despite this somewhat lukewarm-sounding description, Akendengué shouldn’t be written off lightly. 1976’s Afrika Obota, his second LP, is a wonderfully-performed record that covers great stylistic ground, from soulful acoustic folk (“Negro,” “Evo”) to sophisticated highlife-lite (“Sa gunu, sa gunu”) to a kind of shimmering, cloudy jazzy pop that faintly anticipates the vibes of French downtempo of the ‘90s (“Considerable” and especially “Orema ka-ka-ka”). Like a lot of the most successful musicians of ‘70s West Africa, Akendengué had the opportunity to visit France to study and work with local and diasporic musicians. Because of his politics, which ran afoul of authorities back home in Gabon, Akendengué’s first few records were recorded in France where he resided until 1978, and Afrika Obota benefits from the stellar facilities at the well-known Studio Saravah in Paris. I’ve only heard his first two records, but he has continued recording well into his seventies, and I’m sure there’s much to explore in his catalogue. In terms of ‘70s African records that can be had for a song, Afrika Obota is a must.

235/365