Afrika!

I’ve been getting more and more intrigued with African popular music for quite sometime now. While getting attracted to music from the grandmother continent of popular music is relatively easy to do, it started off quite tricky as African music tended to be labeled under the ever-patronizing name World Music. While the term gives an initial impression of an orgy-of-sounds and genre mixing from different corners of this earth, my initial naive illusion soon gave way to the perception that it is just an easy way of labeling all non Anglo-Saxon music under an easy no-brainer name. This isn’t helped by the fact that most pop albums that had the terms ‘World Music’ suspiciously attached to it, from pop-folk albums like Paul Simon’s Graceland, latter albums of the Talking Heads, the immense jazz of Weather Report, to modern indie-pop outfit Vampire Weekend, sounds and rhythms from the African continent were evident by the bucket loads.


My recent escapade into proper African Music (you know, music by actual African musicians) started with an introduction to the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti & Africa 70 a couple of years ago. Nigeria’s answer to James Brown is arguably the perfect embodiment of the fusion between African beats and the American R&B sounds of the 60s and 70s. His politically infused, Pidgin English speaking, over-10-minute-long tracks take James Brown’s rock steady funk drives and combining them with African chants, congas, bongos and drums (led by Tony Allen, recently recruited as drummer for Damon Albarn’s The Good, The Bad & The Queen) were a fresh wake up call on how insanely cool African music can be. The release of 1960s and 70s African highlife, juju and Afrobeat tunes through Nigeria 70-Lagos Jump complied by UK Based Strut Records and the ever increasing popularity of New York based African music blogs Awesome Tapes from Africa and Voodoo Funk only served to strengthen this fascination with (specifically) West-African music.




Fela Live

The whole shenanigans surrounding Live 8 2005 and Bob Geldof’s non-usage of African artists due to his notion that they’re not quite good enough to attract world wide attention made me even more curious about modern acts from the sub-Saharan Africa. This led me to be lucky enough to uncover the gem that is Amadou et Mariam’s Dimanche à Bamako. Amadou and Mariam are a blind Malian couple (together since both attended school for the blind over 30 years ago) who have been producing steady rock infused West-African music since the late 90s through a plethora of Bamako and Paris based record labels. Yet their breakthrough came in 2005 when Dimanche à Bamako was released on NoneSuch Records to raving reviews from the world wide music press. The fact that the album was produced by the French- Basque Latin God, Manu Chao (who also naturally falls under the umbrella of ‘World Music’) helped add to the crisp production and popularity of the album immensely. In true Manu Chao style he made the fusion of African rhythm with heavy blues undertones and Latin-European style production seem effortless.

Having completed a lengthy 3 year tour around the US and Europe which had them play Chicago’s Lollapalooza and the African Express festival in London to name just two, this Malian duo are to release their 8th studio album to date, Welcome to Mali on November 17th. The fact that this album will be produced by Blur/Gorillaz/The Good, The Bad & The Queen front man Damon Albarn will add to the commercial & critical appeal of this sought after record. Also, anticipating just how Albarn plans to further enhance the sound of these two artists is almost half the excitement.

Amadou et Mariam on the BBC Jools Holland Show

Amadou et Mariam are indeed leading the way to popularising African pop music to the world yet anticipate more change and improvements in public perception in a time where African influenced changes are en vogue (I’m looking at you Obama).