Once again this year we have lost many fine musicians.This is my annual woefully inadequate tribute to some of those whose sad passing may not have received the attention they deserved.
We start with a double loss - both Barbara Dane and Joe Chambers of The Chambers Brothers left us this year - and a sincere apology to Nikki Giovanni. In August I featured her "When I Die" here and a few weeks ago that is sadly what happened. Let's hope that the recording of hers that I have chosen today has similar predictive powers for all of these artists.
"It Isn't Nice" - Barbara Dane & The Chambers Brothers
It is that time of year when all music bloggers are contractually obliged to tell you about the music they have enjoyed in the last 12 months. I dealt with my live music experience in a post just before Xmas so this one just covers recordings.
Speaking for myself I'm not sure 2024 stands out as a vintage year for new music. I have heard lots of decent stuff, and no doubt missed even more, but relatively little I would describe as exceptional. Hopefully this statement will prompt one of you to tip me off to a record that will go on to change my live forever.
Favourite albums of the year
Ten albums in alphabetical order by artist, with Bandcamp links so you can consider them when deciding how to spend your Xmas vouchers. The usual caveat applies, i.e. at least half the list might be different if I did it again in a few days' time.
I excluded compilations from the list but if I had not the compilations of vintage Ghanaian, Nigerian and Congolese grooves featured in the last post of the African odyssey would have been contenders. As of course would "Sounds From The Flightpath Estate".
Assorted sounds and visions
We finish off with some of my favourite tracks from 2023 that have not previously been featured here during the year - if only to show that the zeitgeist is infinite.
On Friday and Saturday I went to my 26th and 27th gigs of the year - Smoke Fairies in the hipster haven that is Haggerston showcasing their "Wild Winter" album which is ten years old this year; and then Sharon Shannon, her Big Band and assorted guests brewing up one hell of a hooley at the Shepherd's Bush Empire with a mix of Shane MacGowan songs and some instrumental sets. I enjoyed them both very much.
I have no more gigs lined up until January so I am now in a position to share my annual Gigs of the Year list, whether you want it or not. With the usual caveat about the list being different if I were to do this again next week - the Sharon Shannon show might well creep in to the Top 10 with more time to reflect - in date order they were:
Luiz Bruno & The Adult Children @ Shacklewell Arms
Salif Keita @ Barbican Hall
Peter Case & Sid Griffin @ What's Cookin'
Grupo Pilon @ Peckham Audio
Nana Benz Du Togo @ Dalston Eastern Curve Garden
Lola Kirke @ 100 Club
Nusantara Beat @ Shacklewell Arms
Sahra Halgan @ Greenleaf Baptist Church
Ron Sexsmith @ London Palladium
Dur-Dur Band @ Barbican Hall
I like to take a few photos at gigs when the opportunity arises. Most of them are pretty terrible but every now and then something half decent emerges by accident. In an attempt to ratchet up the self-indulgence even further here a few of them from this year.
In order of appearance: Dur-Dur Band; Les Deuxluxes @ Botanique, Brussels; Nana Benz Du Togo; Sid Griffin & Peter Case; Madou Diabaté, accompanying Salif Keita; Cecile McLorin Salvant @ Bozar, Brussels.
We'll round things off with a seasonal song from Smoke Fairies and a few videos of live performances by acts I saw this year, then that is it from me until after Xmas. Hope you and yours have a good one, with lashings of figgy pudding and cups of good cheer.
Welcome to the third of what appears to have become an annual event (unfortunately for all of us) - a Christmas themed Single Song Sunday.
This year it is "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". There are well over 1000 recorded versions of the song. Most of them are completely unnecessary as once you've heard the version by The Crystals from the Phil Spector Christmas album that's everything you want.
Despite that I have put together a short selection. After The Crystals we have some swing with Bing and The Andrews Sisters (a hit in 1947), some Ukrainian punks, Swamp Dogg doing his own thing with it and The Mighty Sparrow with a brief calypso canter through the tune.
Regular readers will not be in the least bit surprised to learn that the MRV comes from John Holt.
Here are some Sisters with instructions. Sister Wynona has done what Sister Rosetta told her. If your name is Jack, jump to it. As for the rest of you, straighten up.
They're back! And by 'they' I mean of course Taiwanese moody rockers Psychedelic Kindergarten.
The almost all-female band - 'guitar uncle' Liu Wenchang is the token man - released a double album "話" (Words) way back in 2001. And that was it.
A study of their Facebook page reveals that they decided to reactivate the band after 20 years in February 2021 after getting together for what was intended to be a one-off gig to mark the drummer's birthday. They have played regularly since then and this September they released their first new material in 23 years.
We have a couple of tracks from "Words" for you. If Google Translate is to be believed, which it usually isn't, the titles translate as "No" and "May God Bless You" respectively. The video is the new single, "With a Head and With a Face".
I had planned to finish this post with a vintage clip of Mr Clint Holmes performing his 1973 smash "Playground In My Mind" but I couldn't find any. Never mind, we have something even better. Please marvel at the elaborate routines of these Indonesian line dancers as they reinterpret the song for a new generation.
I recently belatedly got round to buying "Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing", the album by the aforementioned Ms Valazza that got rave reviews when it came out last year. Rightly so, as it turns out.
I put it on and was listening to the opening track "Room In The City", which sounded familiar. A bit of digging revealed that was because it features on a free sampler issued by Fluff and Gravy Records that I had picked up last year (and which was worth every penny I didn't spend).
Rather confusingly both the Bandcamp page and the meta data stuff on each track claim that everything dates from 2016, which is not the case at all. My guess is that the Fluffy folk first issued the sampler then and have kept adding tracks over time.
Anyway, here is the Kassi Valazza song with two other selections from the sampler (both originally released in 2017 it seems).
Readers of a certain age will have spotted the reference in the blog title to the kid's programme that made The Magic Roundabout look like it was created by chartered accountants from Guildford. So just for you, here is Episode 1 in its entirety.
At the end of Homer's Odyssey Odysseus is reunited with his father and Athena pops down to prevent another war kicking off.
Nothing as dramatic at the end of Ernie's Odyssey I'm afraid, just a long rambling post. But unlike Homer I provide a soundtrack, which I think is a plus point for me.
Since we started the journey back in May last year we have visited 55 countries (57 if you include Mayotte and Somaliland) with a few minor diversions thrown in. If I have added them all up correctly we have so far heard from 550 different artists - 350 audio tracks plus 200 videos.
That sounds like a lot but in truth we have barely scratched the surface of all the excellent music to be found in every corner of Africa. If this humble series has done nothing else hopefully it has encouraged you to explore further.
It has certainly had that effect on me. While most of my many African purchases in recent months have been targeted on the countries that had yet to be covered I have also continued to acquire plenty of music from those that we had already visited, some of which may well have featured if I had found it earlier.
So the main purpose of this post is to share some of those late additions with you before we all pack our bags and head home. We will kick things off with four excellent compilations, all of them with self-explanatory titles, some wordier than others.
The short title is "Tabansi Records Sampler". Tabansi was an extremely important label in the 1970s and 1980s, based in Lagos but with artists from across West Africa on its books. I could have chosen pretty much any track on the album but opted for Tony Sarfo from Ghana.
Now on to the 'proper' albums. We first head back to Nigeria where we find The Mebusas who turned their hands to all sorts of musical styles on their 1973 album "Blood Brothers Vol. 1". It was reissued a few years ago but there has been no Vol. 2 to date.
Next door in Cameroon Sergeo & Njohreur could be found strutting their funky stuff in the 1990s. This track is from their 1997 album "Le Mari D'autrui" which I found in a charity shop and does not seem to be readily available (although an incomplete version is on Spotify).
From Cameroon we head due east to Ethiopia where we find the two "Beauties" Aselefech Ashine & Getenesh Kebret. Before you condemn me for objectifying two such fine singers, that is the name of their 1976 album which was reissued by Mississippi Records last year. The 1970s. A different time.
From there it is a short hop north to Sudan where we find Abu Obaida Hassan. Abu was a big name domestically in the 1970s and 1980s and in 2018 Ostinato collated some of his best tunes on "Abu Obaida Hassan & His Tambour: The Shaigiya Sound of Sudan".
That is it for the new arrivals, but there are two final tracks before we wrap things up. The first one is necessary to correct an error. Robson Banda was lined up to feature in our visit to Zimbabwe but it was only when I started preparing that post that I discovered while he made his career there he is actually Zambian, so I had to drop him. But his 1990 album "Soweto" is too good not to include.
A similar sin of omission is being put right in the final MAR slot of the series. As I may have mentioned along the way, in some countries it was a real struggle to find some decent MAR, in others there was a surfeit.
One such example was when we visited Côte d'Ivoire in August last year. I selected Ismaël Isaac and Tiken Jah Fakoly, both very deserving, but it meant leaving out the man who is probably the biggest MAR star of them all, Alpha Blondy. That can't be right, so I have added one of his big hits from 1984 on the end.
That's it for the audio. If you missed any episodes or just fancy sifting through the now 360 mp3s that have featured during the series I will be keeping them all available for a few months at least. You can find them all at this link. Or possibly this one.
I haven't compiled the 200 videos so if you want to watch them you'll have to wade your way through them manually, but I have added a few of my personal favourites from the series below to see us out.
Many thanks to all of you who commented and contributed, extra thanks to Charity Chic for suggesting the series title, and the biggest thanks of all to all the wonderful African musicians out there. You make the world a better place.
I popped into a charity shop on Sunday on my way back home from the football. A short time later I popped out again, 49p lighter but with a copy of "Ballads Of The Book" in my hand.
"Ballads Of The Book" was released in 2007 and was put together by Roddy Woomble of Idlewild. He had the bright idea of getting assorted Scottish authors and poets to team up with equally assorted Scottish musicians. He managed to talk the likes of Alasdair Gray, Ian Rankin, Ali Smith and various Folkies, Fannies and Arab Straps into taking part.
It is a bit of a mixed bag. On first listen it is the folkies' efforts that stand out, including the two below - Karine Polwart and King Creosote, in collaboration with Edwin Morgan and Laura Hird respectively.
Earlier on Sunday I had learned that my godfather has passed away the day before. When I was a child he always sent me a selection of books on my birthday, and at least part of the pleasure I still take in reading is down to that. So I'll dedicate this post to him. RIP Ray.
Those of you who labour under the mistaken belief that there is some sort of guiding intelligence behind this blog may have thought an African Odyssey/ Single Song Sunday mash-up was inevitable at some point. You would be wrong.
The idea only came to me on Thursday night on my way home from a gig by the current iteration of Somalia's greatest funk machine, Dur-Dur Band (as featured during our visit to Somalia back in August) and guests. The show itself was excellent, and is up there with Nana Benz do Togo and Sahra Halgan in my list of Top 3 Mandatory African Gigs of the Year.
Anyway, while on the bus I remembered the Double Durs had covered Fela Kuti's "Lady" on their "Berlin Session" album. Then I remembered that various other big names had done so as well. Hence this post.
We start with Fela's impeccable original and follow it with covers from South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana and Somalia. All the artists have already featured on our African odyssey so I won't drone on about them again here.
As for the videos, you may recognise Shingai Shoriwa as the former singer with Noisettes. She hails from London but both her parents are Zimbabwean so she gets in on those grounds.
After a journey that started over 18 months ago we finally arrive at our final destination. This is not the final post in the series though. There are two more to come - one themed and one tying up some loose ends - before we can shake the dust from our shoes and settle down to enjoy a refreshing glass of Zambezi lager.
For this last leg we have made the short trip over the river named after the lager from Zambia to Zimbabwe. Like so many of the countries we have visited on our odyssey it is one with a troubled political history but a rich musical heritage.
In our recent post on Zambia the 1970s Zamrock scene featured heavily. There wasn't an equivalent Zimrock scene on anything like the same scale, but there were a few bands who latched on to the heavy new sound from the north. One of these was Wells Fargo from Bulawayo whose members included the likes of the magnificently named Never Mpofu and Handsome Mabhiza.
Fortunately the good folks at Now-Again took no notice of Mr Mpofu's subliminal messaging and a few years ago they released an excellent compilation of the band's mid-1970s singles called "Watch Out!". That is where you can find our opening feast of funk.
Zimbabwean music really came into its own in the 1980s with jit bands like The Bhundu Boys and The Four Brothers rightly gaining international recognition. All you hipsters will be familiar with them already which is why they are not included apart from a video (I couldn't leave them out completely).
Back home jit was often overshadowed by sungura and soukous, but collectively Zimbabwean musicians in the 1980s and 1990s were making some of the best pop music ever to emerge from Africa. The next four selections all feature artists from the golden age.
Safirio Madzikatire was a comedian and musician and quite a character by all accounts. Highlights of this list of his achievements include using his wife as collateral during a particularly frenetic gambling session and being regularly deserted by his bands for reasons unspecified. The list rather understates the excellence of the singles he released with the Sea Cottage Sisters in the 1980s, of which this is one.
System Tazvida formed the Chazezesa Challengers in the early 1990s having previous played as a sideman with various well-known bands. His own band blended elements of sungura, South African mbaqanga and traditional music and enjoyed great success locally until his untimely death in 1999 aged only 30. Today's track dates from 1995.
One of the bands that System that system used to play with were the Khiama Boys, formed in 1984 by Nicholas Zakaria. One of the leading exponents of 'pure' sungura, the band survived a split in 1997 when co-leader Alick Macheso went off in a huff to form his own band and were still making excellent music as recently as 2017. This is from their 2003 album "Munomgedzo".
Admire Kazenga's career began in the early 1990s but it was not until he moved to Harare from rural Mashonaland up near the border with Mozambique that his career took off. "Auntie Rhoda" was a massive hit for him and the lads in 1996. He was another to leave us far too soon, passing away at 34 in 2004.
As good and as many as Zimbabwe's musicians and bands were back then there was (and is) one man who stands above them all and bestrides the local music scene like a colossus - the great Thomas Mapfumo.
Mr Mapfumo's early career with the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band and the Acid Band had already established him as a force to be reckoned with - the Acid Band's 1978 album "Hokoyo!" being a particular highlight - but it was the creation of his patent Chimurenga sound with Blacks Unlimited that took him to another level entirely.
I found it almost impossible to choose just one track to represent Mr Mapfumo's music. In the end I opted for this 1981 single but Global Press Music have reissued a lot of his back catalogue at a mere $4 an album. Personal favourites include "Chimurenga For Justice" (1986), "Toi Toi" and "Zvichapera" (both 2002). I would encourage you to check out the Global Press Bandcamp page as there are also lots more top quality Zimbabwean albums to be found there at the same price.
One of the features of Mr M's music over the years has been the use made of the mbira, a type of thumb piano used by the Shona people. One of the leading exponents of the mbira was Dumisani Maraire who was responsible for introducing it to North America. His son Tendai is the main man in Chimurenga Renaissance, based in Seattle but committed to honouring and updating Shona culture. This track comes from their 2020 album "Wona Baba Maraire" which features the mbira extensively.
And so to the MAR slot. Man Soul Jah (Joseph Nhara to his Mum) was a regular fixture on the Zim reggae scene in the 1990s and early 2000s before apparently packing it all in. He reemerged last year by releasing three new albums at the same time, his first recordings for 17 years. This track comes from "Shine Jah Light". The other two albums are "Mr Government Man" and "Mhoroi Chigwa".
Announcing his return his PR company stated that "with unwavering defiance, Man Soul Jah is poised to etch his name into history's sacred walls by orchestrating a triumphant symphony of courage, conviction, and creativity.” While I suspect history's sacred walls will remain largely unetched upon on this occasion, "courage, conviction, and creativity" is an apt description of many of the musicians we have featured during the series.
We will start the video section with someone I once spent an enjoyably boozy evening with in swinging Shoreditch after he admired the sonar equipment for repelling rats that I happened to have on my person at the time. You had to be there really.
And be sure to pay attention to Jonah Moyo's pan-African message in the second video, which has happier news from Zimbabwe's neighbour to the south than Zeke does.
It has been thirty years since Michael Franti wound up Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and launched his new direction which he once described using this vegetable analogy: "The big problem with Disposable Heroes was that it was a record people listened to because it was good for them - kind of like broccoli. I want Spearhead to be more like sweet potatoes".
The first batch of sweet potatoes came piping hot out of Mr Franti's creative ovens in September 1994 in the form of Spearhead's debut album "Home". I bought it at the time but that copy has long since gone the way of all flesh. So when I saw one going for £1 in a charity shop recently I snapped it up. I'm very glad that I did, it is even better than I remember.
Last week Mister F and I went up to the Shacklewell Arms in London's trendy Dalston to see the young American noise-a-teers Laurel Canyon.
According to the blurb for their self-titled debut album "the guitars are drenched in an Asheton worshipping haze, melded alongside a Velvets chug and mid-to-late 80s Pacific Northwest guttural/ primal howl... this is American primitive music at its most powerful".
Now I don't know about any of that but they make a splendid racket and deserved a more responsive crowd than they got. Go and cheer them on if they pass through your town.
I have teamed them up with an earlier Laurel to pad things out a bit (not that anything Mr Aitken did could ever be dismissed as padding),
From Younng American Noise-a-teers to Young New Mexican Puppeteers - not Tom's original but a German Version for George and Mister F. They know what they did.
We have arrived at the penultimate destination in our musical tour of Africa. And a fine one it is too - Zambia.
Normally in this series I try to come up with a selection that spans the musical generations of whatever country we are in, but not this time. Apart from the MAR there is nothing in the audio section less than 35 years old. That is not to suggest that there has been nothing decent since 1989, just that I already had so much good Zambian music from the 1970s and 1980s in my collection that I did not feel the need to go searching further afield.
You can blame that on Zamrock, the heavy rock sound that swept the nation back in the 1970s. Regular readers may remember me raving about it in the past, and I know some of you went off and picked up Volume 1 and Volume 2 of "Welcome to Zamrock!" put together by the good folks at Now-Again Records. The rest of you should do so just as soon as you finish here.
From Volume 1 we bring you the great Chrissy 'Zebby' Tembo with a track originally released on his 1978 album "Heavy Connection". Chrissy was the drummer with The Ngozi Family, of whom more anon, and the rest of the band backed him on this and his earlier, equally excellent album, "My Ancestors".
On Volume 2 you can find The Peace, although not this particular track. Fortunately Now-Again did it again when they reissued their 1975 album "Black Power" last year. I have opted for the title track but the whole album is worth having. It has some soul and blues-rock influences that make it stand apart from most of the other Zamrock bands of the time. Some tracks sound like Steve Miller back when he was still good.
Its time to cast your mind back to the paragraph before last. You may remember me mentioning the Ngozi Family, whose 1977 album "45,000 Volts" would probably have been featured today if I hadn't plugged it heavily when it was reissued. Paul Ngozi was the guitarist and leader of the Family and he also had a successful solo career before his untimely demise in 1989 aged only 40.
You can find two of his solo albums from the late 1970s on Bandcamp (I would particularly recommend "Lightning And Thunder"). He was still firmly pushing the Zamrock sound at that stage but his music became progressively poppier during the 1980s. Today's track was first released as a 12" single in 1987. I found it on a bootleg CD called "The Definitive Collection of Zambian Legends" that I picked up on a very brief visit to Lusaka a few years ago.
We are sticking with the 1980s for our next two selections. Emmanuel Mulemena was a big name in the Zambian music scene of the 1970s and was one of the artists responsible for popularising the kalindula sound. After his death in 1982 his backing band renamed itself The Mulemena Boys and recorded a tribute album to their former boss. While largely sticking to his formula they spiced it up with one of those exciting new drum machines, which features prominently on this (and every other) track.
It appears the kalindula scene in the 1980s was dominated by a few families. Emmanuel's son John Mulemena led the Masasu Band, whose other main member was one Geasi Bwaluka. Geasi in turn had a younger brother Timothy who led the Bwaluka Founders Band. This track from their 1989 album "Kangumbe" can be found on a compilation that came out a couple of months ago called "Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola" (Kampire being a DJ of some note it seems).
Which brings us to the MAR. I have struggled a bit because while there is plenty of good Zambian reggae very little of it is available to download. I intend no disrespect to the estimable MILZ (whose 2017 album "The Teacher" this comes from) when I say that he would not have been my first choice. It is still a nice tune though.
If any of you have looked at the title of this post and thought to yourself "surely he can't inflict that song on us" - oh yes I can. And worse.
But that is for later. First we must deal with the business of the day.
I don't think it will be seen as courting controversy to say I'm not a big fan of those archive boxed sets that ask you to stump up lots of money for multiple (and usually not as good) versions of songs that you already have, even when they are from artists I like.
Take for example Volumes 3 and 4 of Joni Mitchell's Archives series that between them cover the period 1972 to 1980. Volume 3 came out last year, Volume 4 last month. The combined price is £125 for eleven discs. For that you get six different live versions of "Big Yellow Taxi" which is probably at least five more than anyone needs.
That is not to say there isn't some good stuff tucked away in there. I really enjoyed the early demos of songs that ended up on "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" and "Hejira", my favourite Joni albums along with "Blue". I would happily buy a double album with just them on (which is sort of what I ended up doing by downloading the individual tracks).
Here are a couple of those demos, one each from Volumes 3 and 4 and one each from the two aforementioned albums, with the title track of "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" added on - it seems that it was originally envisaged as a medley with "Coyote".
... with an extra special treat just for George. After a less than stellar solo career as Andy Andres, which included a German language version of the Paul Evans smash, young Andreas Lebbing became the lead singer of top pop act Wind under his real name.
The Wind of change paid off for him. In 1987 they took "Lass die sonne in dein herz" to second place in Eurovision behind Johnny Logan. Feast your eyes on the lady with the keytar and the enormous shoulder pads of the man playing the steel drums. And, yes, that is indeed one half of the future Milli Vanilli showing he could mime guitar playing as well as he could mime singing.
Wind had previously finished second in 1985, and remain the only act to finish second twice, but that was before Andreas joined them.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And that man is King Jammy.
Just as the world seems on the verge of collapsing, the great man comes riding to the rescue with a brand new album called "King Jammy's Unites The Nation With Dub". Having successfully ended the pandemic with his 2022 album "King Jammy Destroys The Virus With Dub" he will be hoping to repeat the trick with this one.
The album comes out this Friday. Vinyl copies are already available for pre-order. There's no sign of the digital version yet but no doubt it will be up on his Bandcamp page in time for Bandcamp Friday next week.
The good folks at Greensleeves very kindly sent me an advance copy in the mistaken belief that I am some sort of mover and shaker (I'm not but keep it quiet, I don't want them to find out). The first track below is a sneak preview of the new record. I have teamed it up with a couple of golden oldies.
According to the United Nations there are 54 countries in Africa, yet there will be 55 posts in this series. This is the reason why.
The territory known as Western Sahara is the one remaining colony in Africa. Initially occupied by Spain in the 1880s, the Spanish handed it over to Morocco in 1975. It has been blocking independence ever since - the Sahrawi people are still waiting for the referendum that was meant to take place in 1992 - despite political pressure and the military efforts of the Polisario Front, who control about 30% of the territory.
Although only two countries have ever recognised Morocco's claim to Western Sahara, one of them being the US under the previous Trump presidency, there is no sign that the Sahrawi people will get the self-determination they want any time soon. Bad news for the estimated 150,000 Sahrawi (almost 40% of them) living in refugee camps in Algeria, many of them since the 1970s.
Despite the small population and the difficult conditions in which they live the Sahrawi have produced some amazing music. None more so than the mighty Mariem Hassan, one of best female singers I've ever heard and someone I have raved about many times on these pages. She only recorded three solo albums before her premature death from cancer in 2015. Today's selection comes from her third and final album " El Aaiun Egdat".
Before going solo Mariem had spent many years as the lead singer of El Wali who were essentially the Polisario Front house band and through whose ranks many fine singers have passed. A few years ago the always excellent Sahel Sounds reissued their 1994 album "Tiris". It really is a must have.
The line-up of El Wali that recorded that album does not include either Mariem Hassan or Dighya Moh-Salem, who also sang with them for a while. These days she lives in exile in Paris and fronts her own band. Their album "Leflij" came out just last month. Hot off the press, here is their tribute to the man who brought you such hits as "Boombastic" and "It Wasn't Me".
Group Doueh hail from the port city of Dakhla. Led by guitarist Salmou "Doueh" Bamaar with various friends and family members in tow, I saw them live in 2011 and found it a bit much at the time but have warmed to them since. They are not your typical desert blues band, more of a desert blues band that for some obscure reason has chosen "I Looked Up" era Incredible String Band as its blueprint. See what you make of this track from their 2012 album "Beatte Harab".
For a more conventional desert blues sound you could do a lot worse than give a listen to Aziza Brahim. Born in one of the Algerian refugee camps in the 1970s but now based in Spain. Her latest album "Majwa" came out in March this year but this track comes from her 2016 record "Abbar el Hamada".
Slipping smoothly into the MRV slot are Tiris, an eight-piece ensemble formed following a talent competition in the refugee camps in 2005 (making them the Sahrawi One Direction or something). Their debut - and possibly only - album "Sandtracks" came out a couple of years later. While not primarily a reggae band, the album does include the splendid Saharan skank of "Aid Istiqal".
On the last two Sundays just past I have been to see two of my favourite songwriters in two very different venues.
The Sunday before last found me and Mr F heading up west to the la de da London Palladium to enjoy an evening in the company of the great Ron Sexsmith. Ron has been over recording his latest album at Abbey Road and fixed up a few gigs as part of an extended 60th birthday tour.
The Palladium being a proper theatre we were treated to two sets, which gave Ron more time to play and the chance to look beyond the normal repertoire. The result was a truly career-spanning selection, from a song he wrote when he and the drummer met while working in a courier company 40 years ago that they first played at the office Xmas party right up to a song that is lined up to be on the new album.
With the added bonus of a brief guest appearance by Nick Lowe - as you can see in this photo if you peer hard enough - an excellent evening was had by all.
It was another excellent evening last Sunday. This time it was a small basement under a pub in Stoke Newington that in a previous life had been The Drop of Andrew Weatherall fame. In an even earlier life was one I used to visit regularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I lived round the corner. In those days they put on the occasional gig upstairs, the basement still being used to store proper beer then.
The star of the show on this occasion was the magnificent Amy Rigby who brought along her own Live Stiffs Tour alumni in the form of bass player and husband Wreckless Eric (not pictured so you'll have to take my word for it this time).
Amy has recently released a new album called "Hang In There With Me" so the set featured quite a few tracks from that mixed in with some old favourites, a version of "The Visitors" by ABBA which really needs to be recorded for posterity and a lovely tribute to her father who died last year.
Ron is now back home in Canada but Amy has gigs in Swansea, Bristol, Hastings and Nottingham between now and the end of the month. If you are in the area go along if you can, you'll enjoy yourselves.
Among the many highlights of their respective sets were songs about going back to their home town so we will leave you for now with them and a tune that Ron that played to remind us to try to stay optimistic despite all the nonsense at the moment.
When we were in Uganda earlier in the week I played you a funky track from a compilation album which goes by the snappy title of "Mr Bongo Record Club Volume 1". Here are a couple more that have another link as well.
Amazones de Guinee were an all-female group formed by members of the Guinean military. "Samba" was recorded in Paris in 1983 and appears on their album "Au Coeur De Paris".
The samba is a musical form associated with Brazil, which is where we will find Alipio Martins with his tale of the fanged fish that might give you a nasty nip if you were foolish enough to dip your toe in the waters of the Amazon.
And if that wasn't enough there's a samba, a piranha and another river for you in the videos.
And we have reached Uganda. Musically it used to be seen as a bit of a backwater compared to its some of its neighbours like DR Congo and Kenya, but that has changed over the last ten years or so. After the emergence of Eddy Kenzo as a major pan-African star it is currently a bit of a pop powerhouse.
It is also a country where popular music and politics are inextricably linked. Earlier this year Eddy married the Energy Minister - in UK terms think Ed Miliband weds Dua Lipa - and was appointed an advisor to long-running president (and not very nice man) Yoweri Museveni.
This puts him firmly on the opposite side to fellow big name Bobi Wine who has been imprisoned and beaten up by government forces on a depressingly regular basis since he decided to stand against Museveni in the 2021 elections. A film made about his presidential campaign was nominated for an Oscar this year.
That is enough politics, let's crack on with the music. We will start with the oldest Ugandan track I have. It is a funky instrumental from 1974 by The Rwenzori's, named after the mountain range where many of the members came from. You can find it on Mr Bongo's "Record Club Volume 1" compilation.
One of the first popular music styles indigenous to Uganda was kadongo kamu which means 'one little guitar'. Originating back in the 1960s it was kept alive during the difficult Idi Amin years largely through the efforts of one man, Peterson T. Mutebi. You can read all about him here, and listen to Part 2 of the title track of his 1982 album below.
These days kadongo kamu has largely faded from view and this century the dominant form of popular music has been faster and shinier and heavily influenced by dancehall and afrobeat. There is still plenty of good stuff though as the next two selections show.
Jeff Korondo has been active since the late 1990s and as well as his music career he is the founder of an NGO called Music For Peace. This track is from 2003. I have not been able to find out any information about Stipper Man's humanitarian activities (or anything else about him) but he makes a jolly noise, as this tune from 2018 shows.
Readers with long memories and impeccable taste may remember me raving about an album called "Electro Acholi Kaboom From Northern Uganda" a couple of years ago. It featured lots of souped up versions of traditional acholi courtship songs and reminded me a lot of our own dear Tsonga Disco.
That album seems to be unavailable now but you can still get hold of a collection by Otim Alpha who was featured on it and was one of the pioneers of the scene. His album was released by the excellent Nyege Nyege Tapes label based in Kampala whose catalogue is worth checking out.
There is plenty of very good 'conventional' reggae from Uganda that I could have chosen for the MAR slot but I could not resist the charms of the Entebbe Eek-A-Mouse himself, Mr. Mankwa. Described as "a Ugandan Gibberish Dancehall Artist from the 90s" on the blurb for his "Saba Saba Sounds" EP, he is also the subject of a three-part documentary you can find on YouTube.
Eddy Kenzo may have fallen in with a bad crowd of late but his string of hits from 2014 still put a smile on my face when I hear them, so we'll start off the videos with the song that made his name. In the interest of balance Bobi Wine appears as well.
Normally in this series we finish off with a Mandatory Reggae Version (MRV) of whichever song it is we are featuring - and we will do today. But I think this is the first time that the song in question has itself been a reggae standard. I'm talking about "Johnny Too Bad".
The original version of the song was by The Slickers, whose members Derrick Crooks and Winston Bailey were among the co-writers. It came out in 1970 but only really attracted attention outside Jamaica when it was included on the soundtrack album for "The Harder They Come" a couple of years later.
As for the covers, we start with a couple of men who are not exactly averse to a bit of self-mythologising. You can see why the song might appeal to them. John Martyn included it on his 1980 album "Grace and Danger", but this is an alternative take found on the "Best of the Island Years" box set. Steve Earle put it out as a single in 1997. He was backed by The V-Roys, whose main man Scott Miller went on to do good things as a solo artist.
Obviously the punks have had a bash at the song. I have resisted the charms of the Anti-Nowhere League version to bring you this take by D.O.A., one of the original North American hardcore punk bands who have been around in one form or another since 1978. This is from their 2015 album "Hard Rain Falling". Their lead singer Joey Shithead is now the model of respectability and serves as a city councillor in his home town in Canada (fortunately under his real name).
Following D.O.A. we have The Silencers. Not as I mistakenly thought when I bought it the Scottish band of that name who had a degree of success in the late 1980s but an earlier outfit from Pittsburgh whose 1980 album "Rock 'n Roll Enforcers" includes this version. Rol may wish to note for future reference that Discogs lists eight bands called The Silencers.
We get a bit more mellow next with the mighty Taj Mahal, who covered the song of his 1974 album "Mo' Roots". There are a handful of reggae covers on that album and Aston 'Family Man' Barrett pops up on piano.
Even mellower is Desoto, one of several pseudonyms used by Canada's own Michael Phillips. He has kindly made his back catalogue available on Bandcamp on a 'name your own price' basis. This comes from a very good covers album "Musicians Are Cowards", originally released in 2005 and worth spending some money on.
Next we have a ragged but righteous version by Alex Chilton, released posthumously by Fat Possum on a fine 2020 compilation called "Memphis Rent Party". You can buy it for a bargain $7 on Bandcamp, then head to Discogs to find out who all the performers are.
Just because "Johnny Too Bad" is a reggae song doesn't mean we can skip the MRV. After all, The Slickers' recording is the original not a cover. As you can imagine there are no shortage of options to choose from so I've upped it to two MRVs.
The first is by Neville Staple, which was tagged on to a reissue of his 2002 album "Ska Au Go Go" as a bonus track. The second is the cream of the crop. It is by the great Bunny Wailer and it comes from his 1977 album "Protest". "Protest" is one of my favourite albums of all time. I would say this track is one of the highlights, but they are all highlights.
"They Crowned An Idiot King" was written about George W Bush. 'Idiot' isn't really adequate in this instance but the general point applies. Apart from that I have nothing to add to the wise words of my friend Mr. Dogg.
Cody ChesnuTT made two great soul albums ten years apart. The first was the modestly titled "The Headphone Masterpiece" which came out in 2002. It was a reasonable claim. We had to wait another ten years for the next masterpiece, "Landing On A Hundred". That is the one today's selections come from.
CC - as his friends used to call him until that name was trademarked by a famously litigious Caledonian blogger - released his third album "My Love Divine Degree" in 2017 but hasn't been heard of since. Whatever he is up to I hope he is keeping well.
Other Chesnut(t)s are available. Jerry only had one T and didn't feel the need to capitalise it, but he wrote three classic songs. Well two classic songs and one that has the same name as a classic Leiber and Stoller song, both of which were performed by that Elvis (hence my confusion). Many thanks to Spence for pointing out my error.
My friend Mano has recently shared some new Tsonga Disco albums with me (his finger is much more firmly on the pulse of that particular scene than mine is these days).
Among them is "Khuzani", the latest album by one Florah N'wa Chauke. Florah is a member of the Chauke clan, who are preeminent when it comes to traditional Tsonga music and who have made a big splash on the disco scene. Headed by the mighty Thomas Chauke, we have also featured Themba, Conny, Hammy, G.T. and Patson here in the past.
"Khuzani" is a worthy addition to the Chauke canon, featuring as it does contributions from the Shangaan Svengali Joe Shirimani and his little brother Prince Rhangani. Neither appear on this track from the album, which was selected purely because the title prompted the post.
Earlier this year the nice people in Promoland kindly sent me a copy of "The Three Times", an album by Norwegian band Flight Mode. It might be that Florah's song is a tribute either to them or to the Swiss record label of the same name, although perhaps unlikely.
To provide ballast I have added two top quality tunes starting with the word flight. That's how the magic works folks.
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