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.
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