Mandatory African Single Song Sunday

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.

"Lady" - Fela Kuti

"Lady" - Hugh Masekela

"Lady" - Manu Dibango (featuring Ray Phiri)

"African Woman" - Gyedu-Blay Ambolley

"Jija Love" - Dur-Dur Band