Molo Africa

Fraternal greetings to two people today.

The first is the mystery person from Ouagadougou who yesterday became our first ever visitor from Burkina Faso. Welcome! To mark the occasion I thought I should post something from my extensive collection of Burkinabe music, which amounts to two albums by Georges Ouedraogo.

Georges has been featured here before, and the previous post gives some biographical detail as well as a couple of top tunes. I am off to Paris for a few days at the end of the week and hope to pick up some more music from Burkina Faso and elsewhere in Francophone Africa while I am there, but in the meantime here's Georges:

"Bembao" - Georges Ouedraogo (from "Gnou Zemes", 2000)

"Mounafrica" - Georges Ouedraogo (from "Tingre", 2007)

The second greeting goes to Joseph, a Kenyan geologist Mr F and I met in the Little Driver in Bow last night. As well as being an expert on gemstones - he disdains rose quartz and other "cheap" stones, presumably on the grounds they are unworthy of his professional expertise - he takes a keen interest in physics and has heartfelt if largely incomprehensible views on Ohm's Law.

I'm not sure I have any Kenyan records but here is the A-side of a single I picked up during a brief stop-over in Nairobi airport some time in the 1980s. It is by an outfit called Fred Tetteh and His Continentals. For many years I assumed Fred was Kenyan but then Google was invented and I discovered that he was (and hopefully still is) Ghanaian.

The record was released on the Dix label, and the sleeve tells us that "Highlife means good life" and exhorts us to "Enjoy Highlife with Dix". The record itself tells us that it is in the Calypso-Samba style and sung in Pidgin English by Andrews Bampoe and Boniface. The composer was one Joe Eyeson. The B-side is a highlife tune called "Nyifra Nyi", sung in Akan. There is no date on the label but I would guess late 60s or early 70s - if anyone knows better let me know.

After all that, here it is:

"Lie Lie Fight" - Fred Tetteh and His Continentals

Video-wise we have nothing remotely relevant to offer you. Instead, as the weekend draws to a close, here is a chance to relive it with Wet Willie. The highlight is the bass guitarist's reaction shot at 0:58.