A little photography exhibition for you today. It's not a patch on any of JM's marvellous monthly spectaculars, but like them it does have a theme.
During the course of my travels for international espionage unspecified work and pleasure I have been lucky enough to stay in rooms that have views that might politely be described as unconventionally attractive. About ten years ago I started photographing them and posting them all on social media.
Last month I was in Belfast and racked up the 100th view of the series, so I thought I would mark the milestone by sharing some with you. We'll start with the view that brought up the century and follow it with some personal favourites from Paris, Guimaraes and Genoa respectively.
In the unlikely event you want to admire all 100 (now 101) you can find them over at Flickr.
Tucked away in the bowels of Wednesday's post was a reference to a visit I paid to Flashback Records in London's fashionable Essex Road last weekend.
As well as the album by Hukwe Zawose that I featured then I also found two albums by Little Axe in the bargain bin. Based on the assumption that any album on On-U is worth risking £1 on I snapped them up.
The albums in question were "The Wolf That House Built" (1994) and "Hard Grind" (2002). Here is a track from each of them.
My original plan for the videos was to have two videos of songs about axe-wielding, Bob Marley's "Small Axe" representing the supporters and Baris Manco's "Nick The Chopper" the opponents. Baris duly delivered.
But I couldn't find any videos of Bob doing "Small Axe" so I tried looking for the Twinkle Brothers' "Axeman" instead. Again no luck but bizarrely YouTube's algorithm selected the second video below as the fifth best match. And who am I to argue with the algorithms.
Its T time on our tour. T for Tanzania to be precise.
We have had some highs and lows on the odyssey but none to match Tanzania which has the distinction of being the site of Africa's highest and lowest points (the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro and the floor of Lake Tanganyika respectively). And there are lots of good things in between.
Those good things include many groovy tunes. The music of Tanzania has perhaps tended to be a bit overshadowed by that of its neighbours DR Congo, Kenya and Zambia, but it deserves to be heard. So let's crack on!
We will start with the greatest band that never was, or at least the greatest name for a band that never was. Back in 1975 the Vijana Jazz Band were riding high in the charts and were very keen to get their new material on the market, but that enthusiasm was not shared by their record company who wanted to finish milking the current singles first.
So the band popped over to Nairobi, recorded some tracks and found someone who was able to persuade the record company it was a new band and get the record released that way. The name of that imaginary band? Why, Koka Koka Sex Battalion, of course. You can find the Sex Battalion tracks plus other Vijana Jazz Band releases on this 2011 Sterns compilation.
You will have spotted that the Battalion boys were heavily influenced by the rumba rhythms rolling over the border from DRC. The same is true for many other Tanzanian bands from the 1970s to the present day. One such example is Twanga Pepeta International (sometimes to be seen without the International and sometimes called the African Stars Band, making them almost as confusing as the Sex Battalion). Formed in 1994, the shiny little number is from their 2006 album "Password".
Not everyone was lured by the shimmering guitar sound back then in the 1970s though. Some like Sunburst looked further west and south, taking their inspiration from the funky sounds emanating out of Nigeria etc and the Zambian rock scene.
They were only around for a few years but made some great music in that time. In 2016 Strut records released their complete recordings on a compilation called "Ave Africa". The track I have chosen was originally a B-side in 1973. Those were the days when they still had proper B-sides.
All the acts featured so far hail from mainland Tanzania, so we should probably pop over to Zanzibar to see what is happening there. Well, Siti Muharam for one, whose 2020 album "Siti Of Unguja" is worth buying for the cover alone. Her great-grandmother, Siti Binti Saad, was the first East African singer to be recorded nearly 100 years ago and was credited with popularising taarab music. Siti Muharam made this album to help to preserve her legacy and does so magnificently.
Sticking with current female performers we follow that with the title track from "Maisha", the debut album from the Zawose Queens released last year. The Queens are sisters Pendo and Leah Zawose and this is their take on the traditional polyrhythms and polyphonic singing of the Gogo people based mainly in the Dodola region of the country. I refuse to bow to demands to refer to them as Gogo girls.
Like Siti Muharam, the Queens have an impressive musical lineage. Their late grandfather was Hukwe Zawose, the most famous exponent of the Gogo musical tradition. I had not originally planned to include him in this post, but when I paid a visit to Flashback Records in Islington last weekend I found a copy of his album "Chibite" in the bargain bin. I took it as a sign.
"Chibite" came out in 1996 on Real World and is pretty much a one man show. Dr Zawose handles vocals, thumb piano, fiddle, flute and ankle bells and is helped out only by Charles Zawose (who I think is his son) on harmonies and all-important second thumb piano.
And so to the MAR slot. This time it goes to dAbo Mtanzania. I am not sure why he chooses to capitalise the A - perhaps he was named after former Manfred Mann singer Mike d'Abo? Whatever the reason, here is is with a track from last year's "Undisputed" album.
We will start off the videos with one of the more obscure Tanzanian performers after which I will try to pander to your more populist tastes. So please all join me in giving a warm 27 Leggies welcome to Farrokh Bulsara from Stone Town in Zanzibar.
The tedium of real life work has been draining my creativity of late. So in the absence of any original thought I decided to jump on the Monday's Long Song bandwagon.
To give things a slight twist I have gone to both ends of the spectrum. Here, then, are the longest and shortest songs currently on my iTunes. Combined they clock in an just under half and hour, although the Bonzos only contribute 2% of the total.
The credit for inspiring today's cornucopia of cool sounds goes to that crazy cat from the Cotswolds, Khayem.
Last Friday being Bandcamp Friday he very thoughtfully provided links to a selection of reggae releases that were available to download for free. I had some of them already but diligently checked out the others.
One of these was "Let's Make Waves", a truly splendid EP by an outfit called Creation Rockers. Originally released in 2012 on the defunct Springline label, it was reissued in 2022 with some extra tracks by the Dubphonic label in Cyprus. I have gone with the title track but could have picked pretty much any one of them.
I have not been able to find anything else by Creation Rockers but some international man of mystery style sleuthing - i.e. reading the blurb - revealed that the leading lights were Brad Τurner from the duo Foshan Roots and Alan Blizzard aka Yabass. So here is something from each of them.
There are several Foshan Roots recordings on Bandcamp. This track comes from their album "Sky Warrior Dub", another Dubphonic reissue and another that is available to download for free. Brad now goes by the name of The Manor and churns out reggae and ska releases on a regular basis from his studio in swinging East London.
As for Yabass, he has now extended his name and has released a couple of records in recent years - "Year Zero Dubb" in 2020 and the 2023 single featured below.
A final shout out to the other members of Creation Rockers, Drummie Dan and Papa D, whoever and wherever they may be.
And we trundle on. We have crossed over the northern border of South Sudan into Sudan. When is was still a single country before the South gained independence in 2011 Sudan was the largest country in Africa. Even now it is third in size behind only Algeria and DR Congo. We are talking BIG.
Like its regional neighbours Ethiopia and Somalia, Sudan had a thriving music scene in the 1960s and 1970s which came to an end when the ruling regime banned fun and targeted musicians. In Sudan itself this process began in the early 1980s but the full effect was not felt until the introduction of Sharia law by President al-Bashir in 1989.
Things seem to have loosened up in recent years following al-Bashir's overthrow in 2019, but it seems that the only Sudanese music recorded during that thirty year period was in exile, and we will finish off with one such example. Before that we have four tracks from the golden age and two from the groovy new scene.
We will start with a couple of selections from an excellent compilation called "Two Niles To Sing A Melody", released on the Ostinato label in 2018. It is worth having any form but the CD comes with an informative booklet which describes the history of the golden age (and how it came to an end) and includes interviews with some of the featured musicians.
First up is the man considered to be the biggest musical star Sudan ever produced, Mohammed Wardi. Born in small village near the border with Egypt in 1932, he moved to Khartoum in the mid 1950s where he began his recording and performing career.
Mr Wardi went into exile in 1989 but returned home in 2002 where he remained until his death ten years later. This particular song, the title of which means "The Photo" in English, was recorded in 1970 and clocks in at just over nine minutes.
The other chosen track from "Two Niles To Sing A Melody" also dates from 1970. The title translates as "We Don't Know What To Say", which is appropriate as I don't know what to say about the man who performs it. I have found no information about Taj Makki, who doesn't even get a paragraph in the booklet. But the aural evidence suggests he knew how to knock out a cracking tune.
For our next two treats we move across to the ever reliable Habibi Funk label. And what treats they are. The first comes from Sharhabil Ahmed who according to the title the label has given to their collection of his vintage recordings is "The King of Sudanese Jazz". I am in no position to contradict them. Mr Ahmed was born a couple of years after Mohammed Wardi and their careers have some parallels, although Mr Ahmed never left Sudan and made his living as an illustrator during the prohibition.
Sharhabil Ahmed's wife Zakia Abu Gassim Abu Bakr played in his band and was Sudan's first professional female guitarist. I don't know whether she is any relation to Saif Abu Bakr, the singer with our next act The Scorpions. I could have asked him myself on Saturday just gone when he played up the road in Hackney. Unfortunately the first I knew about it was when I Googled him for this post on Sunday. So I just had to content myself with listening to their great 1980s album "Jazz, Jazz, Jazz".
You can read all about Noori, his band and the history and culture of the Beja people here. As for Jantra he apparently "cuts a mysterious figure, a rather unknown quantity even in Sudan, outside of the select few circles which have granted him cult status to perform at their humble gatherings or at street parties far from the gaze of the wider world". But if you happen to find yourself in one of the towns near the Sudan-Ethiopia border keep your eyes peeled for a man with a blue Yamaha keyboard, that might be him.
Finally in the MAR slot we have one of the exiles I mentioned back at the start. Rasha (Rasha Sheikh Eldin to give her her full name) is a musician and actress from Omdurman who emigrated to Spain in the early 1990s. This jaunty little number comes from her album "Let Me Be", released in 2000.
We also have some recent MAR in the final video. The first three videos hail from the golden age and what they lack in high visual quality they more than make up for in charm.
After Friday's attempt to turn a missing Jimmy Reed CD into the subject of a blues song, comments from esteemed readers C and Rol reminded me that I had never followed up on a promise I made to them last year.
That promise was to dig out a demo of "Bedwetter Blues", a previously unreleased future classic from the early 1980s - one might even call it a sleeper hit. With apologies for the delay, I am pleased finally to be able to honour my promise. C and Rol may be less pleased. Further apologies for the poor sound quality.
You can find out more about A Cuddly Pair and how they narrowly missed stardom in my post from July last year. As for the song itself, the singer (who also wrote the song) has asked me to emphasise that the lyrics are not in any way autobiographical.
It seemed appropriate to team "Bedwetter Blues" with another number from the early 1980s. This one came out on Sugar Hill Records in 1983 and may actually be the more ludicrous of the two.
In the words of Waterbed Kev, I can't hold it back, the paint is flowing over...
You can imagine how pleased I was to pick up something billed as "four Jimmy Reed albums on two CDs" as part of one of the regular '3 for £1' offers in our local Buddhist bookshop. But...
[Note to readers: please insert "da da da dum" or other blues riff as appropriate when reading the next bit, and make sure you have your harmonica ready so you can do a solo at the end].
When I woke up this morning/ and I opened up the case/ one CD was missing/ I had tears all down my face.
Now I only had two albums/ When I was expecting four/ Well I'm happy with what I got/ but I'm still left wanting more.
[Harmonica solo]
Well I took myself down to the river, as you do in these circumstances, and after staring into its murky depths for a while a dawning realisation crept over me that two Jimmy Reed albums for 33p is still a pretty good deal, especially when they contain such much-covered classics as "Big Boss Man" and "Baby What You Want Me To Do".
The albums in question are "Rockin' With Reed" (1959) and "Found Love" (1960), and here is a big boffo tune from both of them.
Last Sunday night found me at La Botanique in Brussels. It also found Les Deuxluxes there. This was not a coincidence.
Les Deuxluxes are a hard-rocking male-female duo that comprises Anna Frances Meyer on vocals, guitar and occasional flute and Etienne Barry on guitars and drums (simultaneously - M. Barry operates the drum kit with his feet, having presumably decided that was easier than trying to play the guitar that way). Between them they put on a cracking show.
To keep things nice and simple I have opted for the title tracks of their two albums to date in the audio section. They were released in 2016 and 2020 respectively and you can find them both on Bandcamp. You might want to pay Les Deuxluxes a visit there on Friday. And if they ever pay your town a visit you should go along.
I recently picked up a copy of Warren Zevon's "Learning To Flinch" for next to nothing. Despite being a fan for many years - as I know some of our regular readers are as well - for some reason this album has never previously crossed my path. So I snapped it up.
Released in 1993, "Learning To Flinch" was Mr Zevon's second live album. But unlike 1980's "Stand In The Fire" on which he and band rocked their socks off, on this album it is just the great man on his own recorded at assorted venues in the US, UK, Europe and Australia during 1992.
Among the 17 tracks were three new songs. Two of them subsequently popped up again on "Mutineer" in 1995, but the other never made it on to a studio album. So obviously that has to be the first pick.
For the other selection, how about an 11 minute version of one of the best songs ever written (recorded appropriately in Norway, home of the headless gunner himself)?
The opening track on "Learning To Flinch" is a suitably splendid version of "Splendid Isolation". Here is another one from around the same time on which Mr Z is accompanied by someone called Neil Young (no, I've no idea either). To that I've added two more clips from the same concert, including a cover version I had not expected to find.
I'm away working for a few days at the start of next week. See you on my return.
Welcome aboard, everyone, as the next leg of our odyssey takes us to South Sudan. After spending time here we will head on to its northern neighbour Sudan. The two were a single country until 2011 when 98% of he population of what is now South Sudan voted for independence.
South Sudan is the world's youngest officially recognised independent country, becoming a teenager back in July this year. Its early years have been troublesome with civil war, famine and many other challenges. Let us hope things improve for its citizens as it approaches adulthood.
When preparing this post I did some research to try to identify artists from previous generations born in Juba or the other towns and cities in South Sudan, but failed dismally. So all today's tunes date from the last 15 years or so.
We'll start with Mary Boyoi, who spent part of the 1990s in refugee camps in Ethiopia as a result of the civil war in Sudan, before returning home in the 2000s to undertake relief work and become a campaigner for independence.In 2009 she released "Election Jai" ("the elections are coming") and actually stood as a candidate herself.
Mary is still recording and judging by some of the videos on her YouTube channel has reinvented herself as a bit of a saucepot in recent years. Whether this has helped or hindered her political career I don't know.
Next up is Emmanuel Jal, probably the best known of today's artists. Like many of those featured in earlier legs of the journey his life story is quite extraordinary. He was a child soldier from the age of eight before being adopted by a British aid worker and smuggled out of the country to Kenya where he was educated.
It was in Kenya that he began his recording career in 2004 and he has gone on to enjoy a degree of global success, helped in part by being the subject of a documentary called "War Child" in 2008. Today's selection comes from an EP released in 2010 and was included on a 2012 album called "Sudan Votes Music Hopes Remixes" in 2012, which is were I found it. I can also recommend "Ceasefire", his collaboration with Adbel Gadir Salim, a renowned oud player from the north.
Ajak Kwai's biography starts in the same way as Mary and Emmanuel's, being displaced because of the civil war. She spent eight years in Egypt where she started performing before emigrating to Australia around the turn of the century. I have chosen a track from her 2008 album "Come Together". You can find that and her 2021 EP "Red Sands" on Bandcamp.
Gordon Koang is another South Sudanese who emigrated to Australia, albeit more recently. He happened to be there in 2013 putting on some shows for the local expats when renewed conflict broke out back home and he applied for refugee status. His music is based on the traditional music of the Nuer people. This song comes from his 2020 album "Unity".
All of which brings us to John Frog. No relation to Kermit, Crazy or the members of Paul McCartney's chorus, he was given the nickname "aguek" (meaning frog) by his parents due to him being a breech birth baby. He burst onto the scene in 2018 with "Guondo Sakit", jumping up to the top of the charts across East Africa (you know, like what a frog would do). I can do no better than bring you the hit.
We finish, as is only right and proper, with our far-famed Mandatory African Reggae slot. Barnabus Samuel is a bit of a polymath, describing himself as an artist, songwriter, activist, author, humanitarian and entrepreneur. I can't vouch for his full range of skills but his music is pretty decent. You can find several of his records on Bandcamp. This track is on "Sambara" released in 2021.
Apologies for the appalling pun in the title. No apologies for the music though, which is excellent - some proper soul music from one of the all-time greats, Mr O.V. Wright. We have one track apiece from two of his classic 70s albums, "Memphis Unlimited" (1973) and "The Bottom Line" (1978).
As a bonus I have also chucked into the mix a selection from "Four And Twenty Elders", his gospel album with The Luckett Brothers that was released posthumously in 1981. I can think of at least one regular who will enjoy that.
There aren't many O.V. Wright videos on YouTube but this one is a bit special. It is Mr Wright with the Hi! Records band live in Japan some time in the late 1970s. The picture quality is pretty ropy; if that bothers you close your eyes and revel in the sound.
While in Belfast last week I did my usual Botanic Avenue run (Time Slip records plus six charity shops) and picked up a fair number of goodies.
Among them was "Lost In The Former West", the fifth and final album by The Fatima Mansions that came out 30 years ago. Like everything else by the late great Cathal Coughlan it is well worth a listen.
As much as I like The Fatima Mansions I have really always been more of a Microdisney man which probably explains why I have picked one of the mellower tracks for you along with their cover version of the old Walker Brothers song.
We'll hand the video slot over to J.D. Souther who left us a couple of days ago. When you got him away from The Eagles he could knock out some top tunes. RIP Mr Souther.
Our journey through Africa is taking a slight detour today to visit a country we inadvertently drove straight past - Sierra Leone.
We should have gone there directly from the Seychelles but I foolishly deleted my list of Sierra Leonean artists from the document I have been using to plan posts and by the time I noticed we were already in South Africa. Many apologies to all concerned. Better late than never, we have now arrived and I hope you will agree it was worth the wait.
We'll start in the 1970s, an era when big bands and orchestras bossed the scene all over West Africa. We have featured some of them on our earlier visits to the likes of Benin and Senegal so it seems only right that we should do the same in Sierra Leone.
The band in question is the mighty Afro National. If you buy only one greatest hits album by a Sierra Leonean band from the 1970s this week make it their "African Experimentals (1972-1979)". It includes today's track, first released in 1972 on their self-titled debut album.
One of Afro National's friendly local rivals back in the day was Muyei Power aka Orchestre Muyei. A popular live act across the region, they made very few recordings before splitting up in 1979. But somehow in 2014 Soundway Records managed to track down some sessions that the band had done while touring in California in 1976 and released them as "Sierra Leone in 1970s USA".
Next we turn to the man considered by many to be the king of palm wine music, the late great S.E. Rogie. Palm wine evolved in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the first half of the last century when local musicians fused traditional melodies with calypso rhythms learnt from visiting sailors, becoming popular in the 1950s and in turn being an influence on the development of highlife music.
Mr Rogie started recording locally in the 1960s and later in life lived first in San Francisco and then London. It was during this period that he really started getting recognised beyond Sieera Leone and neighbouring countries. This track comes from his 1991 album "The New Sounds of S. E. Rogie", recorded three years before his death. That particular album is not on Bandcamp but you can find his final album and two volumes of his 1960s recordings there.
From palm wine we move to bubu, the traditional music of the Temne people from northern Sierra Leone. Janka Nabay took it on himself to modernise the sound, and after emigrating to the US in the early 2000s to escape the civil war released a number of albums on Luaka Bop and other labels before sadly passing away in 2018. Today's selection comes from 2012's "En Yay Sah".
You often hear tales of musicians overcoming hardships before achieving success, but few have had to ensure quite as many as Sorie Kondi, as his biography explains. A blind street musician, a chance encounter with an American recording engineer gave him the chance to have his music heard by a wider audience, a chance he grabbed with both hands. This track is from his 2013 album "Thogolobea". You can also find some more recent recordings (as The Kondi Band) on Bandcamp.
Remember what I was saying about Sorie Kondi facing more hardship than most? Well since typing that I have learnt that Mash P, the man occupying the MAR slot in this post, was not just a street youth but a child soldier in the civil war. This possibly tops Mr Kondi. Either way, Mash P's experiences certainly entitle him to ask "Mr President, Wat Ar Gwan?" (featured below and the title track of his 2016 album).
I cannot confirm whether the P stands for potatoes.
I am back in the saddle after a very enjoyable break on the Antrim coast. I would recommend it as a place to visit. In the unlikely event that anyone is interested my holiday snaps are on Flickr.
I have also managed to fit in a couple of gigs since I was last here. On Friday just gone we were up in London's fashionable Walthamstow to see the mighty Sahra Halgan backed by three fuzzed-up funky Frenchmen.
I did a feature on Ms Halgan a month back so won't repeat all that now. Suffice to say that she and the band put on an excellent show and if you haven't already bought her current album "Hiddo Dhawr" then you really should. Only the willfully perverse would not enjoy it.
The Friday before found me in the back room of the House of McDonnell public house in Ballycastle (Wee Tom's to the locals) enjoying Eleanor Dunsdon and Gregor Black's slightly skew-whiff take on the traditional music of Scotland and Ireland.
As you can see they use the conventional folk instrumentation of harp and drums but do some interesting things with it. Think Pentangle with a harp replacing the guitars and double bass and you will be on the right sort of lines.
Eleanor and Gregor are based in Glasgow where they no doubt hang out with Charity Chic and all the other cool kids. Gregor is from Northern Ireland and his parents, who I had a nice chat to, have been acting as roadies for their first Irish tour.
Eleanor and Gregor currently have an EP out which I would encourage you to investigate. It is called "Let No Man" and I have added a sample below along with one from Sahra Halgan's album.
So it turns out I completely missed out a country on our African odyssey (apologies to the good folks of Sierra Leone, it will be put right). It is one of a number of signs recently that I could probably do with a break.
It is fortunate then that I am off on holiday tomorrow. I will be spending a week or so wending my way along the Antrim coast and then a night in a neat little town they call Belfast before heading home.
Among the places I am planning to visit are Giant's Causeway - hence the Taj Mahal song - and Rathlin Island. It was from Rathlin that Marconi and pals sent the world's first commercial wireless telegraphy message in 1898, so a track from Thomas Dolby's "Golden Age Of Wireless" album seems apt.
It is also apt because we went to see Mr Dolby in action the weekend before last. It was one of three gigs I have been to in the last fortnight, all very different but all very good. The others were by Lola Kirke and leading purveyors of souped up traditional Indonesian songs Nusantara Beat, so I have added a number from both of them as well.
To reach Rathlin you the ferry from Ballycastle and I will be spending a couple of nights there. If I had been in Ballycastle last week I would have been able to join the fun at the annual Ould Lammas Fair. I missed that but will buy some dulse and yellowman if there is any left. No, not that Yellowman.
That's it for now. I'll be back here towards the end of next week. Stay groovy until then.
In belated recognition of Sir Elvis Costello's 70th birthday earlier in the week here are a couple of tracks from his 1986 album "King Of America". It is one of my favourite albums of his and a fine reminder of when he went by the name of Mr Show.
It also gives us the excuse to lead off the videos with what is not just the best cover version of a song from "King Of America" but one of the best covers of anything ever in the whole world.
If you are expecting the usual rigorously researched and meticulously mixed playlist today you are out of luck. It is not because I don't care about the music of South Africa, but because I care too much.
By way of background, my family emigrated to South Africa in the early 1970s. I moved back to the UK in 1979 and have been here ever since but a lot of my family are still over there and I visit them at least once a year. As a result I have acquired a huge amount of South African music over the last 50 years or so.
I set off with the intention of trying to bring some order to the chaos, but even after rigorous cutting and hiving off the stars of Tsonga Disco into a separate post I was left with a 'shortlist' of around 100 artists. So then I gave up and just picked 12 songs I like. I make no claims that my selection is remotely representative of the South African music scene. It isn't.
Today's tracks are mostly from the last century (but then so am I). There is more pop, soul and jazz than traditional music. Only Hugh Masekela and Brenda Fassie have any sort of international profile, while some of the others are barely known even in their own homes. And for the MAR slot I have ignored the late great Lucky Dube and gone for a poet and the Kalahari Surfers.
Where the artist in question has music on Bandcamp I have added a link under their name. Other than that you are on your own.
The videos are a bit more orderly. We start with what I believe is still the biggest-selling South African single in Europe and follow that with what I personally consider to be two of the best pop records ever made (watch out for the birds in the Mahotella Queens video). Then we have someone I went to school with, and finally Lucky Dube because I felt bad about denying him the MAR slot.
Later in the week we will reach the 45th stop in our African odyssey and it is a big one. I probably have more music from South Africa that from anywhere else other than the UK and US and we will not have the time to travel down many of the byways and even some of the highways.
Long-standing readers may recall that one of the reasons I started this blog way back in the mists of time was to promote one particular style of South African music, Tsonga Disco. So I thought I should do a separate post dedicated to the stars of that scene rather than risk missing them en route. I will leave it to CC to decide whether this forms part of the official canon or not.
The Tsonga or Shangaan ethnic group are found mostly in the Limpopo province in north-east South Africa and southern Mozambique, although as with the other ethnic groups in South Africa many in the current and earlier generations moved to Johannesburg in search of work.
It is generally agreed that the founding father of modern Tsonga music is the late General M.D. Shirinda, who was the first to merge traditional Tsonga call and response singing and rhythms with modern instruments in the 1970s and who together with his backing singers the Gaza Sisters can be heard on Paul Simon's "Graceland".
Two camps then developed, the traditionalists who more or less stuck with the General's formula and those who headed in more of a poppier direction (Tsonga Disco). The undisputed king of the traditional wing is Thomas Chauke who is still going strong at 72 with roughly 40 albums under his belt.
On the Tsonga Disco side the official lineage is: Paul Ndlovu, who shone brightly but briefly in the mid 1980s before he died in a car crash in 1986; Peta Teanet (1988-96), who also died prematurely when he was shot by a policeman; Penny Penny (1994 to date) and General Muzka (2007 to date).
Papa Penny and General M has both dodged the curse of the disco kings to date, and Muzka has stayed active. Penny had more or less taken up politics full time until the 2013 reissue of his debut album "Shaka Bundu" on Awesome Tapes From Africa led to a revival of interest in his music. He is now dabbling and occasionally performing again.
But perhaps the most important figure in the development of Tsonga Disco in the last 30 years is Joe Shirimani, who is to Tsonga Disco what Giorgio Moroder is to disco.
As well as making great records in his own right Mr Shirimani discovered Penny Penny and co-wrote and produced most of his early records, then did the same for General Muzka and other major artists such as Esta M and Benny Mayengani (who arguably has a claim to be the current king but whose tendency to fall out with and bad mouth everyone he works with including Mr Shirimani makes him hard to praise).
Here is a video from each of them apart from General Shirinda. Astute viewers may spot a passing resemblance between Penny Penny and my own handsome profile in the top corner. Its a coincidence.
I may have mentioned before that I have been a subscriber to eMusic for many years. I wouldn't join now as the current monthly rate is £17 for 40 tracks and all the main indie labels have long since left the platform, but on my historical deal I only pay a third of that and I mostly use it to experiment with some of the considerable amount of African, Asian and Brazilian music on the site.
It was in that spirit of exploration that I invested in a few tracks from "Konkani Songs - Music From Goa Made In Bombay", a compilation on the Trikont label which contains Goan pop songs from the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the artists like Mohammed Rafi were also active in Bollywood, hence the reference to Bombay I assume.
The blurb that goes with the album is very misleading. For example, it claims that konkani is a single musical style whereas it is actually the local language. Wikipedia lists multiple different styles sung in konkani.
It is then claimed that this fictitious single style has its roots in liturgical music introduced to the region in the Portuguese colonial era. Unless they got mariachi bands to accompany the liturgy that doesn't explain Bab Peter.
Best just to revel in the mystery and enjoy the groovy sounds.
I happened to visit Epping at the far end of London's glamorous Central Line one day last week and took the opportunity to pop into some of the local charity shops. One had a small selection of CDs going for 20p each so I took a punt on an album by a 1990s band whose very existence had completely passed me by at the time.
I'm talkin' 'bout Prolapse (to quote a line from the famous 1970s public service announcement featuring the music of Kool & The Gang when they were still kool). They came out of Leicester, although the male singer's accent suggests he hailed originally from fair Caledonia, and released three albums before splitting in 2000.
I bought the third and final album, 1999's "Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes". I wasn't too sure on first listen but second time round I found it growing on me. See what you think. If you like what you hear you can find most of Prolapse's back catalogue, including a couple of Peel sessions, over on their Bandcamp page.
Note to our Spanish readers: The views expressed in "Government Of Spain" should not be assumed to represent the views of 27 Leggies.
I have been waist-deep in African sounds in recent months. As a result I have rather neglected my Single Song Sunday duties. But that Charity Chic fellow did a post last Sunday that has prompted me to get back to work. Thank you for the nudge CC.
The song I have chosen to relaunch the series is the Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell standard "Fever". There are many versions out there and we have selected ten corkers for you today.
Of course for every corker there is an equal and opposite clunker, such as Madonna's monstrosity from 1993 to which no decent person should be subjected. Modern Romance are almost as bad. You won't find any of that sort of stuff here.
We start with the original, and in my personal opinion probably still the best. Little Willie John took "Fever" right to the top of the R&B charts in 1956 with his version which sold over a million copies in the US alone.
Hopping ahead to 1958 we have the great Ms Peggy Lee with what many consider to be the definitive version of the song. It's certainly the one that has spawned the most imitators, almost all of the pale variety.
Fortunately for us there were plenty of artists who realised that copying Peggy was a fool's errand and decided to give the song their own spin. Like the two Latin acts that come next - Mexico's leading garage band Los Johnny Jets with their take from 1966, and Cuba's La Lupe whose vocals in her 1968 version defy description.
In 1971 Zimbabwean blues-rockers Otis Waygood decided to give "Fever" a go. George may wish to note the presence of extensive jazz flute on this version. Whether George will be as impressed by the even more extensive vibraphone solos by Roy Ayers he will no doubt tell us in due course.
Roy's rendition was released in 1979, which seems to have been a big year for "Fever" fans. It was in the same year that old Link Wray took a bash at it and naughty Lizzy Mercier Descloux thought it would be big and clever to swap "fever" for "tumour". Turns out she was right. Slightly late to the party were The Cramps, who included this fine take on the tune on their 1980 debut album "Songs The Lord Taught Us".
As you would expect there were several candidates for the Mandatory Reggae Version. Grant Phabao & Lone Ranger nearly took the coveted spot but in the end I plumped for Susan Cadogan and her 1976 release produced by The Upsetter himself.
Peggy Lee's version may be the definitive version but it was not the most successful in chart terms in the US. That honour belongs to The McCoys of "Hang On Sloopy" fame. They took the song to #7 in 1965 (Peggy only made it to #8).
So here they are to lead out the cavalcade of cool videos. But we've saved to best until last.
From Somaliland to Somalia. Or from one part of Somalia to another part of Somalia if you don't recognise Somaliland as an independent state.
Before we get started can I once again express my gratitude to the good folks at the Ostinato and Analog Africa labels for the great work they do bringing the vintage sounds of the Horn of Africa (and other parts of the continent) to a new audience. Each provided two of today's selections.
I have described in several earlier posts in the series how civil wars and regime changes have brought golden ages of the local music scene to a crashing halt, and such was the case in Somalia in 1991. Fortunately a few radio stations and recording studios were able to preserve some great music from the 1970s and particularly the 1980s.
We are going to give the first half of today's set to the three big bands of that era, starting with Dur-Dur Band who glittered more brilliantly than most on the Mogadishu disco scene in the 1980s.
The band broke up and its members dispersed during the civil war but for the last ten years a UK based lineup featuring many of the original members have been performing and recording on and off. They will be playing at the Barbican in London in December. I have my ticket, you should get yours.
There are a number of original Dur-Dur Band albums available on the Awesome Tapes From Africa and the Analog Africa labels. Today's track comes from the latter's "Volumes 1 and 2" reissue. The reformed lineup last year released an album featuring some sessions they recorded in Berlin in 2019 which is well worth nabbing as well.
Next up we have Iftin Band, formed by the Ministry of Education in the mid-1970s with the expectation that they would play an educational and political role as well as a cultural one (again something we have seen in some of the other African countries we have visited). I can't comment on their educational efforts but the music was top of the class.
Today's selection comes from "Mogadishu's Finest", a compilation of their mid-1980s recordings released by Ostinato. By this time the band were no longer state-sponsored and were playing regularly at the hot spot that was the Al-Uruba hotel where these sessions were also recorded.
From another Ostinato compilation ("Sweet As Broken Dates") we bring you our third and final band. Waaberi Band started in the 1960s as the government-appointed house band of the National Theatre of Somalia, but like Iftlin Band had been privatised by the time they recorded this swinging instrumental in the 1980s. Dig that groovy organ!
Like the other two bands the original Waaberi Band broke up as a result of the civil war, but a rebuilt lineup featuring their latter day lead singer Maryam Mursal released an album called "New Dawn" on Peter Gabriel's Real World in 1997.
Ms Mursal released a solo album called "The Journey" the following year which recounts her escape from Somalia with her children via Djibouti and a refugee camp in Denmark where she was rediscovered. This track is taken from that album.
Back to the 1980s now and also back to Analog Africa with their superbly titled "Mogadisco" compilation. This mighty 1988 cracker from Shimaali & Killer is just one of the many highlights. Shimaali is Shimaali Axmed Shimaali who had a stint in Dur-Dur Band and is one of three singers featured on "Volumes 1 and 2". I have no further information on Killer.
You may have detected a slight hint of reggae on "Hoobeya". Technically it is actually dhaanto, a traditional music associated with the Ogaden clan. There are strong similarities between the two styles, notably that both accentuate the second and fourth beats in the bar.
I strongly suspect that Dalmar Yare is really a dhaanto singer but at the risk of upsetting any MAR purists out there I am putting him in that slot. He describes his music as reggae and that is good enough for me. Today's track is from his 2018 self-titled album.
The next official stop in our African Odyssey is Somalia, but first we are making an unofficial stop in the Republic of Somaliland, a self-declared independent state occupying the northern part of Somalia.
I did not include Somaliland as a stop in the tour as it is not on the UN's list of recognised countries. But neither is Western Sahara and that is going to be part of the tour, so I have arguably been a bit inconsistent. The main difference between them though is that while there are 40-50 countries that recognise Western Sahara as an independent state, none have ever recognised Somaliland.
I won't get into the politics of why that is, because I don't understand them, but in practice Somaliland has been functionally independent since the early 1990s when the Somali civil war led to the collapse of any recognisable form of government down in Mogadishu. Since then the powers that be there seem to have been largely content to leave the good folks of Somaliland to their own devices.
I probably would have just let all of that pass us by and headed straight to Somalia if it weren't for the great Sahra Halgan. A singer and activist who served as a nurse in the war of independence, she would be greatly insulted to be described as a representative of Somalia. But she is far too good not to feature in our African odyssey.
Hence this Sahra/ Somaliland Special. The audio tracks are both from her 2019 album "Waa Dardaaran", and the video is the lead single from "Hiddo Dhawr" which came out a few months ago. Buy them both, you won't be disappointed.
And if you live in or near Norwich, Stroud, Guildford, Manchester, York, Totnes or London, go along and see her when she plays in your town in September. I have my ticket already.
On Saturday evening we popped along for a bit of the free Turning Tides music festival in London's glamorous North Greenwich.
In some respects I wish I had not bothered. The people responsible for the change over between sets were ridiculously slow, taking up to an hour every time. As a result each set was reduced to little more than 30 minutes rather than the scheduled 60.
Then after the gig the tube was temporarily suspended for some reason, which meant we had to queue for ages with the handful of people who had been to see Peter Kay at the O2 before starting the journey home.
On the plus side, I very much enjoyed the truncated performances by Ibibio Sound Machine and our old favourites Girl Ray, so on balance I'm glad I went.
To mark the event here are some songs about tides that don't require you to wait an hour before listening to each one or to submit yourselves to the tender mercies of Transport for London.
I was listening to Victoria Williams' "Loose" album the other day and was shocked to discover that it is 30 years old. Where has the time gone?
"Loose" was Queen Vic's third album and the first after the MS diagnosis that has increasingly limited her ability to record and tour in the years since (although she is still active and was well enough to play a few gigs last year).
I fell in love with "Loose" on first hearing and I am still smitten with it now. Unfortunately not many other people felt the same way at the same time and commercially it did absolutely nothing. Maybe like the Century Plant its time to bloom has yet to come.
If you could only pick one track from the album it would probably have to be "Crazy Mary". Here's the Great Lady performing it live while trying to ignore the strange man in a loud green jacket mumbling away next to her.
After being spoilt for choice last time out in Senegal, I always suspected it would be more difficult to compile a set list for the Seychelles - after all it is the smallest and least populated country in Africa. But I did not think it would be this hard.
I have searched far and wide but only found two sources of Seychellois music online - the always reliable Les Disques Bongo Joe for oldies and a Seychellois label called Noufans for the new stuff.
Those of you who joined us on our trip to Mauritius a few months ago may remember that we mentioned a Bongo Joe compilation called "Soul Sega Sa! Indian Ocean Segas From The 70s". Most tracks on that album are from Mauritius or Reunion but there are two from the Seychelles and they are our first two selections. The other three are from the Noufans catalogue which stretches all the way back to... 2021.
So basically there is a 40 year gap I have not been able to fill. Which is a shame because I am sure the islands must have produced plenty of fine music during that time, including by the 13 singers whose stars hang on the Seychelles' Wall of Fame in the capital Victoria.
I have only been able to find songs by three of the 13 artists and only one of them has made the cut. That is Joseph Louise from the island of Praslin who released his first record in 1976 and had a recording career that lasted over 35 years. He leads things off.
I have not been able to find out anything about the other bad boy from Bongo Joe, Jocelyn Perreau. But he is one of the veteran Seychellois artists whose songs are covered by current hotshot Clive Camille on his album "Gramophone Vol. 01" which came out last year - who knows, it might even be this one.
Our fourth selection topped the Seychelles chart for Molo last year and cemented his comeback after a period away from the music industry (or so it says here).
Also riding high at the moment is the MAR master Gatto who will be headlining at the swanky new Music Stadium in Victoria on 7 September. If you happen to be in the area why not pop along. Claims that Gatto can trace his lineage back to the Black Forest are yet to be verified.
We kick off the videos with the fifth biggest selling song in France in 2005. It spent five weeks at #2 but was unable to displace Crazy Frog's "Axel F" which had a 13 week run at #1. Crazy French! The other videos all feature Wall of Famers.
Links stay up for a month or so. If you are an artist or copyright holder and want me to remove the link, or if you want to get in touch for any other reason, e-mail me on leggies27@hotmail.co.uk.
