South African Jazz: JAZZ IN AFRICA VOL. 2 (by flatinternational)

 

LINER NOTES

Track I — 12 x 12 (vernacular) 7.28.
Upon my arrival in South Africa, I quickly learned that the twelve-bar blues (called "the twelve") reigned supreme at the local "blows". Somehow, I became fascinated with the relationship of the two musical absolutes — twelve bars in twelve keys and my wife, Terry, decided it should be "twelve by twelve". As Kippie said, "keys are keys wherever you go".

Track 2 — "Mabomvana" (Mackay Davashe) 5.02.
"Mabomvana" literally means "little red" but a free translation would be "hot stuff ". One night at a session, the subject of the number of possible harmonic "solutions" to an original melody arose and I maintained there could be more than one until the composer designated his particular "solution". Kippie agreed, but some of the others doubted it so Kippie played this vernacular piece "Mabomvava" and asked me to work out a "solution." I had never heard the tune before and my solution was based upon a familiar chord chart in F sharp major. This broke Kippie up since he had played the tune for years on a chord chart in B flat major. We decided to record both solutions of the same melody— "Mabomvana" in B flat major and "Johnny's Idea" in F sharp major.

Track 3 — "Johnny's Idea" (Davashe, Mehegan) 3.46.

Track 4 — "Like Someone In Love" (Burke, Van Heusen) 3.31.
This one features Hugh. An advocate of the Beiderbecke — Davis-Baker school, Hugh has developed many of his own personal idioms which already mark him as an original thinking musician in contemporary jazz. His proposed trip to America this winter for study may be the beginning of a major jazz career.

Total Time: 19 mins. 47 sees.


Track I — "Angel Eyes" (Matt Dennis) 11.29.
We decided we needed a "fat" tune to stretch out with and here it is. Kippie's solo, I believe, is one of the great moments of the entire two volumes.

Track 2 — "Yardbird Suite" (Parker) 3.39.
Kippie again with a bow to Parker. Of all the Parker imitators, and they are legion, Kippie seems the most personal and the least imitative. Like Parker, he is short on repertoire and long on the blues, although living where he does justitfies an un-familiarity with tunes that is impermissible in America where fifteen - tune musicians flourish.

Track 3 — "These Foolish Things" (Strachey, Marvell) 4.16
Chris again with a ballad. One learns to really play a ballad last —the most difficult challenge for an improvisor. Chris handles this well with a nod to George Shearing.

Total Time 19 mins. 24 sees.


flatinternational.org 

From Benin: Stanislas Tohon - Koudé Alafia Tchink System

This album is a masterpiece. Totally afrobeat taken from traditional tchinkoume rhythm of Benin that Stanislas Tohon wonderfully modernized. Recorded in Côte d'Ivoire and Produced by famous Papa Disco, the orchestration, the arrangements and especially the density of the recording make this record unique. It is also very rare and hard to find.

orogod.blogspot

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STANISLAS TOHON “Dans Le Tchink Système »

Afro-Soul holy grail by the “Soul Brother From Benin“, featuring the famous “Vis à Vis” band from Ghana and recorded in Kumasi in 1979.

Stanislas Tohon aka Papy Grande was born in the “ Country of the kings ” (Benin), in Abomey 1955. He’s “Chevalier de la legion d’honneur” in Benin for his brilliant musical career.

The famous soul singer from Cotonou started his musical career at the age of 9 , played with the greatest such as Gnonnas Pedro and recorded almost 35 albums. Influenced by the traditional “Tchingoume “ music , he invented his own rhythm called “Tchink Système”, a mix of soul and Beninese traditional rhythm .

“Dans le Tchink Système” is a four track album recorded in Ghana on 24 analog tracks channel  with the incredible “Vis à Vis Band”, included a rare version of his first 7 inch “Africa “  that he recorded a year before with “Les Satelites” from Cotonou.

Sang in Fon, his native language from Benin, this album is a soulful call for peace and unity in Africa, a real definition of Afro Soul music !

This extremely scarce and obscure record is now remastered and stricltly limited to 1000 copies . Official Licence available Dec 10 th 2014 .

Enjoy!

hotcasarecords.com 

Tracklist

A1	Dja Dja Dja	4:46
A2	Yallow2	5:05
B1	O Kou	5:25
B2	Paix Lo.	4:05

The Budos Band - Burnt Offering

For the first five years of their existence, it was a fairly simple matter to take a guess at the title of the next Budos Band recording. That’s what happens when your debut is called The Budos Band and the next two albums are The Budos Band II and The Budos Band III. That’s called establishing a precedent. And so, when the Staten Island “instrumental afro-soul” band announced that their Oct. 21 album would be titled Burnt Offering rather than The Budos Band IV, it was clear that something was up.

Reviews of Budos recordings tend to minimize the amount of growth and transformation that did go on between Budos Band I and III. The three LP’s can’t rightly be called “extensions of the same musical thought”—they’re more like a journey down an increasingly apocalyptic road. Like a high fantasy novel, they begin in a place that is bright and almost (relatively) innocent before growing and multiplying in the audaciousness and opulence of their arrangements. By the end of Budos Band III, there’s a distinct impression that these sprawling funk instrumentals are teetering on the edge, clearly brilliant but moments from spinning out of control. The band is performing music like Bobby Fischer played chess. It may have simply been an unsustainable arc.

And thus, Burnt Offering, which represents a full-on mutation rather than the previous steady evolution of Budos music. It’s 2014, and in the band’s Daptone studio, it would seem guitars are all the rage. Because for the first time, “funk rock” becomes an accurate descriptor for the still-complex musical sprawl, which now evokes the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin right alongside Fela Kuti.
“The Sticks” is a fine example of what to expect, opening with a riff that sounds straight out of Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Trippy keyboard swirls around the fuzzy guitars that are now leading the way, with occasional blasts from the horn section reminding the listener that you’re still listening to a Budos Band recording. “Aphasia” is similar but more segmented, trading off segments between familiar funk and vintage-sounding guitar breakdowns that could have been rescued from the cutting-room floor of some early heavy metal exploration. It’s difficult to say whether those two halves ever truly become a whole.

The most effective example might be “Magus Mountain,” which integrates the guitar arrangements organically with soaring horns to create something closest to the desired funk-rock fusion. The traditional drum kit (gone is the hand percussion) is also significantly more noticeable here than in most other Budos recordings, shouldering a greater burden of providing a strong foundation for guitars and horns to riff upon.

It’s a mostly successful experiment that, in all reality, still retains much of the DNA of The Budos Band’s past triumphs while simultaneously embracing a very specific stylistic addition. The new elements add freshness but simultaneously detract on some level from the band’s uniqueness, the x-factor that only they were able to provide in the past. There are still irresistible dance grooves here, but also more segments that are likely to call for headphone introspection. It might even be safer than that out-of-control feeling on Budos Band III. One can only hope that future Budos Band recordings retain at least this level of their signature sound—it’s entirely too good and too uncommon to discard.

pastemagazine.com 

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After three albums of uniformly excellent, Afrofunk-fueled instrumentals—titled, tellingly, The Budos Band, The Budos Band II, and The Budos Band III—where were the Budos Band to go? As great as their output has been to date, the New York ensemble had more or less painted themselves into a corner. In truth, there were many directions the group could have headed toward on their fourth album, but they dauntingly chose the path of most imaginable resistance: doom metal. Rub your eyes all you want; it won’t change that sentence. The Budos Band’s new album is called Burnt Offering—and from its wizard-sporting cover on down, it draws heavily from the late-'60s/early-'70s well of dark, arcane proto-metal.

To be perfectly clear: This is not your uncle’s Primus-shirted funk-metal. The majority of Burnt Offering is built on the same framework that the Budos Band has always used—elegantly simple guitar, deep pockets of syncopation, and bold shouts of brass—but here it’s been wreathed in the thick organ vamps of the bands that helped inspire metal, namely Iron Butterfly and Uriah Heep. Those looking for kvlt cred won’t find it here, nor should they; the album’s heaviest tracks, like the fuzz-slathered “Aphasia” and the gutbucket-distorted title track don’t come anywhere near the metal orthodoxy of Pentagram, let alone Black Sabbath. This is still Afrofunk of the Fela Kuti faith, with “Tomahawk” being the most horn-splashed and intricately polyrhythmic of the bunch.

When the delicate guitar intro of “Magus Mountain” drops into a propulsive, blown-out low gear, though, it’s as if Sir Lord Baltimore is jamming with Maggot Brain-era Funkadelic. The fidelity is immaculately retro, saturated and reverberating, which lends an even more eerily anachronistic tone to simmering, sinuous cuts such as “Black Hills” and “Turn and Burn”, the latter of which lands the album in some swampy epoch of alternate history. “Into the Fog” more or less says it all; with organ chords transmogrified into haunted-house groans, and monstrous stomps shuffling somewhere between Blue Öyster Cult's “Godzilla” and Fela’s “Zombie”, the song is all meat, zero subtext. Not that an album this earthy needs anything so subtle to get its freaky point across.

Burnt Offering has its own kind of subtlety, and most of it is in the interplay between meter, genre, and mood. When it falls a little flat, on the tame, muted “Trail of Tears” and “Shattered Winds”, it still manages to register as better-than-average Afrofunk with a tasteful layer of filthy hard rock smeared on top. It's not a profound exercise in fusion, and at times it seems the band might be amusing themselves at the expense of being taken seriously. But the most remarkable thing about Burnt Offering is that, at its core, it really isn’t all that much of a departure from what the Budos Band has always done. The neatest trick the album pulls off is in finding the unexplored commonality between Afrofunk and doom metal—deep grooves, murky atmosphere, hypnotic riffs—then playing them with joy and loopy abandon. Spooky, funky, freedom-loving fun: The chance to embrace something like that doesn’t come along often, and it’s to be cherished.

pitchfork.com

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Don’t let that album cover and title fool you. The level of departure here is so slight that the boys could’ve gone ahead and just slapped a roman numeral four on there. The Budos Band’s approach to instrumental funk/soul has always had a touch of the ominous. They reclaim the original grandeur of Beethoven’s Fifth while fitting into the fun and frivolity of how the symphony has been fetishized over time. It’s music for dancing, to be sure, but it contains a mood that sort of hovers over the revelry. It’s looking down on itself from a great height. It isn’t imbued with judgement, necessarily, but a grave sort of knowingness. It feels good in the crowd, bathed in darkness and strange lights. But something is moving us, and we are a little bit scared of the possession. Most dance music uses this feeling as a segue to release. Budos Band just lays in the pocket and glowers with a fierce but composed solemnity.

All grasping pseudo-profundity aside, we’re talking more tasteful deep-funk liberally laden with monster-mashable, Éthiopiques-style keyboard drone. Burnt Offering lets things simmer a bit more here and there, but the record is pretty much business as usual. Despite prominent distorted rock guitar and snatches of discordance, this music is too classy for the b-movie scores that apparently inspired it. When I try to pair what I’m hearing with Argento or Romero films, it feels oddly ill-fitting. Yet the Budos sound is somehow very theme-oriented. It’s just that its foreboding swagger is too potent to take a backseat to a larger presentation. Perhaps their music is the theme to devil-may-care grace itself. That walk and lean and gesture to a world standing still in fearful anticipation.

The momentum of these songs is fearsome, their get-in, get-out run times elegantly restrained. Burnt Offering may not be a groundbreaker, and (as with previous outings) can begin to feel a tad rote if you’re not in the right mood. But this record is nowhere near the neighborhood of inessential. This is your Halloween party record, without a doubt, but really any party with Daptone artists blasting from the speakers is well on its way. So come for the gimmicks if you so choose, but you’ll be staying for the empowering, molten slab-rocking, stentorian fury these guys unfailingly bring time and again. Be sure and move somethin’ while you’re there.

tinymixtapes.com

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Although the first three Budos Band albums (helpfully titled I, II and III) were generally regarded as straight-up Afro-beat and jazz-tinged funk/soul, rock elements did creep into the mix, and in recent years reviews of the instrumental group’s live shows have steadily grown more and more psychedelic. Burnt Offering is the culmination of that evolution, and it’s telling that they opted not to title it Budos Band IV; that mystic sleeve artwork, done by art teacher (and Budos drummer) Brian Profilio isn’t a coincidence, either. They said as much when announcing the record, noting how it “reflects their love of Black Sabbath and Pentagram as much as it does Fela Kuti.”

Indeed, right from the get-go the album proceeds along the aforementioned lines: “Into the Fog” and “The Sticks” both have signature heavy riffs powered by the bass guitar, and although the group’s horn section is equally busy, the tunes’ arrangements suggest a ‘70s rock band utilizing horns rather than a traditional funk ensemble tipping its hat at rock music. The title track recalls vintage Deep Purple, what with its ominous introductory chords followed by the launching of a heavy bassline, gloom-and-doom keyboards and searing/droning lead fuzz guitar all dominant over the horns. And “Magus Mountain” has an unexpected Nuggets vibe to it—speaking of psychedelic—in the way the guitar and organ suggest a garage rock tune with horns added to it. Even the songtitles tilt in this direction: “Aphasia,” “Into The Fog,” “Shattered Winds,” “Magus Mountain,” “Turn and Burn,” etc.

What will be interesting to see is whether the Budos Band’s fanbase will follow ‘em down this path because the group did make its reputation as being one of the more prominent young Afro-beat ensembles to emerge in the recent past. One imagines certain purist fans recoiling and dropping out while a host of newcomers discover ‘em. Regardless, artists fiercely need to experiment and evolve—case in point, another “non rock” group, Latin/funksters Brownout, recently recorded a tribute to Black Sabbath titled Presents Brown Sabbath that’s been earning rave notices—so it’s likely that a combo as talented as the Budos Band will remain a work in progress, unwilling to rest on laurels or sit still for very long.

blurtonline.com

Released on Daptone Records on Oct. 21, Burnt Offering, the new full-length album from The Budos Band, steps a bit away from the dance floor.

It moves toward the ooze of early Black Sabbath. Slithers through the minimalist rhythms of early the West German rock band Can. And swings with freedom similar to Scorpions in their Lonesome Crow fusion phase. While this record is a slight departure from all the Sly Stone and James Brown musical cues, it shines on as a natural progression. As any record collector will tell you, after you sample all the obvious funk Gods, where do you go? To the early metal, that was based in the blues.

As noted in the press release, the title track, “Into The Fog,” was recorded with a Binson Echorec, a classic tape machine used by Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett. With a trumpet solo that references early non-funky, pre-CTI Freddie Hubbard, it sets the tone of the 10-track instrumental record and stands as a warning call to fans of the band. This record will weigh a bit heavier on your brain fuzz-meter than a dance floor playlist.

And that’s OK. The Budos Band have proven with previous releases that they shake asses at shows. Consistently.

The uptempo afro-funk of the tracks “Tomahawk” and “Shattered Wind” checks in with Fela-inspired sax solos. And “The Sticks,” the second song on the record, is squarely centered on an organ-based groove. But it’s the new territory, complete with the boggy psych rock context, that gives this record a different identity.

The beautifully dirge-laden “Aphasia” reinforces the truth that all great guitar solos get better with a foot in your chest rhythm section. This is the early crunch and punch Black Sabbath tribute, but with a sharp horn line replacing Ozzy. The title track, “Burnt Offering,” wields ornate horn charts with psychedelia running amok on the organ keys, and then ends with an epic Keith Moon meets John Bonham drum solo. It is an awesome thing.

“Magus Mountain,” the standout song of the entire album, starts with a light Heart-esque guitar solo,  and then it boils ahead with the perfect balance of spiritual mysticism and rock-funk dominance. This synthesis of organ, bass, and in-the-pocket drum precision paints the perfect setting for the cavalcade horn charts to soar, swirl and explode. Keeping true to the character of the album, the breakdowns excrete with muddy metal and prog-rock essence.

Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, Burnt Offering is the band’s most challenging release to date.

bammagazine.com

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What do you get when you blend psychedelic sounds, a nine piece band and add a pinch of movie soundtracks? Yeah, you know the answer to this silly hypothetical because you’ve read the headline.
Burnt Offering is The Budos Band’s fourth album and their first since 2010. The instrumental ten track offering is in no way charred, but it definitely has some hot riffs.

While previous albums by the New York outfit have been named in numeric order, Burnt Offering is the first to have its own title and it is evident why: the album departs from the more funk infused style of the previous records and delivers a psychedelic hard rock sound. Burnt Offering starts out slow but quickly builds up into a powerful rhythm.

Overall, it is kind of like a 60s James Bond soundtrack if Roger Moore were about to bust out some Soul Train moves. The opening track Into the Fog sums up it pretty well – you are about to enter into a haze of fusion.

Brass riffs are accompanied with an electric bite, which somehow manages to make funk sound brooding. At times there are worldly influences in the songs. The trumpet often sounds like it should be calling out from a baking Mexican desert and, in more than one instance, there was a Middle Eastern tone coming through.

Each song has a strong hook which is often repeated, which is what gives Burnt Offering that soundtrack vibe. Overall it works well as an album but the repetitive nature can make some of the songs blend into the background. The band have nailed intros, in particular the track, Magus Mountain has a very strong start.

The artwork for the album seemingly reveals some of the inspiration behind the album, it would comfortably sit at home on a Zeppelin or Sabbath record. In fact, the best way to describe the album is imagining Black Sabbath tasked with writing a Tarantino soundtrack, except replace Tony Iommi with brass and sax… and completely remove Ozzy’s vocals. Listen to Aphasia and you will feel it ooze Sabbath goodness.

Although it is a thoroughly enjoyable album to listen to, Burnt Offering does not break new ground in terms of sound, it just borrows from a number of influences to create a very unique but familiar concoction. In more ways than one way, it is nice to hear something which could have been released comfortably in the 70s being created in 2014.

viciouschildren.com

New album: Afro Latin Vintage Orchestra - Pulsion

With a sound that lands somewhere between library music and fusion, Afro Latin Vintage Orchestra goes into the realm of psychedelia and beyond on “Complot” from their upcoming album Pulsion. While the vinyl has a street date of October 29, you’ll find the CD and digital releases out by mid-September. Orders are now being taken on Ubiquity’s website.

For Pulsion, recorded over an entire year, a string quartet was enlisted, making the total number of musicians to create this album land at a whopping thirteen. The music itself was played live, and Masta Conga, leader of the collective, also cites the mindset of a beatmaker, “I can take an idea and reinterpret it if it turns out interesting for the track. It allows me to pay tribute to those who inspire us and to immortalize this musical tradition.” He continues, “Where the classic work of collective repetition before the recording of the album did not allow me to arrive there, the method of work (noted below) left me more control over the production.”

Masta Conga gave us some insight on the track “Complot” and the album it comes from just a few days ago. When we first heard it, we immediately thought of Miles Davis’s On the Corner. Masta Conga responded, “Its wild and organic aspect structures my way of composing,” but he then credits Vladmir Cosma as an even stronger influence. Library music was something he says he “explored more seriously after the release of Last Odyssey,” the group’s previous album.

As for the creation of the track, he notes, “I first recorded the double bass with the percussion. Next, I record the drums. During a third session, guitar and keyboards are recorded. Lastly, brass and violins are added. In the first stage of a piece we can know nothing about the final outcome because the composition moves forward at the same time as the work of the edit. It’s a work of rewriting without any of the original idea except the rhythmic skeleton, which gives the movement.”

waxpoetics.com 

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A musician friend whose opinion I greatly respect shared with me that he enjoys listening to Pulsion, the fourth release by the Afro Latin Vintage Orchestra (ALVO), in two layers: The frothy jazz-influenced horn, brass and string arrangements on top and, like a musical parfait, the churning Latin, AfroCuban and other funk rhythms underneath.

ALVO was founded in 2007 around the core band of Masta Conga (percussionist, ringleader and spokesman), Benjamin Peyrot de Gachons (keyboards), Jean-Baptiste Feyt (trumpet), Max Hartock (drums), Elvis Martinez (guitar), Victor Dos Santos (alto and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet), and Philippe Vernier (baritone saxophone, clarinet, flute), a global conglomerate that Conga describes as "a space of creation all around, of various revolving musicians according to projects." They're joined on Pulsion by double-bassist David Battestini-Quadri and a string quartet. "On this fourth album, we tried a new approach by including various inspirations such as library music, spiritual and electric jazz funk, abstract hip-hop, with a touch of European groove and contemporary music," Conga explains.

The title track is quite representative of this entire piece: "Pulsion" opens with Battestini-Quadri's acoustic bass tethered to classic 1960s acoustic jazz but the other instrumentation, directed by Feyt's electric trumpet like a spectral spooky finger, quickly lifts the music like an untied balloon to float away and leave jazz behind. Even though trumpet is the lead instrument, the driving percussion rhythms frequently overtake this tune's center. "Shaman" grows from bass line doubled by piano into a hothouse flower of electric keyboards, growling reeds and other exotic sounds, and then navigates a freeform dialogue between saxophone, percussion and bass before settling into Congas's warm Latin percussion groove. "Shaman" would have also been a great title for this entire set. Rippling currents of electronics, horns, bass and strings set the subsequent soundstage for the cinematic "Drama."

Miles Davis' trumpet sound and fearless explorer's essence (more in feeling than execution) emerge like shadows from "Chroniques Marxiennes" and "French Connexion": Trumpet, piano and strings outline and punctuate the "Chroniques" arrangement, with an electric keyboard solo that conjures the spry and schizophrenic spirit—restless, relentless, irreverent yet respectful—of Chick Corea's work in some of Davis' electronic ensembles. "French Connexion" strips down the instrumentation but not the thick heady atmosphere—flute, trumpet, strings, keyboards and congas float in and out, like musical actors coming and going onstage in a play.

Pulsion is easily one of the most intriguing, entertaining and yet inscrutable sets you'll ever hear. I replied to my musician friend with my own description: If trumpeter Don Cherry recorded an album with Mongo Santamaria as his rhythm section, arranged and with strings by Nino Rota and produced by hip-hop pioneer Greyboy, it would sound like Pulsion. He's probably still laughing at this description, but he didn't disagree with it either. 

allaboutjazz.com

Tracklist

01. Kagemusha
02. Pulsion
03. Rituel
04. Resurrection
05. La Traque
06. Homo Analog
07. Audio Synthese
08. La Blanche
09. Complot
10. Shaman
11. Drama
12. En Sursis
13. Chroniques Marxiennes
14. French Connexion
15. Code Panthera
16. Kung Fu

... Miles ... at Montreux

Why Africa Is Yet To Have Another Fela

Originally published at

ventures-africa.com

As Felabration- an annual celebration of the Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s life and music, held in Lagos Nigeria (from the 13^th to the 19^th of October) climaxes, Ventures Africa looks at why the continent’s contemporary music acts, despite their rising global stardom, are failing to replicate Fela’s originality, impact and influence.

VENTURES AFRICA – On the 15^th of October 76 years ago Fela was born in the ancient city of Abeokuta, Western Nigeria. He would go on to, like the Olumo Rock for which the city is known, become not just legendary but also a heritage for his people and peoples all over the world.
17 years after his death, Fela, renowned for his creation of Afro-beat, remains the heartbeat of African music and continues to with his music, made several decades ago, transcend cultures, countries, continents and generations.

The flipside however is that since Fela, African music has struggled to replicate such a revered, controversial and dominant brand in the global music scene the way the Afro-beat legend did. Contemporary African musicians have not been able to exert the sort of influence the maestro had on the African society.

Born, Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome Kuti, Fela’s sojourn into music, like his journey through life, was rebellious. Sent to London to study medicine by his School Principal Father, who was also a Protestant Minister, Fela jumped on music instead; it was only the beginning of his disobedience to authority. His life, since the start of his music career, became dominated by clashes with government authorities- from the US (by being a member of the Black Panther Party), Ghana (where he was banned from entering) to the several Nigerian governments that were recipients of his vitriolic attacks for their poor governance.

However, Fela’s musical prowess endeared him to the hearts of millions of people, in his homeland Nigeria and across the world.

His style of music was original, embellished by a complex blend of traditional African music, western jazz and funk, and the fusion of percussion and vocal styles. This meant that the appreciation of his music was as wide as it was diverse. Just as his performances in his Afrika Shrine in Nigeria regularly drew large audiences, local and foreign- Western music legends James Brown (One of Fela’s main musical inspirations), Stevie Wonder and Gilberto Gil visited, his albums gained massive receptions – Music Critique website Pitchfork Media ranked it number 90 on their list of the 100 best albums of the 1970s – as his shows abroad were also thronged to, so much so that one in Ghana caused a riot.

Zombie, released in 1977 was the archetype of Fela’s musical success. The album was not only a massive hit in Nigeria, but also across Africa and the world, and forty years on remains as popular as it was the first time it came out of the studio. That song and album also typified Fela’s activism as well as the followership he commanded. Just as Zombie raved at the Festival for Arts and Culture (FESTAC) held in Lagos in early 1977, it would also draw massive crowd in in a performance in Accra, the latter however went sour with the Ghana show turning into a riot that led to Fela and his entourage been banned from entering the West African country.

Sam Samuelson, a reviewer in popular music site allmusic.com, said of Zombie “it ignited the nation to follow Fela‘s lead and antagonize the military zombies that had the population by the throat… Since the groove was so absolutely contagious, it took the nation by storm: People in the street would put on a blank stare and walk with hands affront proclaiming “Zombie!” whenever they would see soldiers.

However, Fela’s activism would come at a cost. Zombie, seen as an attack on the Nigerian government was responded to with brutal force by the then Obasanjo military regime. He was severely beaten by soldiers and police who also threw his elderly mother thrown from a window- causing fatal injuries that consequently led to her death, burnt down his Kalakuta Republic, and destroyed his studio, instruments, and master tapes. Even though unsuccessful in stopping either his turn out of great music or his criticisms against Nigerian governments, state-sponsored harassments would carry on throughout Fela’s life, a jail sentence in 1984 that led Amnesty International to designate him a prisoner of conscience was the climax of his detentions and over 200 arrests.
Fela’s kalakuta lifestyle- meaning ‘rascal’ in Swahili- would also hunt him. It is widely believed that his promiscuousness and polygyny was a factor in the AIDS he contracted that led to the kaposis sacoma that killed him. But even his demise did not end his brand, many contend that he became even more popular in death. His funeral, in August 1997, was reportedly attended by more than a million people who began with a procession through the centre of Nigeria’s commercial city of Lagos.

If the thronging to his funeral was just a one day event, the yearly Felabration- conceived by Fela’s eldest child Yeni in 1998, symbolizes the enduring impact of his life and art. The festival is a mega week-long musical event in Nigeria attracting thousands of visitors from all over the world yearly to the New Afrika Shrine an- official tourist destination of Lagos State. 2008 witnessed the gathering of over 50 international musicians from the United States, Great Britain, France and Senegal to perform at Felabration, which always runs through a week of October that includes the 15th (his birthday).
And If Felabration typified the enduring appreciation of Fela’s music at home, the Broadway Musical FELA! by Steve Hendel, award winning choreographer Bill T. Jones, writer Jim Lewis, with producer backing of American rap icon Jay Z and artist extraordinaire Will Smith, depicted Fela’s enduring admiration even in faraway lands.



The show, premiered on the 23^rd of November 2009 at the Eugene O’ Neil Theatre New York to an audience that included Michelle Obama, Kofi Anan, Madonna, Denzel Washington and several other international personalities, was a great success. Fela! received eleven Tony Award nominations, winning three for Best Choreography, Best Costumes and Best Sound of a musical, while also receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Show Album.

In January of this year Finding Fela, a documentary by Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney that tells the story of Fela’s life, music, social and political importance, was premiered to global appreciation.

Fela’s lasting legacy, however, is the overt influence his musical style continues to have in contemporary African and western music. His Afrobeat, aside becoming one of the most recognizable music genres in the world, in which many –including his sons Femi and Yemi have built successful musical careers, is also the foundation to Africa’s currently thriving Afrobeats (note the ‘s’) music style that is fast making global acts of African musicians.

With Fela’s legend status confirmed, his brand proven immortal, the new question now asked is why contemporary African arts have not been able to command a similar impact on Music and the society at large.

For the incomparability of his music to those of contemporary musicians, Fela’s appreciation of music – African and western – is highlighted. Describing Fela as Africa’s Handel, Peter Culshaw – who interviewed the music great – writes in BBC; “Kuti studied classical music at Trinity College in London in the early ‘60s, where he also had a jazz and highlife band called Koola Lobitos.
“When I asked him, cub reporter style, who his favourite musician was, he said: ‘Handel. Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It’s good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that. Classical music gives musicians a kick. But African music gives everyone a kick.’ In the ‘80s, he started calling his music African classical music.”

Such attention to what many see as pure music is often missing among contemporary African arts as is the creativity with which Fela fused several genres and instruments of music. It takes a very cultured musician, Fela’s protégé, Dede Mabiaku notes to popular Nigerian blogger Linda Ikeji. “Fela scored his music and his lyrics came along. Fela groomed his band with the sound he had scored. Ethically, he cultured a sound built within a band. After that, he now performed this song over a period of time before going to the studio to record. See the sequence.”

According to Dede, today’s artists employ the exact opposite of such a tried and tested technique. “Now let us come to the present day artiste, what are they doing? They just go into the studio, make few sounds together, make hooks, roll it round and round within a certain amount of minutes and voice on it later,” he noted.

Fela was also fiercely original in his music and uncompromising in his standard, something most African arts today are not. He is reputed for refusing to do the typical three minutes-plus songs, a stance that hindered him from scoring the big monies of western music labels. Culshaw adds “Kuti received various other offers from American record labels in the ‘80s, but at the time the problem was he was producing 60-minute-long pieces”. In the Documentary Finding Fela, he is quoted saying that you would not expect composers like Mozart or Beethoven to write three-minute numbers, so why should he?

But among contemporary arts, sacrificing quality for maximum commercial gain is the mantra, titled “going commercial” in Nigerian music parlance. “Commercial music is now recurrent, popular Nigerian music critique writes in music site tooxclusive.com, “it has a solid footing in the music industry. Observations have shown that Nigerians are happy people; they do not want to be held down with their problems or the fact that they have problems, hence ‘dance away their sorrows’, an opportunity commercial music provides abundantly”. He goes on to say that commercial artistes “push more records” than conscious ones with the former making more sales.

But Fela saw music as a vehicle of expression of his thoughts- political and philosophic, as well as a medium to advocate for causes that he believed in. This sets him aside and perhaps did not make him money as much, but a legend as such.

Fela’s societal impact is also virtually unachievable by contemporary African arts. In 2011 Australian tabloid Herald Sun said of Fela, “Imagine Che Guevara and Bob Marley rolled into one person and you get a sense of Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti.” Creating a state within a state as he did with his Kalakuta republic, and being described as a cult figure in the UK in the mid 80s, such was the command of Fela’s personality. Albeit it was also destructive –his marrying of 27 wives and living in denial after contracting AIDS symbolized how much so.

Nonetheless, contemporary African arts have struggled to match his conviction in social justice, outspokenness for human rights and black empowerment, against bad leadership and corruption – that still plagues Africa – as well as his indefatigable dare to be different.
Thus, Fela with these qualities, nourished of course by an immense artistic talent, continues to remain irreplaceable in Africa’s music space.

If Finding Fela- the movie documentary had been about finding a contemporary African Music commanding the same influence in African music and the society at large and standing out at the same time, it would have no doubt been a futile project. Perhaps that is why he is Fela- the kind of personality that a century only has the privilege of having once.

Originally published at
ventures-africa.com 

South African Jazz: JAZZ IN AFRICA VOL. 1 (by flatinternational)

NOTES

 American pianist, John Mehegan toured South Africa in 1959 and recorded this seminal album (vol. 1) and a second (vol. 2) with most of the horn section of the Jazz Epistles. The line-up included John Mehegan and Chris Joseph on piano, Kippie Moeketsi on alto, Hugh Masekela on trumpet, Jonas Gwangwa on trombone, Claude Shange on bass, Ray Shange on pennywhistle and Gene Latimore on drums. There is a single track featuring Samson Slingo on mbira with a spoken introduction probably by Mehegan, who also pens the liner notes. According to Jonas Gwangwa, this "was the first LP made by black people in South Africa." (Ansell, p. 98)

Reportedly only 500 copies of the original album were pressed, making it exceptionally hard to find. Teal Records' African Heritage series reissued both volumes in the early 1990s on LP, cassette and CD (TEL 2304, TEC 2304, TELCD 2304, 1991) (TEL 2314, TEC 2314, TELCD 2314, 1992), but these are equally scarce.

A more commonly available compilation CD, Jazz in Africa Vol.1, issued by Camden (CDN 1004), features a selection of tracks from the Mehegan LPs and the Jazz Epistles' Verse 1 LP however this compilation is quite poorly researched with the liner notes giving the impression that all the tracks are by the Jazz Epistles (Dollar Brand etc...) and makes no mention of John Mehegan.

Information:

Side A

 Track I — Venda introduction (traditional) 1.48.
Samson Singo is a busker (a strolling street performer) who wandered into the studios during the session. The mbira piano is about eight inches long and four inches wide. It consists of a number of steel spikes of varying lengths attached to a wooden resonator; the spikes are plucked with the thumb nails.

Track 2 — "Delilah" (Victor Young) 6.06.
Splicing "Delilah" into the Venda introduction we thought might point up the light-years that exist between the "beginning" and the "present". Chris Joseph is on piano.

Track 3 — "Round Midnight" (Monk, Williams, Hanighen) 4.16.
This track features pianist Chris Joseph who was the only musician in the Union who knew the tune. In criticizing the musicians in Durban, I mentioned this fact — the next day, his phone rang three times.

Track 4 — "Lover Come Back To Me" (Romberg-Hammerstein) 3.38.
Kippie insisted this be "my" tune, but we finally compromised on adding some I6's by Kippie, Hugh and Jonas.

Track 5 — "Body and Soul" (Green, Sour, Heyman) 4.08.
This features Kippie, who really "plays" the tune rather than treating it as a virtuoso tour de force.


Side B

Track I — "Old Devil Moon" (Lane, Harburg) 5.30.
This tune came up at a jam session and Kippie, who was only vaguely familiar with it, insisted on working it over until hejcould call it his own. The G major chord in the bridge absolutely gassed him each time we went around. He considered it a "moment of truth" in the tune. He is right, of course, for who ever heard of anyone going from an F minor chord to G major? Surely a moment of truth.

Track 2— "Yesterdays" (Kern, Harbach) 5.25.
We seemed to run into meter trouble on this tune until we dis¬covered that Jonas was deliberately juxtaposing a "quote" of one part of the melody over the chords of another part. Of the three (Hugh, Kippie, Jonas) Jonas was the quickest "study" with a new tune and seemed to have the best facility for playing in the twelve keys.

Track 3 — "X-Ray's Friend" (Freddie Gambrell) 3.32
This track features Chris Joseph again. For all of his rather amazing familiarity with present-day idioms of jazz piano, Chris manages a lyricism that is quite his own.

Track 4— "Cosmic Ray" (Vernacular) 3.40.
This is Ray Shange playing the pennywhistle, or for that matter, two pennywhistles simultaneously as he does on this track. Playing the pennywhistle is only one aspect of this deeply sensitive man who draws magnificently and also plays credible jazz drums. The "pennywhistle," incidently, costs about five shillings, or about sixty cents in United States currency.


INNER SLEEVE NOTES - JAZZ IN AFRICA VOLUME 1 - CONT. 9

The idea of geographical jazz has persisted long after the actual fact has ceased to exist. There probably has not been any authentic regional jazz since the Kansas City school of the late Twenties and early Thirties, yet the myth of local indigenous styles has flourished, reaching it's most preposterous heights with the "East Coast - West Coast" dichotomy of the Fifties,

Beyond the limits of continental United States, we have been told of French jazz, German jazz, Scandinavian jazz, etc. until it seemed that the kaleidoscope of world jazz was as equally stunning in it's ramifications as world painting or world literature. This, obviously, is not true for the rather simple reason that practical materials of jazz do not allow for the essential separation of the attitude (what to express) from the device (how to express it). The inseparable connection of these two factors in jazz accounts for the vast imitative nature of world jazz. Unlike the prophet, the jazzman is not without honour", only "in his own country, and in his own house". Devices, or technics, can and should be cosmopolitan, but attitude or feeling, must be local and specific in order to be valid.

For instance, post - Freudian literature has flourished in all of the major countries of the world, yet a specific national stamp completely distinguishes one from the other: Joyce in Ireland, Kafka in Germany, Virginia Woolf in England, Sartre in France, Faulkner in America. The technical devices employed are common to all, but the feelings revealed are deeply grained in each national experience. The short happy life of West Coast jazz began (Miles Davis Ninetette) and ended (abandoned Columbia album) on the East Coast and it's main progenitor, Gerry Mulligan, was born in Philadelphia. Since 1952, there has been talk of a Detroit school (Byrd, Burrell, Flanigan) and a later -day Chicago school (Bright, Jamal), but there is little in either case to justify the term "school".

Jazz in Africa is basically similar to jazz in the rest of the world (same idioms, same devices, same repertoire). It just happens to be much better than jazz in the rest of the world, excepting America. The reasons for the superiority of African jazz lay in the presence of one mature giant, altoist Kippie Moeketsi, age 34, whom I would rate with Getz, Peterson and Far low as concerns sheer melodic invention; two young disciples of Kippie's, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, age 22, and trombonist Jonas Gwangwa, age 23; and finally pianist Chris Joseph, age 21. Kippie, Hugh and Jonas are African and hail from Johannesburg; Chris is Indian and lives in Durban.

The recent history of South African jazz is intimately bound up with the names of Kippie Moeketsi and Rev. Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican missionary belonging to The Community of The Resurrection. Father Huddleston was born in England and lived in South Africa from 1944 until 1956. Apart from his work with the spiritual and social lives of the African people, Father Huddleston sought for some means of tapping the musical talent of his flock. From this evolved the Huddleston Jazz Band, of which Hugh and Jonas were charter members. Under the leadership of Father Huddleston and bassist Bob Hill (a Scotsman, who can burr with the best of them), a jazz clinic was established and with it an organized'effort to obtain recordings and instruments, as well as to hold classes in basic harmony.

Through the efforts of Hugh and Jonas, Kippie, who had been inactive for several years, became involved and a first-rate group, built along the lines of the Parker - Gillespie ensemble, slowly developed. Instruments were obtained, including a trumpet from Louis Armstrong which Hugh plays on these recordings, and the group gigged around Johannesburg as an organized unit. Finally in 1958, Hugh, Kippie and Jonas joined the pit band of "King Kong", a folk opera similar in structure to "Porgy and Bess", composed by an African, Todd Matshikiza, and produced by Europeans. Since then, things have not been very active jazz-wise and although this magnificent "front line" continues to play dance gigs, more and more, jazz has given way to the African counterpart of rhythm and blues.

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