Nice to meet yet another Benn loxo listener and a few of his friends a couple nights ago. Never hesitate to get in touch if you’re through Paris or live nearby..

Anyway, thanks to several of you I now have 23 out of the 39 Original Music releases. I hope to complete the collection at some stage so please get in touch if you’re up for a trade.

In the meantime I’ll try to keep sharing the wealth here on Benn loxo with some music from a 1996 Original Music release, Sam Chege’s Kickin’ Kikuyu Style.

As you read this I’m probably sipping Guinness, eating oysters and riding hookers.. not to mention birthing a calf somewhere. Imagine me doing this all simultaneously while singing Sam Chege. Seriously, even a dip in the cold Irish Atlantic couldn’t get this guy’s catchy, up-tempo music out of my head.

Chege is a Kenyan musician who plays benga in a fast Kikuyu style, as opposed to, say, the Luo way. His sound also has a strong soukous feel. I read a review that said it also drew upon Nigerian influences… but really? Name three.

As usual, I’m a little weak on my East Coast African music knowledge, but a little digging revealed that Chege is actually a relatively young guy, having finished his graduate studies in the US just a few years ago. He grew-up in a rural Kikuyu part of central Kenya before moving to Nairobi where he worked (or works?) as a music journalist.

Sam Chege – Victoria

Benn loxo reader and contributor, Fabián, comes through again with some great music by Congolese musicians living in Kenya during the 1970s. I’ve also included a few tracks from my own collection to beef-up the post.

I love reading the stories about how all these bands and the personalities behind them are connected. This is especially true when you’re talking about a relatively small group, Conogolese musicians living in Nairobi during the 1970s and early 80s.

Pepelepe was formed by ex-members of Baba Gaston’s Baba Nationale who had recently moved to Nairobi from Zaire in the early 1970s.

Jim Monimambo formed the Boma Liwanza offshoot, Special Liwanza, in Nairobi in 1976. I would love to get some more Boma Liwanza music. Anyone up for a trade?

Monimambo also wrote and performed for Orchestra Shika Shika, another group that had formed in 1980s in the aftermath of Boma Liwanza’s break-up.

I’ve included some Orchestra Mazemba since they were one of the leading Congolese bands in Kenya during the 1970s and 80s.

Finally, something from the Kenya and Tanzania natives, Simba Wanyika, so we can hear how it wasn’t just the Congolese playing that pre-benga, early soukous style in 1970s Nairobi.

Thanks to Benn loxo reader, Cheeku, and Matt over at Matsuli Music for first introducing me to Shika Shika and the various Liwanzas. And thanks, Fabián, for the continuing contributions.

You can find more info by people who know a lot more about this era than I do here and here.

Orchestre Pepelepe – Mulambo
Orchestre Special Liwanza – Mwale parts 1 & 2
Orchestre Shika Shika – Diabanza
Orchestre Shika Shika – Ivete parts 1 & 2
Orchestre Super Mazembe – Kassongo
Simba Wanyika – Shilingi maua tena maua

Benn loxo reader, David, suggested in a comment a few posts back that I check-out the new Kenge Kenge release from the World Music Network‘s “Introducing…” series. A nice find; thanks for the heads-up.

Kenge Kenge play traditional music from Kenya’s Luo ethnic group mixed with a heavy dose of benga and contemporary African sounds à la Konomo No. 1. The group’s name apparently is Luo for a “fusion of small, exhilarating instruments”. Indeed. I bet these guys would be amazing live.

The background vocals also remind me of one of my all-time favourite African bar songs, Meiway’s Miss Lolo. Ah, the lost glory days of late, late nights at Chez Diamy…

You can grab it on emusic. These guys are also featured on World Music Network/Rough Guide’s excellent compilation, The Rough Guide to the Music of Kenya.

While you’re at it, check-out this great video of a Luo dance in southern Sudan. I think the videographer has a bit of a crush on the tall girl, though..

Kenge Kenge – Kenge Kenge

Big thanks to Benn loxo listener and solid DJ, Boima, for the tickets, beer and music last night at the Trabendo. You can catch Boima on tour in Europe with Spearhead at the moment. I’ll be posting something off his latest release, a Sierra Leone hip-hop mix, later this week. In the meantime check-out his web site.

It’s great to keep meeting Benn loxo people. Nice crowd.

Anyway, over a year ago a Benn loxo listener, Carsten, sent me a guest post. Sorry for taking so long to put it up. I re-found Malika’s Poleni just the other day after digging Carsten’s e-mail out of the depths of my inbox:

“Malika was born on the island of Lamu (Kenya) and at an early age moved to Somalia where she began her singing career. In the 1960s she appeared on Somali radio and television and soon gained fame as a singer up and down the East African coast.

Apparently at some point in her career, Malika suffered damage to her voice but unfortunately, I don’t have any early recordings by her so I can’t really make a before and after comparison. Although Malika’s voice at present is not an excessively powerful one nor does its have an extraordinary range, it is a joy to hear her sing. Her phrasing is exquisite and her singing exudes a subtle poignancy that this reviewer finds irresistible.”

You can hear more Malika on the album, Tarabu: Music from the Swahili of Kenya.

Thanks for the post, Carsten.

Malika – Poleni

Today we’ll hear some more good Kenyan music from the Orchard re-release collection on eMusic. This time it’s a little later, a mid-70s recording by Kenyan rumba star, Habel Kifoto.

Initially a member of the famous “military band”, Maroon Commandos, Habel Kifoto released a bunch of solo tracks as well. Benn loxo friend, Steve Mugiri, can tell you more about the Maroon Commandos – and much more – if you’re curious.

Elsewhere, this guy was in Habel’s daughter’s class in Nairobi and enjoys good night out in Nairobi, while this guy feels guilty about listening to pirated copies of their music.

While you’re at it, hear Kifoto and others on the excellent selection of African podcasts over at Podmatic. (For those who don’t know, you can listen to Benn loxo as a podcast, too.)

Habel Kifoto – Sine Ndoe
Habel Kifoto – Charonyi Ni Wasi

eMusic has a surprisingly great collection of early Kenyan recordings, thanks in large part to the Orchard re-releases of music belonging to the Music Copyright Society of Kenya. You heard some already in that ever-popular post about Juma Muhina about a month back.

eMusic has always positioned itself as a spot for young, DRM-unfriendly listeners who are mainly into “indie” music. Their homepage features music by people like Sufjan Stevens, Damien Jurado and Tom Waits, as opposed to iTunes’ Westlife and Beyoncé. It’s nice that a company like eMusic is exposing the Pitchfork generation to some jewels of early African recordings.

Fadhili William is one such Kenyan treasure in the eMusic collection. The collection of his songs recorded between 1963-67 is just the kind of simple, guitar-jangle music that I’m into after a nice weekend in Amsterdam. The dialogue in the middle of Big City Blues is particularly amazing.. cracks me up every time.

Fadhili Williams Mdawida – Big City Blues
Fadhili Williams Mdawida – Wee Jane

Almost a year ago Benn loxo listener, Tim, sent me a guest post. It got buried in a heap of e-mail and only re-surfaced the other day:

“You may know Mbaraka Mwinshehe’s music already. A Tanzanian, he was one of East Africa’s most popular musicians of the 1970s, first with the Morogoro Jazz Band and then in his own group, Orchestra Super Volcano. His career came to a tragically premature end in 1979 when he was killed in a car crash in Kenya.

The Morogoro years were covered in the CD Masimango issued by the German Dizim label in 2000. Plans to issue a second volume covering Mwinshehe’s later work were announced in the sleevenotes of that release, but this has yet to happen. A shame this, because many of his songs with Super Volcano highlight Mwinshehe’s propulsive guitar style and impassioned vocal style. It’s the sound of somebody taking a Congolese model and making it his own.

The track I’m sending to you, Shida, was a huge hit. It has been rescued from a cassette I bought in Nairobi 25 years ago and, as you will hear, the sound quality is only so-so.

[...] The sound balance is just the way the tape sounds. In particular, the horns send the dials into the red every time. Maybe the the song would benefit from being cleaned up and remastered by somebody with the technical know-how to do it, but I’ve come to love its ragged edges.

East African music of this era was often recorded for radio and then pirated on cassette. Very little of it has made it onto CD – or at least ones available in Europe and America. Groups such as the Orchestras Super Volcano, Les Wanyika and Les Mangelepa are little known yet deserving of a wider recognition.”

Thanks, Tim. Great tune and an informed post. And yes, I know that’s not the right cover but I don’t exactly have a huge stock of Mbaraka Mwinshehe images at the ready.

Mbaraka Mwinshehe – Shida I & II

Just enough time for a quick post today from a 1999 African funk music compilation that I re-found recently.

Today’s tracks are a funky reminder that afrobeat and its derivatives weren’t just an anglo-West African phenomenon. Great bands like Mombasa, Matata and others rocked the Kenyan soul and funk scene during the 1960s and 1970s.

I also thought of today’s songs because a friend was asking for tips for a song that “you’d listen to while walking down the street.” Both of these tracks are good mood, long walk classics. If you see a guy on his bike on rue Saint Honoré tonight, bobbing his head to an inaudible beat, it’s probably me singing these tunes to myself.

Matata were BBC’s Best Band in Africa in 1971 but unfortunately they faded away by the mid-70s. Mombasa I know much less about. Can someone fill us in?

You can find both of these tracks on the quality compilation Africafunk from the guys at Harmless Records.

Mombasa – African Hustle
Matata – Talkin’ Talkin’

Lately I’ve been getting so much new music from Benn loxo listeners that I can’t keep up. Big thanks for all the great sounds coming my way. I promise I’ll get to all of it.. just give me some time and keep tuning in.

Several of you have asked for more Kenyan music and that champeta post a while back got some great feedback. With these two requests in mind, Benn loxo listener, Fabián, came through with a classic Orchestra Super Mazembe track in both its original format and as a champeta remix. You can also check-out his web site, Africolombia, with much more music.

Apologies in advance if I got the champeta group name wrong – please correct me, but it wasn’t clear from the song tag or some armchair research who exactly recorded this tune.

Orchestra Super Mazembe is actually a Congolese band by origin, forming as Super Vox in Likasi, Congo-Kinshasa, in the mid-60s. After meeting up with the Super Eagles in Zambia a few years later the band decided to hit-up the booming music scene in Nairobi, Kenya. Since Nairobi already had another band named Super Vox they changed their name to Super Mazembe, which roughly translates into “huge bulldozer”.

From the mid-1970s onwards Super Mazembe released several big hits in Nairobi, maintaining a large following right-up until the late 80s. Today’s track was released in 1983. You can find it on Earthworks re-release, Giants of East Africa.

Orchestre Super Mazembe – Shauri Yako
Dogar Dis – Quedo en las tablas

Were/are any of you into Arthur Russell? The driving bass drum and repetitive melodies in Juma Muhina’s recordings with Nairobi Matata remind me a lot of his music.

If you know Arthur Russell, your first reaction might be that Kenyan Swahili rumba doesn’t have much to do with early disco pioneers. But give today’s track a listen and tell me they don’t go great together on a mix. The release dates are roughly similar and who’s to say the dudes in Nairobi Matata didn’t have a secret love for underground NY disco? Not so secretly, I wish there had been more fusion along these lines.

Dada Mwajuma was a popular tune when it was originally released in 1977. It was produced by the accomplished musician Isaya Mwinamo Asiebera, who also produced albums for many of the other big local groups at the time such as Orchestra Mazembe (some of their tunes coming tomorrow if I have time), Daudi Kabaka and Orchestra Viva Makale.

Big thanks goes out to Benn loxo listener, Zim, who pointed out the Juma Muhina album amongst numerous great Music Copyright Society of Kenya re-releases on Orchard now available on Emusic. I’ll be featuring a few over the next while.

This reminds me how a friend of mine would quietly mix Xplastaz into French hip-hop parties, or how I try to hide amazing West African funk tracks on soul mixes for people who wouldn’t normally be into it. Which reminds me… check back tomorrow.

Juma Muhina – Dada Mwajuma (Part 2)
Arthur Russell – Dinosaur L / Go Bang (Francois Kevorkian mix)