Ooh.. a big package from Stern’s arrived yesterday.

A Benn loxo listener suggested that I have a listen to a new collection of Dar Es Salaam star Maestro King Kiki’s rumba from the 70s and 80s, Maestro of Tanzania.

It’s a great collection. My only gripe is the production quality; so much of what is going on in the background is hard to make-out because the levels and acoustics are all over the place. Still, a fun listen.

King Kiki is actually Congolese but he’s one of Tanzania’s most popular musicians from the older generation. We’ve been sort of working a Congolese music in other countries vibe recently, so King Kiki fits nicely into the mix.

I would tell you more but the lack of liner notes and my general lack of east coast African music knowledge leaves me hanging. Once again, I ask the more-knowledgeable-than-I Benn loxo listeners to fill us in.

And thanks for the tips- they keep my collection growing.

Maestro King Kiki – Salza

A while ago Benn loxo listener extraordinaire, Fabian, sent me a vinyl rip of the Western Jazz Band’s album, Vigelegele.

I’ve had so much listening to catch-up on that I only got to it today.. and it’s amazing. I’d heard the first track, Rosa, before but it’s the the last track on the B-side, the one you’ll hear today, that blew me away.

The slight echo and distortion on the guitars gives this album’s music a special quality.

You might have already heard some Western Jazz Band from another album back in August when I did a post about Original Music’s Dada Kidawa, Sister Kidawa compilation.

You might have also heard them over at Steve Ntwiga’s great site – he posted a track from this album a couple months ago. Steve: I imagine we’re both on Fabian’s mailing list.

Sorry there’s no purchase link, but I think that this album has been out of print for quite some time and hasn’t been reissued.. yet.

Maybe I’ll see some of you tonight, maybe not, but regardless I hope you all have a good weekend. I think I’ll take a break for a couple days. See you Monday.

ps- Thanks, Fabian.

Western Jazz Band – Wana Saboso

I’m determined to eventually get a post in for every single Original Music release. I know that many of you, or at least those who read often, may already have these albums, but bear with me. It’s a personal goal to collect and post a sample from every album in the OM catalog.

Today’s picks come from Original Music’s 17th release, Mbuki Mvuki. It’s a compilation of, in their words, “terrestrial hits from the catalog”. So if you’re not into running around, collecting every release, this album is a good sampler of much of what the label offered.

According to the liner notes, Mbuki Mvuki is Bantu for “to shuck off one’s clothes in order to dance.” I don’t know about you, but that’s what we’re doing here in our Paris apartment this sunny Saturday morning.. dancing, possibly with some by-request Diana Ross thrown into the mix, coffee in hand.

Three of my favourite tracks off the compilation from Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria. Enjoy your Sunday.

Professional Uhuru – Madzi Me Sigya
Salim Abdullah – Wanawake Wa Tanzania
New Star Orchestra – Olefaya Loko

There’s something really sexy about the word ‘rumba’. It’s also a bit of a misnomer in that over the years it came to represent a variety of Cuban-influenced musical styles popular across Africa, not all of them ‘rumba’ in its original sense.

While the heart of rumba was in the country-formerly-known-as-Zaire, there were many great groups in other countries as well. One reason is the civil war that erupted in Belgium Congo during the 1960s. It forced many Congolese musicians out of the country, a bunch of whom ended up in Tanzania.

Tanzania, located in East Africa just below Kenya, was heavy into the Afro-Congo-Cuban sound during the 1960s. Original Music’s 1983 compilation, The Tanzania Sound, captures this beautifully.

Reading the liner notes this morning I noticed a translation of the lyrics for the Dar Es Salaam Jazz Band’s up-beat track, Fitina Nyingi: “Everyone’s rotten, nothing’s any good, I’m better off alone than with these no-goods.”

Now if that isn’t an upper to get us through a grey Friday, I don’t know what is!

ps- thanks, John.

Nuta Jazz – Janja Yako
Cuban Marimba Band – Beberu
Dar Es Salaam Jazz Band – Fitina Nyingi

I happened to sit beside Charles Schillings at a good Sicilian restaurant last night in Paris. Hopefully this means we’ll be featuring some Afro-electro remixes sometime in the future. Either way, the forthcoming Hôtel Costes 10 that he slipped us features a great opener with the kind of North African overtones we so appreciate here at Benn loxo.

Anyway, back to more Original Music…

Today we’ll hear a couple tracks off Dada Kidawa Sister Kidawa, an interesting compilation of Cuban/Afro-Arab music from Tanzania in the 1960s.

It features venerable bands such as NUTA Jazz plus several others like the Kiko Kids Jazz and the Cuban Marimba Band. All these groups emerged during a guitar-based, dance music phase in Dar Es Salaam that emerged during the early 60s.

The compilation’s title track is perfect for what is probably France’s quietest week. Everyone is on vacation, most stores and restaurants are closed. If Paris were on the ocean I’d be down on the beach, listening to Western Jazz Band as I sipped a cocktail under a palm tree.

ps- Benn loxo listener, Zakariyya, is looking for Afel Bocoum’s Alkibar. Does anyone know where he could buy or trade for a copy?

Kiko Kids Jazz – Tanganyika na Uhuru Kids Jazz
Western Jazz Band – Dada Kidawa

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

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

I guess all my praise of the Rough Guide’s world music compilations caught someone’s eye. A stack of their 2006 releases arrived at my door the other day courtesy of the World Music Network. Big thanks for the gift!

The Rough Guide’s Tanzania compilation is, as usual, a collection of tunes featuring a variety of styles from across the country. Among other things, you’ll hear Tanzanian taarab, Xplastaz hip-hop, East African dancefloor pop and the danceband sounds of old.

Aside from taarab and classic Ethiopian, I’m still pretty weak on my East African musical knowledge so most of the album was new to me. Two tracks stood out: Saida Karoli’s beautifully simple singing over guitar, and Mohammed Issa Matona’s taarab rock-out.

This morning it was raining a kind of pissy drizzle that one only finds in Paris, but you wouldn’t have known it from looking at me. Halfway to soaking, I was near-skipping down the street to work as I listened to Mohammed Issa Matona on repeat. Benn Loxo listeners will already know I have a soft spot for Zanzibar and all things taarab. I can’t say what it is about this tune that grabs me so much, but give it a listen.. give it three listens because I didn’t like it the first time either.. and you might just hear what I mean.

The voice of the second track, Saida Karoli, is totally new to me. Far from the coastal taarab, she sings in Haya, a lnaguage spoken in the north-west of the country. Karoli has a clean sound that’s currently sweeping the airwaves in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. She’s very young, too, so hopefully we’ll hear much more from her.

You can grab the Rough Guide to the Music of Tanzania at Amazon or any decent record shop.

Mohammed Issa – Matona Msumeno
Saida Karoli – Omukaile Kilinjwi

Once and a while on Benn loxo I like to remind listeners that African music isn’t all about koras and djembes. There are lots of sounds coming out of the continent these days and not all of them are strictly related to “traditional” music, nor do they all sound like they should filed under “World” at your local Virgin megastore.

I’ve featured quite a bit of hip-hop from Senegal, South African and Nigeria over the past couple years. It’s been a while, so why not listen to some more. Today we’ll hear some contemporary hip-hop and drum’n'bass sounds from Tanzania.

I know that many of you already know the Xplastaz track, but I’ve never featured it on my site and it’s one of my favourite hip-hop tracks to come out of the continent. This song has particular resonance for me. When I first arrived in Paris a little over a year ago I went to this house party near Opera Garnier. A Benn loxo listener, Olivier, had invited me. I walked into what I thought would be a small gathering to find a multi-room dance party in a partially constructed building filled with a few hundred people all busting up the dancefloor to… Tanzanian hiphop? What a great way to start off a city.

The other two tracks are off Mapito, the Tanzanian Mix Tape Remix Project. This compilation really reflects for me how far East African hip-hop has come over the past few years. Both production and musical quality has really, really improved since the scene started opening up during the late 90s and early 2ks.

Both Xplastaz and Mapito are on the excellent African hip-hop label, Nomadic Wax. You’ve heard stuff here already off their release, African Underground Vol. 1: Hip-Hop Senegal. Much more info on African urban sounds at Africanhiphop.com.

X Plastaz – Msimu kwa msimu
Owen Saunders & Mike Freear feat LC, Bennamo, Yega & Mr. Soo – Self Destruct
Mr. Soap – Niwachache Tu (Timebomb Remix)