I picked this up in Springfield, MO on a recent Ozark vacation. A great little store called “Stick it in Your Ear” had this staring at me from the $1.98 piles near the front. I didn’t even notice that Mulatu was a sideman on it until i got home. Great all the way through, but [...]
The sweet, old West African tradition of palm wine guitar has few great players left. Palm wine music dates back to the days when Portuguese sailors first introduced guitars to West African port cities. Early African guitarists and bottle percussionists played at gatherings where revelers drank the fermented sap of palm trees, a traditional alternative [...]
If you dig “east meets west” style exotica ala Ananda Shankar then prepare to have your mind blown, cause Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid is one of the giants! A swirling blend of snakey rhythms played with Moog, organ, belly dance percussion, and of course Omar’s driving electric guitar in the foreground. Check out the track [...]
Cameroon born novelist, poet, musicologist, historian, radio DJ and multi-instrumentalist Francis Bebey (1929) conjured up this relatively unknown record for Ozileka Records in 1979. If you’re familiar with his classical guitar work, this stuff may come as a suprise. Deploying an assortment of synthesisers, the tunes range from feather-light afropop to very exciting grooves. One [...]
I suppose that Pygmies, being so naturally small, have a bit of a head start when it come to “getting down”. Bad jokes aside, this is a pretty amazing record. The ambiance is just awesome and on many tracks the jungle is as much a part of the music as the Pygmies. It is a [...]