HIGH RIZE ZION

Kalita are proud to unveil the second volume in their ‘Borga Revolution!’ compilation series, focussing on the phenomenon of ‘Burger Highlife’, a crossover of West African melodies with synthesizers, disco and boogie that took over Ghanaian airwaves during the 1980’s and beyond.

Featuring both highly sought-after recordings by artists including Atta Frimpong and D.J. Lawyer Okyere, as well as seminal performances by greats such as Pat Thomas, A.B. Crentsil and Alan Cosmos, Kalita once again come to the rescue of audiophiles, DJs and music-lovers alike with ‘Borga Revolution! – Volume 2’. Spread over a double-LP housed in a gatefold sleeve. Accompanied by a 12-page booklet featuring extensive interview-based liner notes on each artist and never-before-seen archival photos.

The 1970s had witnessed an increased Western airtime and physical presence in Ghana introducing funk, soul and disco sounds to the region. By the turn of the decade the country was also enduring economic turmoil, with rising poverty, military dictatorships and long periods of enforced curfews (amongst other factors) making it impossible for artists to survive.

As a result, many Ghanaian artists with a broader outlook began to pursue their careers in the West, moving to both Europe and America in search of stardom. It was here that Ghanaian musicians developed a digitised version of highlife music which fully embraced Western contemporary music styles and newly introduced technology such as the DX7 synthesizer and various drum machines.

It is in this context in which the evolution of Ghanaian dance music and the emergence of ‘burger highlife’ was born. With the ‘Borga Revolution!’ series Kalita endeavour to tell this story, with prominent and lesser-known musicians’ accounts and documentary evidence providing a comprehensive understanding of this shift to the digital age.

Borga Revolution! Ghanaian Dance Music In The Digital Age, 1983​​​-​​​1996 (Volume 2)

Obae

Buy Here!

C2. Pat Thomas - Obae

Aby Ngana Diop's "Liital" on LP/CD/Digital/Tape https://abynganadiop.bandcamp.com

Aby Ngana Diop was the most famous taasukat in Dakar, Senegal in the 1980s and 1990s. Taasu is a Wolof-language poetic style, usually performed by women griots over frenetic drum patterns, with an aggressive verbal flow thought to presage rap. Her only album Liital was groundbreaking in the history of Senegalese music because it was the first commercial recording to feature a traditional female taasukat performing to the modern accompaniment of mbalax, Senegal’s quintessential pop genre.

Aby Ngana Diop—Dieuleul-Dieuleul

Happa - Blackberreh!

First track from Gqom Oh! label boss Nan Kolè. 

Get it here: https://nankole.bandcamp.com/

Bayfal contains a sample taken from ‘Liital’, Performed by Aby Ngana Diop. Courtesy of Awesome Tapes From Africa used by permission. ℗ © Awesome Tapes From Africa.

ACRE067

Bayefal

Nan Kolè - Bayefal

Yermande

Lamb Ji

Lamb Ji

Mari Sekine - Beginning (excerpt)

Forthcoming on Akuphone (AKU1017)
Digital only
Buy: akuphone.com/catalog/NRer109T2eQ#content

SAMPLE: gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1285941.media

At the end of 2018, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Gallica (the digital archive of the Bibliothèque nationale de France), Akuphone and Ko Shin Moon were invited to create a piece from the library’s audio archives. After working on it for several weeks, a first version was presented during the anniversary ceremony. The project continued to develop over four months before arriving at a definitive version. 

The scope of the project was limited to audio recordings from the library’s collection that were free of legal restrictions, which meant: only 78 rpm records from the first half of the 20th century. The format is unique, left to specialists and forgotten by listeners and producers. 78 records are almost never used for sampling and it’s this application that makes Ko Shin Moon’s album stand out. Many factors needed to be considered, including white noise, breaths, the harshness of certain frequencies, and the production style from the era of the recordings. 

 Using these precious resources as a creative tool, Ko Shin Moon made substantial rearrangements, but he forced himself to respect the original tuning of the recordings by setting his analog synthesizers and instruments to the same microtonality as the records. 

 Most of the chosen samples were recorded between 1910 and 1940 and came from different parts of the world. These include: North Africa for “Gasba” and “The River,” The Middle East and Central Asia for “Segah,” “Bayati Chiraz,” and “Nava,” India for “Devi Sthothra” and “Narayan,” Mozambique for “I-XIII,” South Asia for “The Offering” and “Sabat Sabing,” Japan for “The Consonants,” and France for “The Offering.” 

 “We’re very thankful to have been able to have our work infused with such cultural heritage,” says Ko Shin Moon. “We thank the Bibliothèque nationale de France for their trust and above all, we want to show our respect to the musicians and singers present on these recordings. We hope to bring their voices to life with our music.” 

SAMPLE: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1285941.media

Ko Shin Moon - L'Offrande

Here is my remix of the great song SAWRA of the bro Roscius.
I was a great pleasure to work on this version!
I hope you like it :)
Visuel © Becky Baier

Roscius-SAWRA (Loya remix)

Akuphone. AKUMS1003 (12''/DL)
https://bit.ly/2MHqnJR

🕐 Bandcamp Exclusive: June 12
🕙 Vinyl/Digital: September 11

Où cela commence-t-il ?
Where does cultural appropriation end and procreational fusion begin?
The answer to that depends on the perceiver.

For some, applying the structures of electronic music to folkloristic samples may seem de-contextualizing. Yet when considering the similarity between dancefloor compositions and the minimalism of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, the gap to traditional music begins to fade away. They remain distinct mostly by aesthetic characteristics of sound.

Nicolas Sheikholeslami’s premiere solo record as Çaykh is named after the French conjunction "Où" - meaning “where” - as this was the linking element during production. We witness an attempt to re-contextualize music that travelled from analog tapes - recorded in different localities along the Indian Ocean - to a hard-drive via 192kb youtube rips. The sample-based compositions were digitally arranged before regaining their warm sonic qualities in a vintage mixing studio.

This EP assembles three metamorphic 4th-world disco pulsations. Expect some heavily trancy and polyrhythmic analogue-fi jams.

Nicolas Sheikholeslami aka Çaykh is a Hamburg-born and Berlin-based DJ and producer. He is active as drummer & percussionist for the projects Spiritczualic Enhancement Center and Circuit Diagram.

Çaykh’s three earlier sound-collage cassette releases have already earned him a certain fame in the 4th-world and outsider-disco realms. His collection of pre-war Somali music called “Au revoir, Mogadishu“ paved the way for the Grammy-nominated “Sweet as Broken Dates“ compilation, which he co-curated.

Mixed at Studio Strom, Bremen, Germany
Mastering by Mark Gergis (1.1) and Michael Graves (2.1 & 2.2)
Artwork by Thomas Baldischwyler

Album Preview

Buy Vinyl/Digital

AKUMS1003 // ÇAYKH - Où (Preview)

Psychedelic polyrhythms taken off Casablanca-based producer Guedra Guedra's debut LP for On The Corner.

Read More & Buy: https://www.stampthewax.com/2021/01/26/premiere-guedra-guedra-archetype/
Listen on Youtube: http://bit.ly/GuedraGuedraArchetype

Listen On Youtube

Guedra Guedra - Archetype (STW Premiere)

Awesome Tapes From Africa is here for you.

Aby Ngana Diop—Dieuleul-Dieuleul

Awesome Tapes From Africa

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