Much to my shame I'd never heard of the country called Djibouti, but thankfully Ostinato Records & Groupe RTD have put that right. Located in the cultural melting pot of East Africa & with all music strictly state controlled, this LP is a the first ever international recording & a funky, swinging, shake until you ache joy.

Great track, quite reminiscent of some Dur Dur Band's tracks. ;)

Love this album! Spun a tune on this week's show https://soundcloud.com/thepressuredrop/pdrop-april27-sndcld #radiogold

Super Mama Djombo - Assalariado

from "Psychedelic Sanza 1982 - 1984 " on BORN BAD 
BUY https://bornbadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-sanza-1982-1984

FRANCIS BEBEY - Forest Nativity

We are happy to announce the first in an occasional series of fully licensed 12" releases on Autonomous Africa exploring the influence of music from Africa across the globe.

The first release comes from Colombia's Wganda Kenya with three tracks recorded in the mid 70s. The Caribbean coast of Colombia has a long relationship with Africa stretching back hundreds of years. Strong trading links and migration from West Africa to Colombia led to a distinct African influence on the music in cities such as Cartagena and the local music (cumbia and champeta) absorbed these influences. This was  particularly notable in the 70s as records by Fela Kuti amongst others arrived in Colombia. One of the leading practitioners of this Afro Sound were the mighty Wganda Kenya who were huge there in the 70s and 80s and whose music is still highly regarded to this day. 

While their music has appeared on compilations, there hasn't been a big fat 12" vinyl release since Island Records offshoot, Mango put "Shakalode" out as a 12" way back in 1989.

"Shakalode" on the A side is a powerful reworking of the Fela Kuti classic "Shakara" which was much covered in Colombia in the mid 1970s. It's a transcendental Afro Colombian funk bomb.

On the other side are two other Wganda Kenya gems; the call and response percussive and organ grooving "Pim Pom" and the more traditional Colombian cumbia singalong anthem "La Botellita".

Originally this was going to be a 2 x 12" featuring some other Wganda Kenya magic but sadly the masters to many of their tracks have been lost. There are plans to put out a second 12" of reworkings of these tracks aimed at djs who won't play records unless they can mix them, but of course, these 40 year old tracks will still rock any open minded dancefloor just as they are.

All proceeds will once again go to the Mtandika mission in Tanzania - www.actioninafrica.org/about-mtandika.php

Release date April 2015. Distributed by Above Board.

Autonomous Africa is a collaborative project run by JD Twitch, Midland and Auntie Flo.

Autonomous Africa Vintage  01 - Wganda Kenya - Afro Colombia 12" EP (sampler)

The very first title in our Africa 45’s series http://www.mrbongo.com/products/amazones-de-guinee-samba-moussa-doumbia-samba-7

Amazones de Guinee - Samba

Pure vibes to start our series. Live and direct, high energy African funk with a powerful vocal, recorded live in Paris in 1983.

Hailing from Guinea they were the countries first all female group, formed by members of Guinean army nonetheless. Their lead percussionist Kade Diallo was killed in a car crash just days after returning from a tour of France in the early 80’s. The group did not record again until 2008, but they continue to tour now, with a new generation of fans.

Taken from the sought after 1983 album ‘Au Coeur De Paris’, previously unreleased on 7”.

Moussa Doumbia - Samba

Malia born Moussa Doumbia and was a prolific saxophonist, composer and arranger, who lived in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

He fused African and Funk rhythms in his own unique style, comparable to the likes of Fela Kuti, Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou and Ebo Taylor. Moussa’s voice is strongly reminiscent of the almighty James Brown. 

Similarly to Fela and The Shrine, Moussa played at ‘Boule Noire’, a club in the cosmopolitan area of his town, Treichville. Every night they would play their own styles for hours to rich businessmen and locals.

‘Samba’ is taken from his 1980 LP ‘Lassissi Presente Moussa Doumbia’ released on Sacodis. Extremely hard to find.

Moussa Doumbia - Samba

Orchestre Rock - A-Festival -- Mwana Mawa

Orchestre    Rock A Festival -- Mwana Mawa

Cameroon, 1978: it’s like any good western movie. A man drifts through the plains at the furthest edge of the country in search of two former gunslingers, hoping to coax them out of retirement for one last showdown. Except this time, the weapons are guitars and the gunslingers are Jean Gabari and Messi Martin – the calm sheriff and his hot-headed deputy – who had led the band Los Camaroes to superstardom at the beginning of the decade.

Los Camaroes emerged at the end of the 1960s from the town of Maroua in the northern, predominantly Islamic area of Cameroon. After changes in name, in lineup and in management, they worked their way south to the capital to make a name for themselves; in the span of only a few years they changed Cameroon’s music scene forever, leaving a trail of sold-out nightclubs and monster radio hits in their wake. Then, at the height of their popularity, they broke up. 

The band had been led from the beginning by Jean Gabari, whose level-headedness and even-handedness inspired the respect and devotion of his musicians. But it was Gabari’s alchemical collaborations with guitarist Messi Martin that drove the band to its greatest heights. Martin had developed an innovation that would earn him fame throughout Cameroon as the “king of Bikutsi”, as Johnny Cosmos explains: 

“The primary instrument in Bikutsi is the balafon, and Messi came up with a trick that consisted of chewing small pieces of paper until they reached the right consistency and then stuck them between the strings of the guitar. This trick, which made a guitar sound like a balafon, catapulted him to stardom and turned him into the founder of Modern Bikutsi.” (Check the song “Bezimbi” to hear Messi Martin´s wizardry on a Bikutsi tune)

Martin’s extraordinary talents were matched by a character of great unpredictability. He had been lured away from the band before by the promise of success and, in 1975, when Los Camaroes were at the peak of their power, he left them once again. Gabari tried to keep the band going, but his own longstanding battles with ill health eventually forced him to return to his hometown. With Gabari and Martin gone, the rest of the musicians drifted away in search of other gigs. By 1978, Los Camaroes were no more than a rapidly fading memory.

But then came the resurrection.

From out of nowhere, a businessman named Atangana Joseph appeared in northern Cameroon. His goal: to track down the original members of Los Camaroes and get them back together for their one final shot at immortality. The musicians reconvened at the legendary Mango Bar in the capital city of Yaoundé, the very place where, years earlier, they had established their reputation as one of Cameroon’s most fearsome live bands.

Producer Nicolas Mongué and engineer Emmanuel Guyssot were called in from Douala to record what was being billed as a comeback album. There was talk of going into a studio, but Los Camaroes had always thrived on the energy of the nightclub scene; they decided instead to record it live to two-track in the Mango Bar.

The album, Resurrection Los Vol. 1, was completed in only a few days. There would be no Volume 2. The music that emerged during the Mango Bar sessions was the culmination of a fifteen year musical bond between Gabari and Martin, and what was supposed to be a comeback album ended up being a last testament — Gabari would die only a few years later and Martin, without his foil, would never find the same level of musical success. Even at the time, these two titans of Cameroon’s music scene seemed to realise it would be the last time they would ever work together. The resurrection of Los Camaroes was short-lived … but it produced a masterpiece.

Resurrection lOS

Resurrection Los - Los Camaroes

I remember the day clearly. I was searching for treasures in a record shop in Yaoundé, the Capital city of Cameroon, when suddenly I came across a 7-inch record with a picture of a young man wearing a traditional hat and bearing the marks of several imposing vertical scars on the side of his face, carved when he was just a boy as a reminder of his heritage in the Musgum tribe of the northern part of the country.

The record contained two songs – ‘Gandjal Kessoum’ and ‘Touflé’ – by an artist I had never heard of before named Hamad Kalkaba. Both cuts were raw classics of fuzzed-out bass, pin-sharp horns, built upon the unshakable foundation of Northern Cameroon’s mightiest rhythm: the Gandjal. The shop owner - who noticed that I was listening to the same record over and over again - mentioned that ‘There is another single with a green cover of the same artist, if I am not mistaken’.

Over the next six years I searched for that ‘green cover’ and finally found it in a record collection belonging to an old bar in Parakou in northern Benin. While most of the records had been beaten and worn by a life spent in the jukebox, this one had been sitting in its paper sleeve for forty years, untouched and unplayed, seemingly waiting for us to pick it up and rip the two soulful Gandjal tunes from it, the masterpieces ‘Fouh Sei Allah’ and ‘Tchakoulaté’.

These two records, plus a third simply named ‘Nord Cameroon Rythms’ constitute the entire discography of Hamad Kalkaba. Neglected for decades by all but the most devoted collectors of Afro music, Hamad Kalkaba and the Golden Sounds at long last gathers together the body of work of one of Cameroon’s forgotten geniuses.

But unlike many musicians who emerged from nowhere, recorded a few singles and vanished again, Kalkaba hadn’t disappeared. Far from it. He was a distinguished public figure, a retired Colonel in the army of Cameroon, and a former member of Cameroon’s Olympic Selection Committee. When we tracked him down he was serving as president of the Confederation of African Athletics. And Although Kalkaba’s job kept him busy, and he seemed initially dismissive of the music he’d made as a young man, he turned out to be an enthusiastic ally in this project. He arranged interviews, helped fill in the blanks and, when we finally met him in Yaoundé in 2016, provided us with photographs, lyric sheets and notes.

During the interview Kalkaba explained how the songs recorded in the mid 1970s were part of a movement, a movement initiated by musicians from all around Cameroon who, with the help of keyboards, drum kits and electric guitars, had started to modernise the traditional rhythms of their regions. For Kalkaba it was no different and backed by his band the Golden Sounds, devoted himself to the promotion of the sounds of northern Cameroon.

One of the aims of Analog Africa is to showcase the colourful diversity of styles that exist in Africa and its diaspora and today we are very proud to be able to give these Gandjal tunes their first worldwide release.

Hamad Kalkaba and the Golden Sounds 1974 - 1975

Get the Record here:

Hamad Kalkaba - Astadjam Dada Saré(Leave a comment, tell kalkaba how much you love his song!)

Akalé Wubé songs from the album "Mata" available for streaming.

Dodo

💥PRE-ORDER NOW💥

The Dancing Devils of Djibouti. Out June 5.

2LP/CD ➡️ lnk.to/dancingdevils
Digital/Stream ➡️ lnk.to/8spABTID

A stunning collision of Somali funk, American jazz, Jamaican reggae, Indian Bollywood, and the synth melodies of the Red Sea by Groupe RTD, one of East Africa's best kept secrets.

Freshly pressed double LP cut at 45 RPM, housed in a reverse board printed gatefold sleeve, alongside a hardcover CD bookcase with a 12-page booklet.

Recorded in three days -- as per the strict limit set by Djibouti's national radio authorities -- with a state-of-the-art mobile recording studio replete with the very best audio interfaces and carefully positioned microphones around a less than soundproof room to achieve a vibrant, professional sound while maintaining the analog warmth of decades prior.

The Dancing Devils of Djibouti

BUY NOW!

Raga Kaan Ka’Eegtow (You Are The One I Love) / Asma Omar

Eba Aka Jerome et le Sanwi Star - Trasion (Alma Negra Edit)

>> Spotify, Deezer, Bandcamp : https://kuronekoMedia.lnk.to/FoliKadi

Following up on their collaborative single with Colombian trio Ghetto Kumbé, released in November 2020, Parisian collective and record label Mawimbi unveils another extract from their debut album, to be released in June, 2021.

Although it definitely sounds like “afro electro”, a genre Mawimbi has been championing since their debuts as a DJ collective, “Fôli Kadi”, their second single in collaboration with Malian artist Fatim Kouyaté (Midnight Ravers), offers a more intimate and melodic profile, drawing in the inherent melancholy  of Mandingue music and the power of contemporary pop music.

"Fôli Kadi" has some of the essential features found in Mawimbi's debut album. In its musical content on the one hand, as it plays on a subtle balance between a dance beat and emotional melodic content, which gradually rises and ends in a cascade of kora and cymbals.

In its history too, because more than any other tracks on Mawimbi's LP, "Fôli Kadi" owes a lot to the meetings and opportunities gleaned by the collective over the last five years. Their collaboration with kora player Chérif Soumano and singer Fatim Kouyaté was made possible by Lyon-based producer Dom Peter, leader of Franco-Malian project Midnight Ravers and manager of Blanc Manioc. "Fôli Kadi" was made "here and there", through chance encounters and the sharing of musical vibes - for example, Soumano's kora line was recorded in one take as he was passing by the studio to send his greetings. 

"Fôli Kadi" translates to "music feels good" in bambara, a language widely spoken in Mali! 

Drums by Romain Vignaud, recorded at Red Bull Studios
Percussion by Yannick Van Ter Beek
Kora by Cherif Soumano
Vocals by Fatim Kouyaté
Bass, keys & production by Adrien Colle (Mawimbi)

Written by Adrien Colle, Chérif Soumano & Fatim Kouyaté.
Produced and arranged by Adrien Colle.
Mixed by Nicolas Taite.
Mastered by Cem Oral @ Jammin Masters.
Artwork by Michaël Sallit.

Download

Mawimbi - Fôli Kadi (feat. Fatim Kouyaté)

Nominated for a Grammy and the German Record Critics Prize. Get BEJA POWER! Now —> https://ostlp.lnk.to/beja

Raga Kaan Ka’Eegtow (You Are The One I Love) / Asma Omar

Ostinato Records

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