Nigeria Special / Nigeria Disco Funk Special

As much as I love this stuff, there's something weird to me about the fact that virtually no one in the US is following current Nigerian music.

I've heard people make a similar point about jazz, i.e., that the reissue craze has killed enthusiasm for newer, forward-looking jazz. Not sure if it's true in either case, but it makes an interesting parallel (to me, at least).

I check in on Allaboutjazz.com, and sometimes other sites (well mainly jazzcorner), and it seems to me there is a large community that remains interested and excited about newer jazz. You might be right w/r/t generalist music hipsters rather than jazz fans, or Nigerian music fans, per se.

(Or indie rock/indie pop types who listen to other things on the side.)

I don't think reissues are keeping people from buying new jazz albums. I think the crappiness of so much new jazz is keeping people from buying it. The same couple of dozen titles make up every jazz critic's year-end list, because they're the only good ones in a sea of bland sludge or hyper-intellectual wankery. The jazz scene is small enough that there are no hidden treasures - everybody who's paying attention knows about everybody who's doing anything worthwhile.

Re modern Nigerian music, I've got no clue what's going on. And even when I was editing Global Rhythm, the only African artists whose new albums popped up on my radar were the ones with US distribution - Baaba Maal, Amadou & Miriam, Salif Keita, etc., etc. I went to Victor Uwaifo's website a couple of minutes ago and he's got newish albums (the most recent one is from 2006), and there's a link beside each one that says "If you are a label outside Africa who wants to license this album, contact Victor Uwaifo."

I don't really want to de-rail the thread arguing with unperson about jazz, especially given that he knows more about it than I do and I don't even like that much of it, including the old classic stuff, but--

the fan lists as seen on websites like AAJ include more than a couple dozen titles. Whether they are all sucky hyper-intellectual wankery I don't know. (Sorry, just sitting here fighting the beginning of a sinus infection and need something to do.)

I'm exaggerating, but there really isn't that much going on, and consensus picks emerge pretty easily with little or no argument. For example, I just got an email announcing the winners (not the whole list, just the #1 spots) for the Village Voice jazz critics' poll, and while I didn't vote for it because my tastes are a little free-er and noisier than the majority of my peers, I'm not at all surprised to see that Vijay Iyer's Historicity won.

i literally couldn't find a copy of the vijay iyer album online to review for my twitter project

i tried like six times

Why not buy it from I-tunes, or since you write for the Voice some contact his label and ask them send you a download. Jeez. You whined about about Bassakou Kouyate the same way and I gave you the publicist's website. Really, there's more ways to get music than just from bit torrent sites. You live in NYC.

generally when you ask a strange publicist (ie, one who doesn't service you usually) there's an expectation that you're gonna cover it beyond a tweet.

Generally, yes, but the Twitter reviews were your schtick, so it would have been easy to convince the publicist (particularly the publicist in question) to send you a copy.

I think more artists should have their publicist's contact info on their website. Even if it's a general contact email at a major label.

I'm still having a really hard time believing that Asiko album came out in 72.

n/m, '77. That makes more sense.

Both Haastrup and Ken Okulolo still teach and play music in Oakland, California

I see that the liners have some information on where some of these folks now are.

Generally, yes, but the Twitter reviews were your schtick, so it would have been easy to convince the publicist (particularly the publicist in question) to send you a copy.

I think more artists should have their publicist's contact info on their website. Even if it's a general contact email at a major label.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Monday, December 28, 2009 8:14 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha, not to derail this thread, but i've def had some awwwwwkward convos with smaller publicists this year about why exactly i need their record.

Got Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81, another two-disc set, in today's mail. So far, fewer berserk acid-funk rampages than on the earlier Ghana Soundz sets, but it's still plenty sweet.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Monday, September 21, 2009 7:30 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i just got this too! good stuff!

I love this stuff so much.

"I love this stuff so much" so much, so much.

There are two new comps out. Anyone heard them?

v/a: Nigeria Special volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6

v/a: Nigeria Afrobeat Special: The New Explosive Sound in 1970s Nigeria

Both great.

Yeah, I reviewed both of those for The Wire, and they kick ass.

Are there any modern Nigeria compilations out there, apart from the Lagos Stori Plenti one from a couple of years ago? Everything out there seems to focus on the 1970s afrobeat heyday but a lot of the modern stuff I've heard has been tremendous.

Soundway strikes again - The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria, another 2CD set, will be out July 20 in the US. It's awesome. And btw, there's an excellent article on the dudes who run Soundway and Analog Africa in the new issue of Jazziz.

so anxious to download this (as soon as my brutal PC problems are finally resolved).

yeah i raved a little about the world ends comp on the african psych thread. its really good.

In case you don't know, Nigeria won this year's Pop World Cup!

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/06/pop-world-cup-2010-the-final/

(podcast of the whole thing here - http://freakytrigger.co.uk/popworldcup-podcast/ )

Thank you Mr Hand - I think this is the link with all the tracks in one place, though.

thanks!

Being completely ignorant of the earlier soundwave comps, hearing The World Ends in Rough Trade today was the first time I've been stopped in my tracks by a record in ages. It's absolutely fantastic!

Is digging for certain types of old African music on vinyl throughout the continent, neo-colonialist?

http://africasacountry.com/2010/09/14/collection-cultures/

The reissue train has been slow to recognize larger genres in Africa like Soukous, Highlife, or Benga, unless they find an artist that has an added funk or rock influence. In the past the tendency was to look for “authentic” music that sounded more “traditional.” Are they now shying away from things that sound too … African?

stop bumping old topics, god

It's an interesting topic. I don't know if I entirely buy that -- I mean yes there's this trend of trying to find things that fit the "funk" "psych" or "rock" labels on the one hand, but on the other hand, you have blogs like Awesome Tapes from Africa, labels like Sublime Frequencies, etc.

I mean I thought the old idea of looking for "authenticity" in African music was seen as sort of quasi-colonialist too, although maybe the new trends are just new forms of the same sort of condescension. Ultimately I can't, as an American listener, listen to soukous with Congolese ears, afrobeat with Nigerian ears, etc. I love those genres but there's always going to be an element of "Wow, this is awesome because it sounds so strange and familiar at the same time." And that means I'm inevitably exoticising the music a bit whereas a Congolese person might hear a big soukous hit the way I hear a Prince single, as just a good, familiar song that gets played at parties.

The subject of anthology/compilation as revisionist history is sort of a great one in itself. Harry Smith certainly was guilty of a certain kind of distortion with his anthology, taking a bunch of novelty records and songs of varying degrees of localness/commercialness and shaping them into some supposed "old weird america". I think there's a little of that with the Nigeria Special type comps -- look how funny and weird these guys seem with their pidgin english and outlandish disco outfits playing music that sounds like the bizarro version of our own. But I'm sure the rock and funk and rumba and disco and all that stuff that influenced african pop styles seemed like a strange, far out kick to African urbanites in the 60s and 70s too.

tldr

I'm bumping September 2010 blog posts I just read.

Yes, it's definately a complicated subject. 80 some comments to that blog post.

tldr

― mittens reduxeo, Wednesday, September 22, 2010 10:44 PM Bookmark

sb

too short didnt read

that's because too short has better things to do

If people only want to reissue or listen to certain specific African genres from the '60s or '70s that's obviously their prerogative, but it does seem weird to me that thanks in part to marketing as well, that means that such a finite number of genres (and just old ones at that) are highlighted on Pitchfork or hipster record stores (5 of the top selling 'world' albums at Amoeba in Hollywood in July were reissues). And yes I know that certain modern African club styles get some American/UK/European attention and that Congolese music did in the '80s (but no more).

I also think the post could use a little more context -- granted it's just a blog post. I mean this phenomenon didn't come out of nowhere -- you've had a fela kuti revival running strong for at least a decade, you had the catapulting of people like King Sunny Ade and Manu Dibango to international stardom in the 80s, etc.

If anything I think maybe the "people are afraid of things that sound too African" line is itself kind of condescending, because after all Africans chose to make and listen to all this music that doesn't sound all that "African" to Western ears, according to the post.

I mean even highlife, soukous, etc. -- what is "traditional" about these genres? They're urban dance pop musics that draw on international influences, and they certainly sound "western" compared to the stuff in, say, the Nonesuch Explorer series. Once you're engaging in musical tourism the distinction between "traditional" and "westernized" is meaningless anyway - in either case you don't bear the relationship to the music that its primary intended audience does. There's nothing "authentic" about listening to Yoruba ceremonial music on your subway commute.

Hurting otm, and something I'm constantly reminding my students when we listen to music (esp atm Native American recordings mostly from labels like Folkways). Best case scenario someone stood at a ceremony with their sound equipment setup and you're getting something that was at least once upon a time situated in a ritual/authentic context (but like Hurting said has long been displaced from that context if you're listening to it on a subway, or in a classroom). More likely tho this stuff wasn't even performed in a ritual context but was a performance done for an ethnomusicologist that may or may not have any resemblance to anything contextually appropriate (think that famous Edison video of the Sioux Ghost Dance, or one of my fave albums is a Bukharan Shashmaqom performance done by a Queens band where some of the members were professional Shashmaqom artists but the kind of band setup, recording situation, situation context, etc are totally different from historical performances of Shashmaqom).

To a certain degree that's now a strawman argument, as there are not that many people arguing that Nonesuch 'traditional' recordings should be hyped and marketed instead of Nigerian funk and psychedelic whatever. Also, when King Sunny and Manu were first getting hyped they were still active and touring. The current fave items are mostly just compilations of old performances (and yes the Awesome tapes, VOA, and a few other blogs sometimes reach out to non-'hip' artists). As for 'ignored' styles-The ILX African rap thread rarely gets posts, and other than now-Canadian based Somalian rapper K'naan, few rappers from anywhere in the continent have music released and marketed in the US. Could someone get attention in the US from hiphop and rock audiences from current African rap, if they had the money and sent downloads and cds to the right bloggers, djs, etc?

Konono No. 1 and Staff Benda Bilili have gotten attention thanks in part to their backstories and their 'novelty' approach. Soukous (aka Congolese rumba) has not been marketed in the US since the 80s or 90s. There are a fair amount of Congolese people living in the Washington DC area, so I have seen a few Congolese shows since then (I am usually just 1 of a tiny handful of white folks at such gigs).

I meant Folkways not Nonesuch

props for being in that tiny handful of white folks that gets it

Yeah I think those are good points Mordy although ultimately I don't even think it matters what the original context of the recording was once I'm just putting it on a mix for a friend in between Ghostface and Terry Riley.

Also sometimes I don't even particularly LIKE the original cultural context, e.g. the fact that a lot of JuJu music involves what I understand to be praise-singing of elites. But I don't understand the words and I don't care that much.

Curmudgeon, I guess I'm not sure why Western audiences should feel obligated to listen to other African styles either. I mean I have given some African hip-hop a chance and I have yet to hear anything that really grabs me. Which is not to say I've exhaustively searched, but why should I? If African pop stars want to seek Western audiences, they should hook up with companies that can find ways to market them to Western audiences. I'd guess that the bigger contemporary Soukous stars, for example, are not particularly hurting financially and don't feel any desperate need to do so (and to be clear, some of them ARE marketed in the US, but to African expats). If they did, yes I can imagine they might be encouraged to play on some kind of novelty or exotica approach.

I mean I get what can be insulting about the hipster reissue approach, c.f. the Omar Souleyman craze. There's a good comment on the post you linked -- a quote from a woman who complained that the white audience was looking for the primitive while the African audience preferred the music to be civilized, in response to a complaint of overproduction on a recording. But I also think there's a strain of primitivism in American culture itself that probably doesn't exist in a lot of countries, where Americans themselves actually want to be seen as having an element of the primitive.

And yes I know that certain modern African club styles get some American/UK/European attention and that Congolese music did in the '80s (but no more).

I'll fess up to being totally lost when it comes to modern African (and South American, especially Brazillian) club styles and music. the proliferation of stuff is so overwhelming I don't even know where to begin. when it comes to modern stuff I pick up a smattering of things I see referenced or written about, but it's kind of hit or miss. For example, I like Cibelle and Seu Jorge okay but they seem like big crossover Brazillian artists, and their stuff is fairly easy to grasp - on the other hand I d/led some random baile funk comps and hated all of them (mostly for the abysmal drum/synth sounds)

with reissues it's like someone's already done some of the research and contextualization and it's a bit easier/more straightforward to sort through...? I dunno.

I guess what I'm getting at with all these jumbled posts is that there's a lot of what seems like empty posturing and narcissism of small differences in the various strains of African music fetishism, but it's all basically the same idea -- collect more hip shit to listen to, cultural context be damned. And it's all probably at least a little bit colored by racist and colonialist ideas, but at the same time it seems relatively harmless.

similarly, with something like African rap it seems to me that the only way to bridge a gap like that - between the African rapper and the American audience - is for their to be some real, skilled go-between who understands both. And I don't know who that would be (presumably someone from an immigrant community, either an American in Africa or an African in America, but also one with particularly attuned ears and communication skills who could serve as a conduit between the two. these kinds of people are rare).

xp