Felix from Discoteca Oceano is one of 20Jazzfunkgreats longest standing friends & collaborators. An excellent man with good taste to spare, see him here sending some snapshots from the South. This music is frankly amazing, you can really hear bristling in its joyous & raw contours the spirit that has informed so many awesome efforts from Western bands we heart today (Abe Vigoda come to mind, and of course, Timbaland…indian flute, yeah, right). Anyhow, Felix has just about recovered from a bit of an illness, so do leave best wishes and flowers in the mail box at the bottom. And of course enjoy, we know you will.

El Guincho’s Alegranza is coming out on Young Turks on the 22nd of this Month, we can’t wait to have it on vinyl!

The elguitar sounds throughout ‘Armée Guinéenne’. It is always present. She kicks off lonely and then the voice shines like a ray of sun in Guinea, from where they come.

In 1961 Bembeya Jazz National got started with government support, something very common in the 1960′s Guinea, when President Sekou Toure created a framework to sponsor national groups and diffuse Guinean folklore. Aboubacar Demba Camara was Bembeya Jazz’s vocalist until he died in a car crash. Afterwards, the close relationshops between Fidel Castro and Guinea took them to Cuba, where Abelardo Barroso became their new voice.

In several records from the West-African group you can feel the cuban influence, something which makes sense given the way into which both musics feed into each other. ‘Hommage a Demba Camara’ includes this “Armée Guinéenne” that one would expect to hear blasting from some the windows of some Alan Moore’s hallucination of London. ‘10 Ans de Succes’, a live recording in Conakry in 1971 is also worth checking, if African music is full of something, it is live performances with no choruses, but stanzas repeating incessantly to wonderful melodic loops both difficult and wonderful.

Bembeya Jazz Nacional – Armée Guinéenne

The chanting in Souley Kanté’s ‘Bi Magni’ would make any song soar. It is hypnotic pop transcending any language barriers. Who cares where does this music come from? It doesn’t matter if its reggaeton, Congolese Rumba or Ghanan Afrobeat. If Bembeya Jazz Nacional sing in mandinka and blow me away more than if they sang if my own tongue, the rest doesn’t matter. It fades away in the background, magically.

Souley Kanté – Bi Magni

First time I listened to Toto La Momposina was in a Cumbia mixtape they put up in Mad Decent. From then I became obsessed with her. I even wrote to an e-mail I found of her web. The body of the e-mail said ‘Toto?”.

Anyway, I managed to grab one of her records, Carmelina. Toto says: “The drums are part of the how I transcended. One comes to life with a mission, and singing is mine’. The barefoot diva is happiness and passion. Feel the heat, the streets burning to Colombia’s Westerly rhythm.

Totó La Momposina – Cururá

Epilogue -
This post is tagged with alan moore