Solidarity

by The Souljazz Orchestra

The Souljazz Orchestra's last album, Rising Sun, was a beautiful exploration of the two schools of music that make up the group's name, with a decidedly Ethiopian influence to it.  That album was firmly instrumental, and a move away from the more Fela Kuti-inspired afrobeat of their earlier work.

Now, with Solidarity, their new album, the band has evolved once again, while staying close to their roots.  They've constructed ten wonderful tracks which range from afrobeat to Caribbean and Brazilian inspired songs.  They've also invited a number of guests to join them, encompassing a number of different traditions.

Included on this album are artists from (or with parents from) Sénégal, Brazil, Jamaica, as well as Canadians steeped in North American jazz, soul, and Quebecois music.  In many ways, this band from Ottawa has put together a multi-lingual album which reflects the diversity and beauty of Canadian society.  It's all about Solidarity.

This is a fun album to listen to.  The band has a number of crowd-pleasing tracks, full of high energy, but also some that are more introspective and beautiful.  It's good stuff.

Live in Detroit 1986

by Fela Kuti & Egypt 80

This double-disc album contains recordings from Fela Kuti's concert at the Fox Theatre in Detroit in 1986.  Each disc in this set contains two tracks, with running times between twenty-nine and forty minutes.

Fela arrived in America after serving two years in prison in Nigeria on trumped up charges.  His release was partly due to the fact that Amnesty International took up his cause, and then brought him on tour to the US.  Her performed at the Fox with something like twenty-three people in his band, and it sounds like it was one incredible concert.

I don't know if the concert extended beyond these four songs - these alone account for almost two and a half hours worth of music - and I have to say it must have been incredible to watch the band perform these four tracks.  Fela has masterful control over his band (giving various musicians long solos) and his audience, engaging them in call-and-response while lecturing them on topics such as how African speak with 'whole mouth', and how things in Nigeria can happen 'Just Like That'.

It's hard to imagine contemporary concert goers sticking around for forty-minute tracks; I think it would be more likely to see a twenty-minute medley of snippets of each of his biggest and best-known songs, which would also be amazing to hear, but would lack some of the authenticity of these recordings.

This is an essential album for fans of Afrobeat, Fela, or just good music.

Nigeria 70 Sweet Times

Afro-Funk, Highlife & Juju from 1970s Lagos

While, it's yet another compilation of 70s music from Nigeria.  I've been listening to a lot of these over the last two years, and I have to say that they don't really change a whole lot from one to the next.  There's a part of me that suggests to myself that I would probably be just as happy simply playing the same three over and over, but I'm one of those people who feels that a constant stream of new examples of the same thing is better.

This compilation, fifteen tracks deep, has been put together by the fine people at Strut, and it has a different vibe to it than some of the other discs I've bought.  This one is cheerful from end to end, as it conveys a sense of the positive possibilities of this music.  Gone are the more political tracks (at least, that's how it feels), and instead we get tracks like Tunde Mabadu's 'Viva Disco (Instrumental)'.

The crowning moment of this disc is Admiral Dele Abiodun & His Top Hitters International, who perform 'It's Time for Juju Music', a fifteen minute number that goes off on many tangents before always coming back to it's upbeat chorus.

There's a lot to like on this album.

Cotonou Club

by Orchestre Poly-Rythmo

The Orchestre Poly-Rythmo were the giants of the Beninese musical scene in the late 60s and early 70s, but like many bands on the African continent, had fallen into a state of neglect and collective amnesia before the recent resurgence of interest in afro-funk and rock.  Unlike many other bands though, this large and ever-shifting group has continued to play since that era, although prior to the mid-00s, they had never performed outside of Africa.

Enter an intrepid French A&R person, Elodie Maillot, who, if we are to take the rather self-absorbed and self-serving liner notes at face value, has single-handedly revived the careers of the band, having organized and filmed a number of their performances back home and abroad.  Her actions, despite the tone in the notes, did result in this album of new material being written and recorded, and that is a very good thing.

On the eleven tracks presented on Cotonou Club, we can hear a great deal of energy and vibrancy coming from the aging musicians.  They are continuing the traditions of African music, as they were interpreted in the era of Fela Kuti, but have also updated their sound to reflect the times.  It's a very nice album.

I'm not sure why so much is made of the fact that two musicians from the group Franz Ferdinand are sitting in on one track here.  Would that bring in more sales?  I don't perceive them as having added or deleted anything from the track.

Life Stories

by Ebo Taylor

This album is sub-titled 'Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980', and it brings together, on two discs, sixteen classics from this early pioneer of the Afrobeat movement.

Taylor, a guitarist, worked with a number of different bands over the years, and this release has worked to find some of the common threads of his music across a number of different projects.  What we return to time and again is his desire to marry contemporary jazz with the sounds of highlife, creating music that was often ahead of its time, and therefore not too popular in his native Ghana or in the rest of West Africa.

Many of these songs retell local legends, making them allegories that comment on greed and the desire of the ruling class to profit on the backs of the people.  He also tells stories about his own problems with marriage ('Love and Death'), and a local man who committed incest ('Egya Edu').  The pieces collected here range in length from a radio-friendly few minutes to pieces that top 7, 8, 10, or even 15 minutes.

This is an essential piece of a good music library.

Next Stop... Soweto Vol. 2

Soultown, R&B, Funk & Psych Sounds from the Townships 1969-1976

Before listening to this fantastic compilation, my entire knowledge of the music of South Africa was limited to that god-awful gumboot dancing music that was responsible, in a round-about way, for such monstrosities as the Step Up movies, and of course the incomparable Tumi and the Volume. 

Anyway - this is an amazing collection of a wide variety of styles and genres of music that were produced in difficult conditions in the townships of apartheid-era South Africa.  There is a nice mix as we range over these 22 tracks.

Favourites include The Grasshoppers' 'I Am There' with its driving piano, The Mgababa Queens' 'Akulalwa Soweto', and The Klooks' 'Nkuli's Shuffle'.  I don't have the first or third volumes in the series, and that is something I feel I'm going to have to rectify quickly.

Lloyd Miller /The Heliocentrics (OST)

by Lloyd Miller and the Heliocentrics

I picked this up a while ago, and have spent a lot of time with it, just taking it in.  The Heliocentrics, with their last album, introduced me to Mulatu Astatke, and for that I am eternally grateful to them.

With this new project, the group has paired up with Lloyd Miller, another artist I was completely unfamiliar with before listening to the album.  The Stones Throw website refers to Mr. Miller as a "ethnomusicologist, jazz maestro and multi-instrumentalist", and I suppose that's a valid description.

I notice, when listening to this, a number of Eastern influences in the music, which is absolutely lovely.  This is a pretty quiet album, which floats its way around the room.  I find that I zone out a lot while listening to this, although the track "Lloyd's Diatribe" always brings me back, as Miller rants a little about things that he doesn't like about the modern world.

I highly recommend this album if you like ethno-jazz.

Afro-Rock Volume One

by Various Artists

According to the fine people at Slinky Music (my favourite music shop in the Toronto area), this is the album that started the whole recent interest in Afro-funk in North America.  This collection, originally put out by Kona Records, and recently re-released by Strut, gathers the best of the little-known of 70s African funk.

The album starts with Jingo's 'Fever', a brilliant funk track.  From there, it rolls into music from groups like Geraldo Pino & The Heartbeats, Steele Beauttah, the Mercury Dance Band, and others from that era.  The musicians are from all over Western Africa, predominately Nigeria and Ghana, with some other places represented.

This compilation works quite well, with tracks fitting together very nicely.  There are some nice long pieces, broken up by shorter ones.  Particularly memorable is 'Yuda', a pro-Mobutu Sese Seko song from Dackin Dackino, which is great to listen to regardless of its politics.

If you are going to purchase one cd to sample the brilliance of afro-funk, it should be this one.

Mulatu Steps Ahead

by Mulatu Astatke

I really like Mulatu Astatke.  I thought his earlier compilation cd was brilliant, and I really like this recent release of all new material. 

This is a much more Westernized form of jazz through much of the album, but the Ethiopian influence is never far below the surface, coming to the fore on some pieces, such as 'I Faram Gami I Faram' or other tracks that feature vocals.

As usual, I know next to nothing about jazz beyond being able to identify what I like, and I know that I really like this album.  Highly recommended.

Rising Sun

by The Souljazz Orchestra

Having been impressed by some other recent Strut recordings, and lured in by the beautiful cover art, I thought it would be worth giving this album a try, which turned into a very wise decision from my perspective.

This album starts simply, but builds to the second track, 'Agbara', which is an upbeat and stirring piece of music.  'Negus Negast', the third track, sounds slightly African in its temperament, and is a lovely piece of music.

The album moves from slow and contemplative to upbeat and joyful a couple of times, as it moves from 'Serenity' (sixth track), through 'Consecration' (7th) to 'Rejoice', both the eighth and ninth final tracks, which in turn echo the first and second.

This album stands up to repeated listening, and while it could work quite nicely as background in a restaurant, it deserves to be listened to attentively.  Great stuff.

New York - Addis - London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975

by Mulatu Astatke

I just realized the other day that I have been playing the hell out of this cd since December, but I never wrote about how much I love it.  I first heard of Mulatu Astatke through his work with the Heliocentrics on the Inspiration Information project, and when I saw this compilation of his work from the 60s and 70s, I was intrigued.

This stuff is brilliant!  This cd holds twenty tracks highlighting the best of Astatke's career as a jazz musician from Ethiopia.  He has composed and arranged most of the music here, and himself plays the vibraphone, conga, and other percussion instruments.  His brand of jazz marries African influences with the mainstream jazz of the era, and sometimes sounds a little Latin.

Listening to this the first time through, I was amused to hear on 'Lanchi Biye' the opening to K'naan's 'America'.  I'm surprised more people haven't sampled from Astatke's oeuvre, as it fits perfectly a number of artists' styles.  This is now one of my all-time favourite cds, and I can't encourage people to sample it enough.

Inspiration Information

by Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics

This album features the legendary Ethiopian bandleader Mulatu Astatke, alongside the Heliocentrics, laying down what the sticker on the front of the album calls an "Ethio-jazz hybrid".

Whatever labels you might want to give these fourteen tracks, they are very cool. The African vibe is felt most clearly in the opening piece, "Masenqo", but throughout the album, you can feel the influence of a foreign culture and sensibility.

This is a lively, lovely album, which I feel will get a lot of play from me over the course of the summer. Highly recommended.