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Sweet and Smooth Highlife
If you're in the market for sweet, smooth Ghana highlife music, Nana Tuffour always delivers!James Kwaku ("Nana") Tuffour was born on Valentine's Day, 1954 in Kumasi and first came to notice in Alex...
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Malagasy Divas 2
MbolatianaSince posting Malagasy Divas back in January, I've been continuing my explorations of Malagasy music via YouTube, and have come to a realization: That collection was merely scratching the...
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Farewell, "Evil Genius"
Dr. Victor Abimbola Olaiya, known as the "Evil Genius" of Nigerian Highlife music, passed away Wednesday, February 12, at the age of 89. Thus ends an era in Nigerian music. Olaiya was probably the last...
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Malagasy Divas
SiscaMany years ago, Matthew Temple's Matsuli Music blog posted a series of fifty compilations, African Serenades. Back in 2007, I assembled a two-part installment for African Serenades, Vol. 47 Pts. 1...
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Fast-paced Anioma Highlife From King Ubulu
A while back I made a few posts devoted to to music from Anioma, or the Igbo-speaking region of Delta State in Nigeria, immediately to the west of the Niger River. This style is generally faster-paced...
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Sweet 'n' Sour Sounds
We return once again to the Niger River Delta, and some more Ijaw-language highlife music in the style known as awijiri. The rather melancholy vocals and understated guitar work of this music have...
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Tshala Muana: The Voice of Kasai
Acclaimed as one of Congo's greatest female singers, Tshala Muana over four decades in the business has emerged as the international ambassadress for Mutuashi, the insistent rhythm and dance style of...
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The Morning Star Group
Here's a mysterious Nigerian album, Idanre Makin (Idanre Makin EILP 002) I got not too long ago - by a Yoruba vocal/percussion group led by Francis Akinde called Ẹgbẹ Irawọ Owurọ, whose name...
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Jack of All Trades, Master of All
Footballer, guitarist and composer of many of the most memorable songs in Congolese music, Mayaula Mayoni (1946-2010) has often been overlooked. I posted one of his biggest solo hits, "Ba Chagrins",...
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An Èwì Deep Dive with Lanrewaju Adepọju
Even if I weren't already a huge fan of Lanrewaju Adepọju, I would have bought this album for the cover art alone! Aláfọwósowópó (Lanre Adepoju Records LALPS 72, 1980) is a tribute to the cooperative...
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Raji Owonikoko's "Kwara System"
I just came into possession of a raft of great Yoruba recordings from Nigeria - lots of jùjú, àpàlà fújì, wákà, èwi, what have you - and I'll be sharing some of them with you over the next few months....
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Master of the Ngurumi and the Biram
I present today four cassettes by Malam Maman Barkah, the Niger Republic's acclaimed master of two traditional instruments of that area - the ngurumi, a two stringed lute (pictured), and the biram, a...
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The Queen of Wassoulou
Kudos to The Lost Maestros for posting this wonderful video of the Malian diva Coumba Sidibe. I have nothing to add to their summary of her career:Mali's Coumba Sidibe was a pioneering force behind the...
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An Overlooked Obey Gem
I thought I had all of Ebenezer Obey's great LPs from the '80s, until I came across this gem in Dusty Groove in Chicago a few months ago.It turns out that, while Gbeja Mi Eledumare (Afrodisia DWAPS...
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"Live" at the Kilimanjaro
An often-overlooked item in the discography of Les Quatre Etoiles, 1988's Four Stars at the Kilimanjaro (Kilimanjaro International Productions KIP-006-88) purports to be a "live" recording at the...
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Ripoff Alert!
For some time now, a dubious operation called "Kipepeo Publishing," apparently based in Kenya, has been peddling on Amazon CDs made from MP3s downloaded, for free, from this site and others. Moos's...
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The Ladies of Missema, and Pamelo Mounk'a too!
The all-female Gabonese choral group Missema was founded in the 1970s, apparently with some official sponsorship, with the purpose of promoting Gabon's President and kleptocrat-for-life El Hadj Omar...
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Kickin' Kikuyu!
Daniel Kamau's Kikuyu-language benga sounds a little different from the Luo, Kamba and Swahili versions of the music this blog has featured in the past. Together with the late Joseph Kamaru he was one...
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Pumped-Up Makossa
As the title would have it, Turbo-Hits '89 (Editions Haïssam-Records MH 112, 1989) is a collection of remixed makossa (and a couple not-so-makossa) tracks from the house of Gabonese producer Moussa...
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Kinshasa Acoustic: Ali & Tam's avec l'Orchestre Malo
Ali and Tam's together with Orchestre Malo wrap up our retrospective look at three interesting Congolese LP's released in the mid '80s by the Swiss label Plainisphare. Their contribution is Malo...
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