When I was around nine years old, I nursed a simmering schoolboy crush on Martha Ulaeto, who was a rather popular singer in Calabar. She was a local girl who had achieved considerable heights as one of the few trained operatic singers in Nigeria at the time, and her primary repertoire comprised jazzed-up arrangements of traditional songs drawn from the area's folklore. As such, the people of what was then called Cross River State took much pride in her large-scale projection of their culture and she was a mainstay on Calabar's Cross River Radio and NTA Channel 9. I remember seeing her on TV singing "Everlasting" and "Ije Lovu" surrounded by a bunch of dancing kids, looking like a sexy music teacher. I begged my mom to buy me a music magazine that had an article about her in it (I can't remember what the magazine was called but I do recall that the cover of that particular issue featured Eddy Grant wearing an uncomfortably tight pair of football shorts). Most of what I know about Martha Ulaeto came from that article:
She fostered her passion for singing in cultural arts tournaments while a student at Cornelia Connelly College, Uyo before going on to the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) where she studied under Samuel Akpabot, singing the title role in a 1971 rendition of the redoubtable composer's Cynthia's Lament. After an appearance in Adam Fiberesima's opera Opu Jaja, she won a scholarship to the National Conservatoire in Athens and subsequent voice training in London. Finding few outlets for a prima donna of the opera upon returning to Nigeria, she turned to the Efik ballads, work songs and children's rhymes she had heard growing up and found success amidst the blossoming vogue for female folk singers. However, when it came time to release her first album, 1981's Love Me Now, Martha determined to prove that (as she put it in the sleeve notes) "I can also freak out."
Love Me Now was recorded in London with Akie Deen (who mostly underlayed gentle calypso-tinged production, but floored the pedal on a torrid disco scorcher or two) and released on Olu Aboderin's Skylark Records.
She swiftly followed up her debut with 1982's Everlasting, a more boogie/modern soul-flavored set featuring more original compostions. It was produced by Mike Abiola Phillips and released on Martha's own ULA label. She had a very interesting sound on this album... Singing R&B with an operatic vocal style occasionally made her sound uncannily like Miss Piggy, but it totally worked for me. Maybe because I loved The Muppet Show and the production was so damn pristine.
("Everlasting" was the song on which I first heard slap bass. Well... I mean, not really. In retrospect, I can think of a score of songs I had heard before that which are dripping with slap bass, but this was the first time I really noticed it--along with the reverb on the handclap--and went "Huh? How'd they do that?" It was probably the key moment at which I started thinking about record production and after that, I kind of sought out those kinds of sounds... That is, until I vigorously forswore them during my funk purism phase in the late 90s.)
She released two more albums on ULA between 1983 and 1985; I really can't remember if she put out anything after that, though. I believe she lives in London these days and is still involved in musical education and her great love of the opera.
Here are a couple of tracks from her first two LPs.
* The only thing perhaps more execrable and groan-inducing than played-out Brady Bunch references is a lame pun playing off of a played-out Brady Bunch reference, but I really couldn't think of another title for this post, so give me a break, willya?
** I have no idea why this track is coming up truncated... I'm working at trying to fix it, though! (2/18/08: FIXED IT)
A little less than two months ago, after I blogged about the funk-rock band Aktion, Ambrose Ehirim informed me that one the band's key members, Essien Akpabio, was based back in the Cross RIver/Akwa Ibom axis--my own occasional stomping grounds--and I looked forward to interviewing him the next time I was in the area.
So I was quite saddened to hear that Essien Akpabio passed away shortly after I posted that entry. Of course, there is no way to compare my disappointment to the enormous sense of loss felt by his family, his friends, and those who worked with him. By all accounts, he was a really warm and generous guy who was much beloved by all who had the privilege of knowing him.
I was in contact with his daughter for a bit over the past month or so, and while she is a bit too young to remember the days of Action 13 and Aktion, it turns out that Dr. Akpabio remained active in the music scene even after the band broke up. For instance, I had no idea that he was the man behind Terra Kota, a pioneering reggae artist who made some waves when I was a kid and played a big role in charting the direction Nigerian popular music would take in the 1980s.
I found this obit in The Independent. It could have done with some editing and proofing, but it still provides a nice overview of Essien Akpabio's life and achievements.
Musicians Bid Farewell To Akpabio
By Charles Okogene, Group Life Editor Wed, 12 Mar 2008
For the people and residents of Ukana Ikot Ntuen town in Akwa Ibom State, commercial and social activities will stand still on Thursday and Friday, March 13 and 14, as musicians bid the remains of Essien Akpabio farewell with concert.
Akpabio, one of Nigeria’s foremost entertainment promoters and musicians, transited to higher glory last month in Ikot Ekpene after a protracted illness. He was aged 59.
A member of the defunct, The Aktion Funk Ensemble, Essien will be fondly remembered for his contribution to the growth and popularisation of popular (pop) music in Nigeria, a feat that spanned a period of three decades. He played a key role in the formation of Aktion, which at the height of its popularity had a huge fan base. He was at a time the group’s lead singer and later leader.
Aside his contribution to the development of pop culture in Nigeria, which took roots in Eastern Nigeria after the 30 months civil war, history has it that Essien, who was educated at Zixton Public School, Ozubulu, and Dennis Memorial, Onitsha in Anambra State, played a huge role in the development and nurturing of young talents in the entertainment industry when he bowed out of active musicianship in the early 1980s.
Among the young talents of the late 1970s and early 1980s that drank from Essien’s fountain of knowledge were Wictor Essiet (The Mandators), Ras Kimono, Ortis Williki, Tar Ukoh, Adu Deme, Rev. Kris Okotie (now of the Household of God Church), Jide Obi, Felix Leberty, Mercy Adichi, Alex O, Feladey, and Chris Mba. He also promoted Terra Kota’s Sodom and Gomorrah, which was the first indigenous reggae hit after Sonny Okosuns Papa’s Land and Fire In Soweto.
As a young man growing up in the Eastern part of the country, Essien was an ardent viewer of TV Review, an entertainment programme on the then Eastern Nigeria Television (ETV), Enugu, which had Mrs. Mary Umolu as presenter.
“Aside making it a point of duty to attend the programme, he was also a regular face, the same way he attended Ukonu Club. In Onitsha, which was the hub of entertainment after the war, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of the late Eddy Okwedi, Celestine Ukwu, and Osadebe. According to his younger brother, Isong Essien, “Sonny Okosuns’ Postmen, which was the first pop group in Nigeria, further fueled his interest in pop music.”
Essien, who started his music career as a road manger (roadie) shocked the entertainment industry in 1980 when he promoted Terra Kota of Sodom and Gomorrah fame (which was the first major indigenous reggae hit in Nigeria) and recorded a capacity crowd at the National Theatre. He followed up by promoting the Eastern leg of the famed Fela/Roy Ayers concert, and promoted Third World concert in Aba at the end of which the reggae group released an album entitled Lagos Jump in which they narrated how they met a friend called Ikechukwu in Aba.
According to Isong, the late Akpabio’s love for music was so strong that, when he venture into full time music, his father who was at a time in the 1960s the acting Premier of Eastern Region and minister of education, and later internal affairs minister in the same region and who was credited with partial free education in the region, did not raise any objection.
“ I don’t think he would have done anything else,” Isong, who was in Lagos in connection with the burial, told a select group of journalists.
At the dawn of the current democracy coupled with his immense experience, the government of Akwa Ibom State under the able leadership of Obong Victor Attah invited Akpabio home to midwife the state’s musical band, which was later known as The Millennium Band and in which he later served as director.
As part of activities lined up for the interment, a concert vigil tagged “Legend Concert: Essien Akpabio Lives On”, which will feature 25 musicians, will take place tomorrow.
Among the musicians expected are Feladey, Victor Essiet, Charly Boy, George Ema, Chris Mba, regrouped One World, regrouped Aktion, Saforo, Chief Zebrudaya, Etiene T. Boy, Effi Duke, Emmanuel Ntia, Sonak, Emma Ogosi, and Tony Grey.
Akpabio until his death was the head of the late Dr. Ibanga Udo Akpabio House of the great Akpabio family of Ukana Ikot Ntuen in Essien Udim Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. He will be buried in his family house. He left behind a beautiful wife, Funmi, and a daughter who is a pharmacy student in a U.S. university.
In the United States, conventional wisdom regards country & western music as a uniquely American cultural product imbued with inherent negro-repellent qualities. In fact, in popular culture the sticky sweet twang of the pedal steel guitar has become synonymous with--to poach a phrase from Randy Newman--"keepin' the niggers down" (much like clawhammer banjo has become an aural cue for images of forcible sodomy and tender-lovin' incest).
Therefore, I've always found it paradoxical that country music has enjoyed enduring popularity in predominantly black nations such as Jamaica and throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
In Nigeria, for example, the most popular singer in the early 1980s was probably Jim Reeves.Every household had a couple of his records, and like 2Pac, he seemed to drop a new release or two every month in spite of having died in a plane crash in 1964. Insanely large blocks of radio time were devoted to playing his tunes, as well as other singers of "sentimental music" like Skeeter Davis, George Hamilton IV, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, John Denver and Don Williams.
This country & western saturation obviously exerted an influence upon homegrown Nigerian music. In some cases--such as the integration of the pedal steel into the juju of King Sunny Ade and the highlife of Celestine Ukwu--the influence was subtle. In others it was much more overt, as in the music of Emma Ogosi.
When Ogosi released his debut, Nobody Knows in 1981, he largely seemed to be an acolyte of Bunny Mack's slick, leisure-suited discolypso, with a couple of nods towards the folksy lyricism of Bongos Ikwue. However, his 1982 follow-up It's Not Easy found him more clearly defining his goal to craft a uniquely Nigerian flavor of country music: "the African Don Williams," they sometimes called him, or "Nigeria's Jim Reeves."
Ogosi rode that wave for a while, but mostly put his own singing career on the back burner in the latter part of the 80s as he dedicated himself to producing and managing his (now estranged) wife, reggae superstar Evi-Edna Ogholi-Ogosi. He released a reggae-inflected album himself, Weekend Show, in 1990 but he's been silent since then. He's promised to make a comeback soon, though.
Here are a couple of cuts from It's Not Easy, produced by Laolu Akins, featuring his BLO colleague Lemmy Jackson on keys and Monomono's Kenneth Okulolo and Friday Pozo on bass and congas respectively.
A seminal nueva canción by a Brazilian singer-songwriter (Chico Buarque), recorded by a Uruguayan folk singer (Daniel Viglietti) in Cuba and released on that country's state-run record label (EGREM).
I always kinda thought Mike Okri's song was a bit derivative of Dizzy K's, though Dizzy's was a side 2 album track and Mike's was a hit single that went on to become a modern classic. In fact, rising MC Sauce Kid made his name (and resurrected Okri) with a 2006 tribute to the record:
Just kinda wanted to say that because it's been on my mind for the past week. Otherwise, there's not much of a point to this post. Sorry.
(Thanks to Naija Jams for hooking me up with the high quality rip of the Mike Okri LP, by the way... I always only ever had really shitty mp3s of 2 or 3 songs.)
(Edit 3/9/08: That Dizzy K. mp3 I posted last night was a rather rough rip... I've cleaned it up now.)
T-Bones Family were, I believe, an Aba-based group that was active in the 1970s and 80s. The incarnation on this album, Eat the Apple featured lead singer "SamBrown P.E.," "Jervis M.U." and "Allens I.E."
SamBrown still records and performs (albeit in Norway) under the name SamPeace Brown. He calls his style "hilife soul." (I don't think he has a website but Google him and you're likely to find something. Better yet, just go here.)
This track is from 1987, which means you can expect keybs plucked straight off the Velveeta platter but still enough muscular bass to keep things interesting (courtesy of Basil N. Barap, who also produced).
You remember a while back when I said I was not convinced that the African music-worshiping champeta scene of Colombia was real, as in "not a meticulously contrived hipster fan fiction"?
I would now like to say, for the record: it is real, mi gente. Es muy, muy real.
Over the past couple of months (and largely thanks to the influence of Samy and some others), I have been immersing myself in the prickly pleasures of la musica afrocolombiana. I think I can safely say that at this point, Colombia has joined the Benin-Togo axis as the region of the world whose modern groove-based dance musics I most desperately want to explore more deeply.
Therefore do I thank the heavens that since the beginning of the year, our amigo Fabian Altahona Romero has been blasting away on all cylinders on his Africolombia blog.
Fabian is not playing around when it comes to kicking out the jams: You want cumbia? Highlife? Merengue? Rumba? Champeta criolla? Salsa? Afrobeat? Mbaqanga? Makossa? Ziglibithy? He puts it all out there, accompanied by essays (en español, naturalmente) illuminating the history and cultural context of the artists and their music.
I love the way our little "Afro sounds" corner of the blogosphere has been exponentially growing over the past year, and while there have been so many great new additions, this has been one of my favorites. So do yourself a favor and check it out!
While I'm plugging other blogs, I might as well urge you to check the recently concluded "Black History Mumf" series that Odienator ran over at Big Media Vandalism.
Yes, yes... I know February is over, but if we are going to celebrate the consummate character actress Regina King, the esoteric delights of Coming to America or the awesome inspirational stature of George Jefferson; to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Don Cornelius or the deleterious agenda perpetuated in the black community by the Kool-Aid Man; or just take in an all-sangin', all-dancin', all-cullid double-bill of Cabins in the Sky and Stormy Weather, and other kinky cinema and TV arcana from the soul of African-Americana, tell me--can we truly restrict ourselves to just one short (even in a leap year) month?
(My only beef is that Odie never got around to delivering his promised eulogy to Kimberly Elise. My Lord, the torch I carry for that woman could light the tenebrous recesses of Hades.)
The "Black History Mumf" compendium can be found here.
Lately, I've also been into The Rawness, which blogger T. describes as "a blog about human nature and social behavior. Especially from the viewpoints of evolutionary psychology, social dynamics and economics."
While that might sound slightly academic or intimidating, it's really a laid-back, conversational and quite funny exploration of the reasons why we people do the things we do, the way we use language to obscure our motives from others (and ourselves), and, of course, one of my obsessions: taxonomizing life: Take this analysis of the difference between nerds, geeks and dorks (a conversation I myself had many times during my years laboring in that mecca of geekery, the record store):
Geeks can range in intelligence to average to very bright, but they rarely hit the genius levels of nerds. On the bright side, they are usually nowhere near as socially inept as a nerd either. They are usually good at one or two things, but it’s rarely something useful. Their expertise is more likely to be along the lines of an encyclopedic knowledge of something like film, music, television, comic books, sports or history, but from the consumer’s side. A geek is more like a high level hobbyist than an expert genius. Since his area of expertise can often be of little real world use, it’s not uncommon to find geeks toiling away in obscurity or sometimes even mediocrity. However when the geek is lucky enough to combine his hobby with his career he can end up becoming quite successful, and even attain a level of minor celebrity. His level of knowledge comes more from a monomaniacal dedication to a subject more than high intellectual aptitude, even though geeks can often be fairly bright. Policy wonks, the pickup artist community and bloggers are geeks. Fantasy football addicts are geeks. They will dedicatedly digest every piece of knowledge out there about a topic, but aren’t likely to synthesize it into anything new, innovative and groundbreaking. They mostly tend to memorize and regurgitate, although the best of them are often capable of some very novel insights. Making this primer differentiating between nerds, geeks and dorks is something a geek would do. Analyzing the differences in physiology and brain structure and environment between them and coming up with a plausible hypothesis as to the source of those differences, however? That’s something a nerd would do.
The Rawness lives up to its name, though--it can be exacting in its mission to strip human nature down to its base, primal instincts. Sometimes it's too much to take in all at one time, and I can only check in every couple of days. But it's always entertaining and offers great insight to those who want to better understand people so as to better manipulate them!
There's been a lot of buzz around this one--it's pretty much the new Black People Love Us!--an ongoing catalogue of the oddities, peculiarities, eccentricities, and comicalities of the Alabaster Genus of Humanity, rendered in a dry (yet wry) anthropological tone.
Noteworthy items: "#71 Being the only white person around" "#62 Knowing what's best for poor people," "#44 Public radio," "#60 Toyota Prius," "#36 Breakfast places," "#61 Bicycles," but of course, one of my favorites has to be
#69 Mos Def
In the olden days of white culture, people used to look up to Kings and Princes. These were the people that they adored, and every night they wished and hoped that somehow they could wake up and be just like them. But with Royal Families crumbling, that role has been filled by one man: Mos Def.
He is everything that white people dream about: authentic (”he’s from Brooklyn!”), funny (”he was on Chapelle show!”), artistic (have you heard “Black on Both Sides?”), an actor (”he’s in the new Gondry film!”) and not white (”I don’t see race”).
He has done an amazing job of being in big budget movies (The Italian Job) and having one of his songs become a white person wedding staple (Ms. Fat Booty) but still retaining authenticity and credibility.
If you find yourself in a social situation where you are asked to list your favorite actor or artist, you should always say Mos Def. This way you can name someone that everyone has heard of and you don’t look like you are trying to one up anybody. The only possible negative consequence is some white people might think “I wish I had said that first.”
The comments on Stuff White People Like are perhaps even more entertaining than the posts themselves, as readers debate the extent of the veracity of these alleged Causasoid behaviors and try to decide whether or not the very premise of the blog is offensive. ("Imagine if I, as a white guy, started a blog called “Stuff Black People Like”, and filled it with watermelon, fried chicken, dancing, gold teeth, cheap beer, pimping, etc. Can you feature the shit-storm of righteous indignation that would rain down upon me?")
I'm on the fence about it, really... The blog is at the very least racialist, if not outright racist, but I also feel fairly certain that the authors of the blog are themselves white (which I note only because of the unwritten caveat that makes it okay for persons to lampoon their own race in manner that would be unacceptable from outsiders). Essentially, the basic conceit is really the same as the "White people eat like *this*... while black people eat LIKE THIS!!!" gag that was fresh and hilarious when Richard Pryor did it 30 years ago on That Nigger's Crazy! but got worn out over the course of a million iterations on Showtime at the Apollo,HBO Def Comedy Jam and BET Comic View, except this time it's rendered through the screen of bone-dry irony... which is (let's face it) well, a bit of "white" thing to do, isn't it?
Anyway, when you get right down to it, this blog is really not so much about white people in toto, as it is about a certain subset of white people. As one commenter put it: "This blog isn’t about all white people. It’s skewering a certain kind of upper middle class, urban, liberal arts educated white person- and it does a pretty good job."
Still, maybe I shouldn't even be promoting this kind of racially contentious material here on With Comb & Razor, where we play a lot of old African records but the real theme music is an old American traditional called "Kum Ba Yah." Still, just in the interest of balance, I'll plug this spinoff blog my girl Fredara turned me on to just this afternoon:
Anyway, peep Talib Kweli's new video, "Hostile Gospel," shot on location in Lagos by my sensei, Andrew Dosunmu:
I don't think the clip does much to showcase Andrew's signature sensual, postmodern Africana classic aesthetic, but I'm sure this is the kind of rugged vibe Kweli himself probably wanted.
The cele worshippers writhing on the beach during the "gospel" chorus is a nice touch, though.
Earlier today in the comments for the last post, Birdseed enquired about Nigerian synth and electro music and I pledged to get some up soon. I was in the process of uploading some William Onyeabor (who I used to call "the Nigerian Thomas Dolby") when I accidentally deleted the file, but then I remembered that I really have never posted any Dizzy K music on this blog... which is crazy, because that negro was rocking my world in the 1980s.
Dizzy K. cut six albums between 1982 and 1989, almost always working with producer Tony Okoroji. Dizzy and Okoroji's earliest collaborations were standard, full-band, heavy boogie cuts, often leaning heavily on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, but they soon switched tack to a more modern, stripped-down, synth-infused electrofunk sound. However, Okoroji had a relatively original (or perhaps conservative) approach to programmed music, often balancing out the thundering syndrums with organic percussion for a distinctly African electro sound.
This track from 1984's Sweet Music is a fine exemplar of the aesthetic of which I speak.
Not a lot of time today, loved ones--just gonna quickly drop this nice little rollerskating groove by Princess Bumy Olajubu, another young female singer who shone for a couple of minutes in the mid-80s.
This track comes from Bumy's Leo Man album... Damn, I can't even remember when this joint dropped! I'm gonna take a stab and guess that it's 1984 or 85.* The album was produced by guitarist Eric Kol, who also does some vocalizing on this track.
*My estimate is based largely on the John Player Special cap Bumy wears on the cover. The John Player cigarette brand blew up around that period due to its sponsorship of an annual, nationwide breakdancing competition between 1983 and (I think) 1985, and John Player paraphernalia became much coveted streetwear for a hot second.
John Player's popularity seemed to fade with the breakdancing fad, though "John Player's" lived on as a slang noun and verb for hustlers, ballers and tricksters of all kinds before the term "419" came into vogue.
A couple of years ago, back when we were in the earlier stages of this filmmaking quest, Koko and I had a discussion about financing in which I ran down some of the creative methods through which other indie upstarts had raised the capital for their debut productions: Robert Townsend and the string of maxed credit cards that powered Hollywood Shuffle... Robert Rodriguez donating his body to science to make El Mariachi... Darren Aronofsky pulling together the completion funds for π by bumming $100 off of everybody he knew... Kevin Smith pawning a good portion of his cherished comic book collection to finance Clerks... Then Koko says to me: "You still have all those old records, don't you?"
"Yeah," I says. "Why?"
"You said a lot of collectors would pay good money for those things, right?"
"Yeah, I did mention that."
A tense silence fills the next few seconds, though it feels like hours. Finally, I speak: "I'm not selling my records."
"Why not? Don't you have multiple copies of a lot of them?"
"I have multiples of some of them, yes. And God willing, I will keep it that way!"
"FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHY?"
(Mind you, Koko was not asking why I was keeping multiples; he sincerely wanted to know why I kept ANY of them at all. As I've mentioned before, he has never had anything but contempt for the vast majority of Nigerian popular music and remains puzzled by my need to collect these records that he considers pure garbage.)
"You think I don't want to raise this cash, too? It's just that... Some things are more important than money."
Koko is genuinely bewildered now: "LIKE WHAT?"
At this point, I launch into a long spiel, the content of which I cannot remember. I am fairly certain, though, that it contained the phrases "guard our cultural heritage," "sell our birthright" and "FESTAC mask."
Koko is silent for a while, and then he says "Seriously... You have got to be the most un-Igbo Igbo man I have ever met in my life."
And that was that.
Well... Not really. Time and time again, the subject would intermittently re-arise, with Koko goading and pleading (and Enyi occasionally chiming in, asking what I had against making money while rhetorically questioning my Igboness), but like the eyebrows below Sylvester Stallone's Botoxed forehead in the new Rambo movie, I remained unmoved.
Flash forward to now: Some of you who shop for records on eBay might have noticed that over the past two or three months, I've occasionally been up on there hawking vinyl.
To what can we attribute my change of heart? Well...
1) Back when I first started (seriously) collecting old Nigerian records about 8 or 9 years ago, it was mostly a barren landscape. These things were hard as hell to find--even in Nigeria--and I had to go to often absurd and brutally taxing lengths just to find someone who remembered these records, let alone who could grant me access to them. Under these circumstances, I actually entertained the possibility that I was in possession of the last surviving copies of some of these albums, and I was like an ethnomusicological L.S.B Leakey digging up and preserving the fragile remains of a disappeared culture.
But with time, I've learned that it's not that deep. As the popularity of African pop music of all kinds has exploded over the past few years, all these rare vinyl nuggets have continued to come to light by the truckload, so it's not like I have to hoard and curate that much; there's enough vinyl to go round... provided you're willing to pay for it. And if so, why should you not pay me? Because, you see...
2) Comb & Razor, Inc. needs to acquire a few pieces of fairly expensive production hardware, and it's not like we can just charge it to the game. Also...
3) The amount of clutter in my pad is getting ridiculous. My sister visited this past weekend and threatened to call Niecy Nash on my ass.
So yeah... Let me officially state that I am indeed selling records, so if you want to buy them, come see about me.
Check back frequently, and add me to your favorite sellers ("combrazor" is the ID), as I'll be putting up more stuff with time. It'll probably be mostly Nigerian records of the type I post about here, though I might occasionally throw in other stuff, too. Also, feel free to hit me up with requests; I can't promise I'll be able to fill them all, but I'll try!
For some reason, I feel the need to apologize for placing this advertisement in this space: the idea of selling or shilling on this blog for my own pecuniary profit makes me cringe more than a little. But hey... The original raison d'etre of the blog was to document the making of TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, and this is kinda part of that saga, so I guess I can get a pass here.
(Look at me, expressing embarrassment over mercantile activity! Seriously... What kind of Igbo man am I?)
Wow... Is it time for the This Day Awards time again already?
Looks like this year Erykah is headlining... Sure wish I be there to catch the show, but who am I kidding? They wouldn't let me into the This Day Awards even if I were to make it to Lagos this weekend.
That poster is kinda meh, though. Would've been cool if EMEK could have designed it. He's been handling most of Badu's graphics these days, including the New Amerykah album cover.
Check out this awesome metallic ink poster he did for her recent Tel Aviv gig:
Yes, this long-awaited CD compilation finally dropped last week and I meant to blog about it then too... But you might have noticed that I haven't really had the chance to post anything on this page for a while now. I've been spreading the word in other forums both on- and offline, though; so... did you all go out and cop it like I advised you to?
Believe it or not, but I haven't even gotten a copy myself yet! By the time I got to the record store on Thursday, they were S-O-L-D out! They said they're getting some more in by the end of this week, as well as the vinyl edition. I went ahead and reserved two sets of vinyl (the compilation is offered either as a double CD or as two gatefold double LPs). Traditionally I've never been the type who constantly insists on getting doubles on everything, but over the past year or so I have somewhat developed that habit. And hey... All Soundway's releases are so singularly dope and so beautifully packaged, you know that every single one of them is a collector's item in waiting!
So in the meantime, I'm just grooving to all the audio samples on the Nigerial Special site while I wait for my records to arrive.
Man, I cannot wait for Nigeria Rock Special and Nigeria Disco Funk Special to drop in the next couple of months... It feels good to remain excited about going to the record store even as bloggers proclaim the brick & mortar music emporium a thing of the past. Best believe that as long as labels like Soundway, Oriki, Analog Africa, Numero Group and Stones Throw keep on dishing out that good gravy, I'm gonna stay buying music no matter how antiquated that concept might seem in this brave new world!
Here's an ethereal taste, courtesy of our friend Timjim:
I actually was feeling Mandy Brown Ojugbana back in 1986. For one thing, her debut album was on Faze 2 Records, which was the hip, cutting-edge independent at a time when the traditional big record companies were slowly fading. And Mandy represented my generation with her poppy electro-boogie sound redolent of NYC freestyle. The big hit off the record was her cover of Bobby Benson's highlife classic "Taxi Driver," but there were a bunch of great songs on the LP. This was one of my favorites.
(Sorry about the two small jumps... I really need a vacuum cleaner!)
Mandy cut another album and then promptly vanished from the scene. She reappeared last year, though, having relocated to Nigeria after almost two decades living in the UK. She blogs here.
(Oh yeah... Just thought I'd mention that the dark-skinned girl in the red top on Mandy's right is media personality Tosyn Bucknor, daughter of, yep, the great Segun Bucknor.)
Stella Monye's a singer who hit the scene in the mid-1980s, just as my once-voracious appetite for Nigerian pop music was fast waning. So yeah, I wasn't really into this song when it came out... Why then has it suddenly taken occupation of my headspace 20 years later and doggedly refused to vacate?
It's actually a pretty good song, I think... It's just that as a record, it's emblematic of the malaise that gnawed through the Naija music scene after 1984 or so. The recording industry--like the rest of the Nigerian economy--had shrunken drastically; the (relatively) rich and buoyant production values that characterized much Nigerian pop in the post-Oil Boom era dissipated as records began to sound increasingly cheap, threadbare and slapdash.
I mean, can you believe that this rinky-dink production is credited to Lemmy Freakin' Jackson? The Quincy Jones of Nigeria? In '83 this record would have been furnished with lush strings, a punchy horn section and glossy choral overdubs and Jake Sollo seasoning the sauce with some spicy guitar licks. Come '85 and it sounds like it was recorded on a Casiotone in someone's kitchen, with the houseboy chanking away on an old guitar (whose strings he had to scrape with pumice to get the rust off) and Jake Sollo is listed as "Drum programmer."* (The bass work is decent, though.)
Stella Monye is a highly idiosyncratic and somewhat dramatic vocalist, given to fits of frenzy that often cause her to forget to sing directly into the microphone. (Or did Jackson just mike her distantly because of her tendency to shout a la Berry Gordy's treatment of Florence Ballard?) She's much more interesting live than she's ever been on record, though.
But yeah... I digs this record. I think. All week I've been just jamming it in my head, and it's starting to ("...got my rules... and conditions...") drive me crazy so I figured ("I've got everything... all the tools...") that if I posted it here, I might be able to ("...I! promise! you! SAAAA-TEES-FAC-TION!") exorcise myself of it.
What you think? Does it bring you satisfaction? Or something else?
*I think this might have been one of the last records he worked on before his death, too. Shame.
Edit 10/3/08: I think this record was released in 1985, not '86... I fixed that.
I always found it kind of interesting the way Larry made this song pronouncing the Bible to be "the Truth" when just two years earlier he was exhorting "Allah Wakbarr." But that's African musicians for you... They're always ready and willing to tailor their work to the needs of any audience!
Apart from Cody ChesnuTT, she remains my favorite contemporary artist working in the R&B/soul idiom, or whatever you want to call it. Sure, in recent years she has pulled a couple of stunts that have made me slightly question my devotion for her, but in the end, her wit, her creativity, her fearlessness, her goddamn flyness have always won me over.
One thing I've always loved from her right from the beginning is that she's a much underrated conceptualist and director of music videos, and I'm feeling her new one, "Honey":
The compositing seems just a teensy bit dodgy, but man, she is so fly.
And maybe I'm too much of a record store nerd, but I'm tickled pink (not literally, obviously) by all the cratedigger culture inside jokes and shout outs in there.
I wonder if MTV and BET will even bother to play this.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to her upcoming album, New Amerykah.
Just wanted to quickly share this cool video I stumbled upon:
An October 2006 rehearsal of a theatre troupe in Lome, Togo, featuring the grand dame of Togolese music, Julie Akofa Akoussah. Man, I could listen to her piercing, haunting soprano all day! Sadly, Akofa Akoussah passed away a few months after this footage was shot, in April 2007. She was 57.
It's easy to forget how relatively young she was, since she exerted a presence on the Togolese music scene for so long. She was only 16 when she began her professional career in 1966, representing Togo at the first World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal and spanned five decades as a respected singer, songwriter and presenter on radio and television.
Check out these tracks poached from our friend Pieter's excellent (though infrequently updated) Sea Never Dry blog
But Julie Akofa was not the only Togolese chanteuse whose career was launched on that Dakar stage; 21-year-old Bella Bellow also represented Togo at the festival and became a legend almost overnight. As her country's favorite singer and the one with the greatest chances for international success, she hooked up in 1968 with the ambitious Paris-based Togolese producer Gérard Akueson, who set out to position her as the next Miriam Makeba.
Akueson's aesthetic seemed to be based on the goal of packaging African music for upmarket European audiences, with snazzy arrangements, Broadway-ready choruses and Ipi Tombi-esque exotic ambience, as heard on Akue releases such as
(Akueson, for his part, quickly rebounded from the loss of Bellow, embarking upon a long musical and matrimonial relationship with the young Congolese diva Abeti Masikini.)
Tragically, Bella Bellow's meteoric rise was cut short in 1975, when she perished in an automobile crash at the age of 27. She has remained a sainted figure in the musical canon of Togo and also in neighboring Benin, where singers such as Angelique Kidjo cite her as a major influence.
For some reason, when I was younger, every time I saw a "Gnonnas Pedro & his Dadjes" on a record sleeve, I read it as "Gnonnas Pedro & his Dandies." Looking back on it now, it seems somewhat appropriate. Dig: Yesterday I was reading The Painter of Modern Life, Charles Baudelaire's collection of essays explicating, among other things, the worldview of the dandy. This passage leapt out at me:
In this context, pray interpret the word 'artist' in a very narrow sense, and the expression 'man of the world' in a very broad one. By 'man of the world', I mean a man of the whole world, a man who understands the world and the mysterious and legitimate reasons behind all its customs; by 'artist', I mean a specialist, a man tied to his palette like a serf to the soil. M. G. does not like being called an artist. Is he not justified to a small extent? He takes an interest in everything the world over, he wants to know, understand, assess everything that happens on the surface of our globe.
Well, damn, I thought. That kinda describes Gnonnas Pedro, doesn't it?
Beninois singer, dancer, bandleader, guitarist, trumpeter and saxophionist Gnonnas Pedro was not an "artist" in the sense of being a specialist in one any one discipline, and if he was anything, it was certainly a man of the world. A dazzling showman who hewed to the old school entertainment ethos of giving the people want they want. You wanted to hear a bolero in Spanish? Gnonnas Pedro would sing it for you. French chanson? He was up to the task. American soul? Congolese rumba? Nigerian-style highlife? Your favorite country ballad? No matter the song or the style, you could count on Gnonnas Pedro to give it the old college try. At the peak of his popularity, Pedro's Dadjes were known as "the African band that speaks every language." His forte, however, remained crackling Afro-Cuban grooves as well as agbadja, a modernized form of Fon folkloric music.
The Republic of Benin never made a major impact on African or world music (or World Music™) culture. Perhaps due to being a tiny Francophone state wedged between the two Anglophone giants, Nigeria and Ghana, the nation was never able to produce and forcefully project anything like juju, soukous, benga or mbalax--a unique, homegrown style that changed the way the world listened to music and put its country of origin on the musical map.* What Benin did have in spades, though, was a slew of industrious, fanatically committed orchestras that mined borrowed styles like highlife, funk, jerk, jive and jazz for every drop of sweat, swing and soul they could wring out of them. Thanks to the tireless archaeological efforts of Soundway and Frank (not to mention Samy at Analog Africa), Cotonou is becoming a musical mecca for groove cognoscenti and the numerous works of Beninois bands like TP Orchestre Poly-Rythmo and Rego et Ses Commandos are now not only well known, but also keenly coveted.
It wasn't always like that, though. But while most of the Beninois bands toiled in obscurity, Gnonnas Pedro's stylistic versatility and affable stage presence earned him popularity across West Africa. His Yoruba highlife tune "Feso Jaiye" even became a standard among Nigerian musicians.
Gnonnas Pedro finally got to shine on a larger stage in the mid-90s, when he was recruited to replace recently-deceased singer Pape Seck in the Afro-Nuyorican salsa supergroup Africando, recording and touring with the band until he succumbed to colon cancer in 2004 at the age of 61.
This album here is a collection of covers that offers a sampling of his musical polymathy, with Pedro taking on everything from Merle Travis's "Dark as a Dungeon" to the cabaret of Charles Aznavour. Pedro was a great admirer of the French crooner (which whom he was privileged to record a single with in 1964) and there is a certain poignancy to his renditions of "À ma fille" and especially "Les comédiens" (here listed as "Les Commedies").
The lyrics of the latter song seem to describe Pedro's own metier to a degree: "Come see the actors, the musicians, the magicians..." On stage, Gnonnas Pedro was a musician and a magician, but perhaps beyond all that, an actor. His style-switching constituted more than just the essay of genres, but a deliberate reinvention of the self. When Pedro declares "Ladies and gentlemen... Now Gnonnas Pedro is gonna be James Brown!" before launching into a charmingly awkward phonetic reading of "I Got You," he dresses himself up in a constructed identity through music much as the dandy does through sartorial artifice.
And so, walking or quickening his pace, he goes his way, for ever in search. In search of what? We may rest assured that this man, such as I have described him, this solitary mortal endowed with an active imagination, always roaming the great desert of men, has a nobler aim than that of the pure idler, a more general aim, other than the fleeting pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for that indefinable something we may be allowed to call modernity...
****
GNONNAS PEDRO & HIS DADJES BAND - GNONNAS PEDRO & HIS DADJES BAND VOL. 2 (WORLD WIDE MUSIC, 1980, WWM 4 L)
*Frank does, however, strongly maintain the singular belief that the roots of the Afrobeat genre lie in Benin and not Nigeria. It's an interesting theory, actually, and one worth investigating.
I think the selection of this particular album was influenced by the fact that I hardly have time to post at all these days, so I deliberately chose a band I know next to nothing about so I wouldn't have to write too much about them!
Next to nothing, I said; here's the little I do know:
Aktion (sometimes known amongst fans as "The Actions") was an Eastern band based in Warri. Lemmy Faith was the group's leader and other members included Renny Pearl, Essien Akpabio and respected drummer Ben Alaka (who, curiously, is credited as a "guest" on this album).
An earlier incarnation of the band--under the name Action 13--released two singles in 1973: "Active Action" and "More Bread To The People".
Well, that's about all I know. Perhaps some of the veterans like Da Hurricane Man and Ehirim can further enlighten us on this band.
Update 1/18/08: And sure enough, Bro. Ehirim came through for us with some background on Aktion. I'll reprint the info here for those who don't read the comments:
Like you mentioned, Aktion, Action and Aktion 13 as known in some cases was a Warri-based band that played gigs all around the Eastside. Originally, the band was initiated in Calabar by the duo of Essien Akpabio and Lemmy Faith.
The band was resident at then famous spot in Warri called Lido Night Club and Restaurant where they entertained civil servants and off duty officers during happy hours known as "Afternoon Jump." During the festivities (Christmas and New Year holidays), the group embarked on a road trip playing gigs at college campuses, community centers and local villages to entertain Eastside students who were home for the holidays.
And of course, Ben Alaka who was the best drummer of that era was an in-session man but played more for Aktion when they were resident at Lido for the "Afternoon Jump" jam sessions. The band's early years between 1976 and 1978 was a blast which catapulted the group to the top during the 70s hippie era.
However, the band's success was shortlived when music of the era crossed over and the inability of band leader Lemmy Faith to compete with bands from the West resulting to music fans relocating to the West in search for better lives, and in some cases, academic pursuits elsewhere.
Ben Alaka still lives in Warri while Essien Akpabio relocated to his home base of Calabar. Lemmy Faith, I think, and as of the last time I heard about him was still producing.
I had to leave off three songs because I couldn't get them to play smoothly even after repeated tries. And it was all the more frustrating because the record isn't really in bad condition, but Aba-based Clover Records had a tendency to press their releases on some of the thinnest, shittiest vinyl known to man, so even the slightest irregularity causes the needle to jump or stick.
Hope the surface noise on "Masquerade" isn't too distracting either, because that's one of the funkier tracks on the album!
In continuance of the little Victor Uwaifo thing we've been on, I decided to post this offering from the crates, No Palava (or No Palava/Delicate Lover).
I just listened to it this morning for the first time in years and figured it merited sharing, though I must advise that it is from 1984, The Year (in my mind, at least) That Nigerian Music Started To Suck--as such it betrays hints of the glossy yet sterile digital production and cheesy synth sounds that would soon become the industry standard. The songs themselves are pretty good, though: on this album, Uwaifo skips the Edo folklore-based material for poppy songs in English and pidgin, dealing with the vagaries of romantic love. The title track, "No Palava," celebrates rough makeup sex while on the flip side, "Delicate Lover" offers, I guess, the antithesis to that. Actually, now that I think about it, side A sort of represents the "rough" side and side B the "delicate" side.
The liner notes by Dili Uzuka recounts Uwaifo's history and achievements up to that point, including his then-recent honor as a Member of the Order of the Niger. A lot of the other information contained therein is I already went over in my last post, but also one tidbit I forgot to mention: Victor Uwaifo's claim to have created an innovative system of musical notation based on not on notes, but on colors. Specifically, the colors of traditional woven akwete cloth!
SIR VICTOR UWAIFO born on the 1st March 1941, graduate of Graphic and Commercial Art, Yaba College of Technology (1963), had resigned his appointment with the Nigeria Television Service Lagos because he had discovered the relativity between Colours and Music. Elementarily, he explained it thus:
"...take for example BLACK which is the strongest colour: it's [sic] musical interpretation will be DOH, Dominant, which is also the premier musical note. ME, the Third, is represented by BLUE. SOL, the Fifth, which harmonizes with all musical notes is WHITE, Neutral, which harmonizes with all colours".
If we struck at Chord of C Major, we'll have a representation like this:
DOH - BLACK ME - BLUE SOL - WHITE DOH - BLACK
A colour out of place in a painting will cause as much unpleasantness as a discordant musical note in a chord. SIR VICTOR UWAFOR'S [sic] inspiration came from the 'rhythmical' colour-weave pattern of the African Akwete Cloth. He says with elation, "I can conveniently marry sight to sound because I 'see in colours' and I can 'hear'.
(Frankly, I never really comprehended Uwaifo's color notation theory, and I doubt anyone else did either, but hey... We're merely mortals!)
Elsewhere, Uzuka exhorts that just as Uwaifo's innovative music withstood the encroachment of soul and pop in the 1960s and 70s, so would it survive the "rasta invasion"--At the time this record was released, reggae was stealthily, steadily creeping up to become Nigeria's predominant pop sound.
Of course, Uwaifo himself had been flirting with reggae rhythms since the mid-70s and includes the sweet lovers tune "Take This Message To My Darling" on this album. Interestingly, the drummer on this session is Black Rice (or Black O'Rice), sticksman in the Benin-originated underground roots reggae band Jahstix. In the mid-80s, Jahstix was set to blow up in a big way, but their album never came out and their lead singer/guitarist Majek Fashek got a solo deal and was prodded into the Next Bob Marley™ fast track. Black Rice later moved to the Netherlands, and last I heard, he was serving a jail term for murder there. (Don't know if it's true, though.)
SIR VICTOR UWAIFO (M.O.N.) - NO PALAVA (POLYGRAM, 1984, POLP 111)
(This is cheating, you know... It's really part 1!)
In addition to being one of the flashiest and hardest working Nigerian musicians of the highlife era, Sir Victor Uwaifo was almost certainly the most ingenious. Never content to follow the boilerplate of the highlife mainstream or to slavishly ape imported trends, Uwaifo built his reputation on ostentatious showmanship and the judicious mining of the legends and songs of his native Edo culture, which he repackaged as newfangled pop: modern music of African folklore.
Victor Uwaifo was born in Benin City in 1941. Like Fela, he was born into a family that placed a high premium on education and achievement. As a child, he showed precocious talent in athletics, art and engineering, constructing intricate toy cars and airplanes and even a guitar that used high-tension wires for strings and bicycle spokes for frets. Much to his father's disapproval, he had a "drinkard" at the tavern tune the guitar in exchange for a jug of palmwine, got himself a book on music theory and started teaching himself to play.
In his teens, he was sent off to Lagos to attend the prestigious St. Gregory's College (which later produced bands like Ofege and Grotto), where his time was split between studying, sports, playing with the school band and apprenticing with "the evil genius of highlife," Victor Olaiya and his All-Stars. Upon graduating from Greg's, he won a scholarship to Yaba College of Technology where he studied graphic arts by day and played with dance bandleader E.C. Arinze by night.
After leaving YabaTech in 1964, he took a job working as a graphic artist at NTV Channel 10 in Lagos and formed a band called the New Melodies with whom he performed Bini folk songs. It was during this period, he has long maintained, that he encountered a mami wata, or mermaid, while lounging on Bar Beach. The experience inspired the song "Guitar Boy & Mamywater," a massive hit for Uwaifo's renamed Melody Maestroes.
Another early hit was "Joromi," a dance number that retold the Bini legend of a swaggering wrestler who dared to wrestle spirits and demons in the afterlife and became the first certified gold record in Africa. Uwaifo continued his pattern of drawing from Edo folklore to create custom pop sounds like akwete,mutaba,sassakossa and of course, ekassa.
Uwaifo explained the his modern articulation of the ekassa in John Collins' Musicmakers of West Africa:
In fact I wouldn't say I created Ekassa as it was already here as an indigenous dance of Benin. It was a royal dance performed during the coronation of a new king. Some people thought it an abomination to hear "ekassa" while the king was still alive, but I didn't mind them as the first tune was a brilliant hit and others followed. Ekassa incorporates the beat of the tom-tom and agba drums, Western wind instruments, two guitars and, of course, me on the guitar singing in the Edo language.
Uwaifo rode the style for four or five years, releasing four longplaying Ekassa volumes and several singles between 1971 and 1975.
As might be expected, Uwaifo's appropriation of ancient, and in some cases sacred, songs for the purposes of contemporary dancehall debauchery did not always go down well with the self-appointed guardians of the legacy of the great Benin Empire, but Uwaifo viewed his work as that of a high-tech curator:
They fail to see the foundation of my music is very cultural, as demonstrated in the beat and the lyrics. The fact that I use modern instruments to produce my sound has not altered the basic character of the music, otherwise we might as well argue that a historian writing ancient history with modern tools, like a Parker pen and paper, is a farce. The tools he uses to write history will not alter the facts and dates of the book. We have experimentation and evolution of ancient African cultures and my music is no exception to this.
Victor Uwaifo went on to build hotels and a TV studio, went back to school and got a master's degree in sculpture, established himself as a renowned visual artist, served as a professor at the University of Benin and a commissioner in Edo State, and he still performs regularly. His proteges and followers have included musicians from the Midwest such as Sonny Okosuns, Aigbe and Felix Lebarty and Sir Patrick Idahosa. Still, in characteristic cocky form, Uwaifo shrugs off the idea of naming a successor; even as he continues to refurbish the ancient mythos of Benin, his favorite mythology is that of Sir Victor Uwaifo himself:
Since I don’t believe that a genius ever has a successor, I don’t expect any of my children to succeed me. Let’s compare notes: Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, John Stevenson, did anyone ever succeed them? And back home, has Ghana or Africa ever found another Nkrumah? I am a rare specie, and it’s very unlikely that anyone will ever succeed me. If that happens, then I do not rate a genius.
I am not bothered by this. Even if I get a successor musically what about other fields where I also excelled? I am a writer, publisher, philosopher, a scientist, a painter, sculptor and a musician that plays several musical instruments. I remain the only musician today who invented a double-necked guitar, designed and built his own car. And above all these, I’m still alive. I’m yet to see anyone capable of succeeding me.*
Sir Victor Uwaifo: there can be only one!
(And massive big ups to another singular gentleman: our good friend Zim, who niced us up with this this nicety!)
When I was around nine years old, I nursed a simmering schoolboy crush on Martha Ulaeto, who was a rather popular singer in Calabar. She was a local girl who had achieved considerable heights as one of the few trained operatic singers in Nigeria at the time, and her primary repertoire comprised jazzed-up arrangements of traditional songs drawn from the area's folklore. As such, the people of what was then called Cross River State took much pride in her large-scale projection of their culture and she was a mainstay on Calabar's Cross River Radio and NTA Channel 9. I remember seeing her on TV singing "Everlasting" and "Ije Lovu" surrounded by a bunch of dancing kids, looking like a sexy music teacher. I begged my mom to buy me a music magazine that had an article about her in it (I can't remember what the magazine was called but I do recall that the cover of that particular issue featured Eddy Grant wearing an uncomfortably tight pair of football shorts). Most of what I know about Martha Ulaeto came from that article:
