I was first properly exposed to African music in 1975 after an archeological field trip to the Kenyan Rift Valley was cut short and tickets home were already booked and more than a month away. My girlfriend and I hung out in Nairobi, Mombassa and Lamu, then a sleepy little fishing village. Everywhere there was music to be heard — on the buses, blaring from cabs, and in the bars.
The most popular material at the time was Congolese Soukous, based on the rhumba rhythm, and great for dancing. But one would occasionally hear sounds from further afield in Africa, including Nigeria, Mali, South Africa. There was virtually nothing of such accomplished musicianship in the UK/US pop scene at the time, save for the avant-garde and jazz. Ever since, I have always kept an eye on the sadly limited amount of African-based music that penetrates the Anglophone north.
The grim underlying truth, of course, is that virtually all pop and dance music of the Anglophone and Latin cultures is utterly dependent on rhythms that survived the ordeals of slavery. It’s a survival of such power that it continues to penetrate new territory around the world, from Leadbelly, Little Richard and Marley to Kpop and the beautifully obscure Vietnamese psychedelia underground.
What is less understood is the high art and technical and theoretical skill of Africa’s continuing adventures into polyphony and polyrhythmy. There’s nothing accidental about what’s going on. To listen even with just a little care is to marvel — like the discovery that there are billions of galaxies in the universe beyond our own.
And I still get goosebumps listening to the fabulously energetic bass lines from Franco’s Tout Puissant OK Jazz. Hey Roger Waters, wanna have a stab at that? Go on, give it your best shot.
Rantmumble
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