MUSIC (Madagascar): Diadiaso by Vaiavy Chila (2012)

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            I find that though an islander, Madagascar’s Vaiavy Chila offers us a kind of music that marvelously and uncannily captures what one may call the continental African spirit. This is so both in her singing and in the tunes which her band has created and delights the ears with. It is so, indeed, in all those works of hers that I have listened to, including this Diadiaso. What is more, I think that I detect ample amounts of benga (all the way from East Africa) and certain idioms associated with it in all of them. I couldn't believe it when I first found out. Why that is so must be another story altogether -- indeed, a history of human movement and cultural cross-pollination.

            Viavy's chanting voice and dancing ways have a truly lovely touch to them. They are indeed both cheerful and enchanting on a massive scale. Her sunny persona will melt all hearts that love fine and heart-felt music. She truly has a knack for connecting, with little if any self- consciousness, across borders and coastlines and cultural boundaries. She deploys it relentlessly, the bundle of energy that she is, with an untiring spirit. This is a really refreshing and unbelievable thing to behold! It is almost totally different from what many from continental Africa, certainly including yours truly, imagined that Madagascar's popular music would be like before they at last came upon it.  I think that it will really surprise those who hear it, and her other songs -- and those of her compatriots -- f or the first time…[More]

 

 

MUSIC (Cameroon): Ololiyo by Abz ft. Daphne (2020)

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For us in the Covid-19 era, the moral (or certainly one moral) of the visual story in Ololiyo[1] ( sung by Cameroonians Abz Ngitolang and Daphne Njie) is, on at least one level, that there’s no lockdown, no curfew, airtight enough to restrain restive passions riding on raging and hard-to-understand, hard to control, hormones – or interests. Nor are there fail-safe measures or walls or guard-rails to keep everyone, including those entrusted with public (or private) safety, safe. One of the most awkward and blind-folding ‘prescriptions’ of our time, heard around the world only (or largely) since March 2020 is “self-quarantine”[2]. Incidentally, Ololiyo was released only on April 8^th, 2020. Was that prescient or what!

Rendered in both English and French, and a sprinkling of Cameroonian phrases and verve, the Ololiyo soundtrack has a really lively and ‘hostage’-taking proposition and momentum – a la the Stockholm Syndrome. Along the way, we’re all bamboozled by the subtle wirtschaft of song and dance by means of which our minds are turned – sort of full circle. We’re made to forget, without knowing it, where we’ve been, why we’re here, and where we’re supposed to be headed.     

            At face-value, the visible component of Ololiyo is in part about parental zealous and in the end futile endeavors to keep their beloved teenage-daughter safe from obvious dangers lurking in her (in her family’s) social and private spaces…[More]

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[1] The HotJem (2020) “What you need to know about ‘Ololiyo’ by Daphne Njie and Abz”

[2] Perhaps the proponents of self-quarantine should, for a start, read something about self-control.

MUSIC (DRCongo): It fait Semblant by Sista Becky ft. Innoss'B (2020)

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Il fait semblant, sung by Sista Becky and Innoss’B – both from DRC – is an endearing and aurally absorbing find. It endears with its all-embracing air of togetherness and, indeed, of sophistication and elegance; but above all with the physical ease and vocal modulation with which the singers render their art-work. Though we know Sista Becky, at this juncture in her career, far less than we do Innoss’B, both have, it seems to me, contributed equally to grow Africa’s depository of fine musical art with Il fait semblant.  The quality of the song is not diminished by its title, however, which refers to someone faking it; that is, someone pretending to be another sort of character. Innoss'B, it seems, likes to sing about fake love. I don't know what sort of faking irks Sista Becky, however.

            As Sista Becky intimates, the song has an especial dimension to it – a ‘Bantou’ (Bantu) touch. Of course, all Lingala music, all #LingalaPop, is by definition ‘Bantou’. But something counterintuitive stands out in her assertion. The song’s lyrics are mostly written and sung in French. As I don’t speak French, I don’t know how much of the French component is in creole (or pidgin French); but singing in pidgin or broken English has never stopped Nigerian or Ghanaian pop from being #AfroBeats – or indeed Nigerian or Ghanaian music; nor has it stopped #AfroPop, across Africa, from being pop. Indeed, singing isn’t simply about the language in which the lyrics are written or sung...[More] 

MUSIC (DRC): La Verite De Franco by Vicky+Franco & L’OK Jazz (1968)

 

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      I have suggested elsewhere, in general terms, that Franco (Luambo Luanzo Makiadi) and his band had such a huge array of talent and technical capabilities that, led by him, they were able to sustain the capacity to stay competitive at the very top of the musical pecking-order in their country (once Congo Leopoldville, and then Zaire, and... now DRC) – in their time. What I didn’t quite touch on was the long-term survival or adaptability of their music – or more specifically their tunes and beats and the dance-styles which they spawned or fed into – in a world in which tastes and ideas about dance were inevitably going to evolve and perhaps drastically change, even beyond easy recognition, and probably with time selectively ‘reincarnate’.  

      What I want to worry briefly about here is how they could overcome – not just stand – the test of time and thus be in perpetuity current; even if, periodically, as throwbacks.

       If leisure-seekers in succeeding generations were conceivably going to acquire, and perhaps return to, different ideas about sound and dance-floor body texts, the intriguing (or perhaps rhetorical) question must, for present purposes, be: Did any of Franco’s songs have a built-in potential for adaptation or re-imagining by properly-licensed artists and producers in the generations after him; and, if so, which particular ones? This may appear to be a non-question, but great works (or the works of great artists) are supposed to be perennial or cyclical in their appeal to succeeding generations. They’re not supposed to suffer the fate of ‘mere’ mortals – that is, permanent death after some duration!

       One song which has recently struck me as carrying within it the ‘genes’ for even longer-term survival than usual is La Verite de Franco (all the 4:57 minutes of it!). I find that it has an aural form and content that’s wonderfully ‘modernist’ in the same vein as today’s pop hits – and, by definition, perhaps more evergreen than most. It has an uncannily self-contained sound system, so to speak, that’s nevertheless open to infusion and nourishment from the more expansive galaxy of now – and vice-versa... [More later] 

#LingalaPop #Rumba #CongoleseMusic

MUSIC (Tanzania+Uganda): Come Again by Lulu Diva ft. Eddy Kenzo (2020)

 

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                 Lulu Diva delivers to everyone with discerning ears really mellow lyrical lines – sung mostly in Swahili. It is fine poesy, with, if you ask me, a detectable Sufi touch. There are several other ‘touches’ in the mix as well. They keep our ears and alerted eyes busy. 

                Eddy Kenzo, veteran of memorable auditory  campaigns across our remembered 'terrains' and pasts – glows here in his Ugandan accent, and fits right in. He brings true flava to the show, from where-ever he’s been to.

                 The beat, spreading like an audible surround-haze, and like ‘wild’ fire in the savanna, binds the two artists, and us – all of us – in a manifest communal part-a-king. But, lasting only 3:13 minutes, it ends before it is past the gate – as it were; before we, the audience, have the chance to look at each other in silent acknowledgement of what a thing we have there... 

MUSIC (Tanzania) Quarantine by Wasafi ft. Diamond Platnumz x Rayvanny x Mbosso x Lava Lava x Queen Darleen x Zuchu (2020)

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                 Quarantine is a powerful take, by Tanzanian artists, on the world-wide phenomenology of Covid-19. Released on May 22^nd, 2020, it had already recorded 7,003,534 views some 24 days later – on June 15^th 2020 (at 12:57 AM, GMT+3). The song is a creatively-conceived production laced with parody, swag and self-belief. “Wacko Jacko” appears here in absentia, so to speak; and is given pride of place in the moves and memes we’re treated to. The whole idea is to ease such of our lock-down, quarantine and/or curfew woes and angst as can, with music and a little laughter, be eased.

                        There’s more English in Quarantine than is typical in Tanzanian pop, even including superstar Diamond Platnumz’s songs. The way the troupe, split into two, carries itself there, the impression one gets is that Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania's capital city, is, with music – with Bongo Flava, certainly – the center of the artistic universe. It’s hard to not indulge those feelings there, when they give us one treat after another like this – as if picked, with eyes closed, out of a skull-cap...[To be continued]  

MUSIC (Ethiopia): Suse by Tsedi

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             Suse, released in 2019, is a beat-denominated song – as many are, but as personal as can be there. It is indeed so in such a deceptively and unintentionally straightforward way that one is lured to look in another direction hoping to, somehow, decipher it all; while, from another angle, it tweaks out one’s ingrained body beats to go in tandem – and go wherever – with hers!  It’s pure urban sorcery... [To be continued]

Play here: Live version of Tsedi’s Suse