palm wine guitar music (from west africa)

not for a particular reason, I just think those guys choose better tracks

Yeah I find it to be an annoying drawback to stuff like the Soundway comps -- great music, but not much respect for the music. They present it like it's all part of some Old Weird Africa.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, June 5, 2013 2:19 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

90% of that stuff is post-1960s and palm wine stuff has it roots much earlier and indeed s.e. rogie probably would have been considered to have an "old-fashioned" repertoire when he was recording in the 60s and 70s

oh I know, I didn't mean Old Weird Africa in time period, I more mean that it all becomes this single, vague, exoticized place with a BIZARRO version of rock and funk.

i'm not sure you can levy that accusation what with all the detailed liner notes and stuff

but it does strike me that all the interest in post-rock african music hasn't really excited that much interest in earlier genres.... or so it seems....

i think a lot of the older stuff isn't as available as the 70s music. Waterman mentions a bunch of recordings that he says he couldn't locate --

The earliest recordings known to me of Yoruba songs with guitar accompaniment were made in England in the late 1920s by the Zonophone Company. The Catalogue of Zonophone West African Records by Native Artists, published in Hayes, Middlesex in 1929, includes a number of songs in Yoruba with guitar and tambourine accompaniment, performed by Domingo Justus. None of my older informants mentioned Justus, and I haev no been able to locate any of these discs for analysis. The first recordigns of palmwine music with guitar accompaniment made in Lagos, performed by Irewolede Denge and Dickson Oludaiye, were part of the Odeon series previously mentioned. The masters of these recordings were likely kept in Germany and lost during the Second World War, and I have not managed to find any of the discs.

I'd love to hear some more palmwine recordings than the few that have been reissued. Maybe there's an archive we could get access to somewhere? Actually, I was hunting around for these discs recently: http://www.afrodisc.com/parlophone_po_500_599.79.html but I can't figure out who has them.

here's a motherload of west african music in various genres, albeit only some that might be categorized as "palm-wine guitar music": http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Decca-West-African-recordings

i actually managed to download the 100s of tracks in this collection and converted them to MP3s. i could try to share but it's like 10 GB.

oh man that;s beautiful thank you thank you

I always see King Sunny's albums cheap but never pick 'em up

Oh man, most anything pre 1985 or so from Sunny is awesome

i think the british library's "sounds" site is kind of underutilized in general, maybe because everything is streaming as opposed to easily downloadable, and it's not as user-friendly as it could be. but it's an amazing resource.

i mean check out http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Ethnographic-wax-cylinders

i'm sure i've been to the sounds site before and then forgot it existed

http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Decca-West-African-recordings/025M-1CS0043769XX-0200V0

(listen to that one!)

(or this one)

http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Decca-West-African-recordings/025M-1CS0089424XX-0200V0

So much stuff! Hard to keep track of it all. Anyway, just bought that Waterman book, which will likely only increase my list of things to check out. Thanks, gang.

yeah I read that Waterman book in college, which is a long time ago now and I don't remember much of it. but liked it at the time.

i thought that jollof rice song sounded familiar so i searched it on spotify/my local library -- it turns out i didn't have a copy of it, but searching it brought up this album which is apparently really new and has a jollof rice track on it?! http://www.mvulamandondo.com/album/ambush/

like really new = a few days old i think

this is the same tracklisting as the Palm Wine Guitar Music comp but i'm hoping the vol 1 means we can expect a vol 2

http://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Rogie-Limited-Edition-Vinyl/dp/B00CIOG4BA

Just came looking for a thread on SE Rogie after finding The Sounds of SE Rogie on LP this weekend. Initial thoughts were Rogie = African Hank Williams but it's a very simplistic analogy. Enjoying this with the windows open and a warm breeze flowing through the house.

http://i2.wp.com/ameyawdebrah.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/paper-front.jpg?resize=620%2C620

somehow missed this came out last year

You know what's a good album ? Seven Degrees North (2000) by King Sunny Adé.

I tried (bottled) palm wine two weeks ago. It was light, sweetish, slightly tart, not bad but not something I'd trade a beer for.