Rolling Global Outernational Non-West Non-English (Some Exceptions) 2020 Thread (Often African bands)

wow that Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn is interesting!

Matthieu Saglio sounds beautiful

i love abby washburn and she's most interesting to me when she's doing chinese inspired stuff so yeah, i love that album.

I have been seeing references to her for awhile but have not listened. Will give that one a shot.

Hailu Mergia is selling car air fresheners that come with a digital download: https://hailumergia.bandcamp.com/album/yene-mircha
"Pine-scented air freshener, feel as fresh as Hailu while you cruise in your car or hang in your house. Comes with free download of the new album Yene Mircha!"
(Surely this is a reference to his job as a taxi driver? https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/01/hailu-mergia-the-ethiopian-jazz-legend-who-jams-in-his-taxi)

lol, yeah it absolutely is!

curmudgeon, I've been following washburn's work for like 15 years now back when she was in Uncle Earl. She's got a kid with Bela Fleck.

I bought some really good South African jazz records this week:

Marcus Wyatt and the ZAR Jazz Orchestra - Into Dust/Waltz For Jozi and One Night In The Sun (big band jazz with vocals in English and, I think, Xhosa)
Thandi Ntuli, Live At Jazzwerkstaat (piano, guitar, bass, drums, four horns, and a string quartet)
Benjamin Jephta, Homecoming and The Evolution Of An Undefined (Jephta is a bassist; the first album is acoustic post-bop, the second adds elements of electronic music and funk)
Keenan Ahrends - Narrative (mostly guitar-bass-drums, but a saxophonist appears on three tracks and a pianist on a couple of others)

They're all on Bandcamp.

x-post to Ulysses- Doh, just remembered my wife is a bit of a Washburn fan and she remembers seeing her at one tent at a festival while I was seeing another act at a different tent.

Congolese band Les Bantous De La Capitale’s (The Bantus of The Capital) founding member Nganda Edo dies aged 87 in Congo Brazzaville. He was the only surviving founding member of the band.

The musician, born Edouard Nganga, is described as the dean of Congolese music. Nganga lend a hand to popular bands such as Ok Jazz with Franco Luambo Makiadi and Vicky Longomba, he replaced Philippe Lando Rossignol who had quit, He also performed alongside Négro Jazz which was his first outfit and the Bantus of the capital.

i ordered a Hailu air freshener!

i should do that too

Watched a crazy, disturbing doc about young and middle aged Kenyans blaming their problems on elderly Kenyans and calling them witches and in some situations killing them. The doc briefly showed a cool Kenyan brass band but I didn’t get the name, alas. The movie doc is called The Letter

I like the advance of this Awesome Tapes reissue coming in August. The Afrobeats/ Afro thread folks will like this too

Penny Penny—the South African singer who made it from janitor squatting in the studio to pan-African superstar in the space of a couple years back in the mid-90s—released his second album in 1996 amidst stadium tours and nonstop promo in the aftermath of his breakthrough debut "Shaka Bundu.” After our reissue of "Shaka Bundu” in 2013 gained notice from outlets including Fresh Air and Rolling Stone, Penny Penny played the Sydney Opera House for the first time and built a larger following overseas (he was meant to play Dekmantel this summer). Now, his curiously hard-to-find follow-up that leans on message-laden songs with his familiar banging sound—an amalgam of House and Shangaan music production behind anthemic vocals—comes out 14 August on Awesome Tapes From Africa LP/CD/Tape/Digital.

Cool! See also our wonderfulOld School Afropop thread, where he was recently highlighted.

Hachalu Hundessa, a prominent Ethiopian singer, songwriter and activist, has been shot dead in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in a killing that risked heightening tensions in a nation taking stuttering steps toward establishing a multiparty democracy.

Mr. Hundessa, 34, was shot late on Monday night in the Gelan Condominiums area of Addis Ababa, the city’s police commissioner, Geta Argaw, told the state-affiliated broadcaster Fana on Tuesday. The singer was taken to a hospital after the attack, but died later of his wounds. It was not immediately known who was responsible for the shooting. from NY times obit

https://afropop.org/articles/ethiopia-erupts-following-killing-of-oromo-singer-hachalu-hundessa

Sad

the buscabulla album (Regresa) gives me some v chill helado negro vibes and then i discover they've worked together <3

This was released this year, and is blowing my mind right now: funeral songs from northern Ghana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-JEhZ52sAw

here's my halfway 2020 top 10 for this thread

Obongjayar - Which Way is Forward
Mulatu Astatke, Black Jesus Experience - To Know Without Knowing
Sven Wunder - Eastern Flowers
Hailu Mergia - Yene Mircha
Tony Allen, Hugh Maskela - Rejoice
Buscabulla - Regresa
Nihiloxica - Kaloli
Majid Bekkas - Magic Spirit Quartet
Pacific Breeze Vol 2: Japanese City Pop, AOC & Boogie 1972-1986
Selam Seyoum - Grace

That Nihiloxica record is incredible.

Those Ugandan drummers in Nihiloxica are relentless

I need to listen to that new Mulatu Astatke and few others on Mordy’s list that I haven’t heard yet.

big Mulatu fan but was disappointed by this one

This is a French band, but this song feels like it might be at home here. I like it a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLX3t9G6CA
Kolinga • Nguya na ngai

not sure why this gem is not included on Yene Mircha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNByVSLcR4U

It is only on the CD version of "Yene Mircha" - not the vinyl LP, nor the Bandcamp download. Similarly, the CD of "Lala Belu" has (unlisted) bonus tracks that aren't on the vinyl LP nor download.

That New Astatke one has A lot going on. Can’t decide if I like it yet , after 1 quick listen

Just learning about Astatke’s collaborators on this : from a Guardian review—- Melbourne’s Black Jesus Experience, a collective of singers, rappers, and jazz improvisers of Moroccan, Zimbabwean, Maori, Ethiopian and Australian origins.

Yeah, gotta admit the raps on that Astake record sound pretty corny to me, well intentioned and all but...

Balla Sidibé, founder member, lead singer, percussionist and composer of Orchestra Baobab passed away

Aw man RIP

That sucks. Covid related?

So this guy, the producer, is English but his sound and his collaborators are African so I feel I can mention it on this thread (if only under the "some exceptions" caveat to thread title). Need to listen again but really liked it on 1st pass:

Skinshape - Umoja

The heavy metal scene in Botswana.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02rc6xl

Orquestra Baobab member Balla Sidibe’s death has not been attributed to COVID in the articles I saw.

I haven’t listened to Botswana heavy metal. I have been listening to UK based Nigerian Obangjayar who raps and sometimes uses old-school rooted afrobeats rhythms.

2018 interview
https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/get-to-know-obongjayar-who-makes-otherworldly-spirituals-for-the-modern-soul/

Obangjayar has his own thread!
He’s great live too, saw him just before lockdown

here's that thread: up like sun, down like sun - a thread for obongjayar

(Obongjayar is the correct spelling)

Thanks

There’s Only like 2 comments on his thread!

Oumou Sangare is on Beyonce’s visual Black is King album and Burna Boy and Beyonce holding a Robert Farris Thompson book on Yoruban art. Lots of other cool guests too. It’s a bit flawed but I like the ambition.

Just noticed I have missed out on some new Mdou Moctar mixtapes plus new Saharan Whats App ones

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5807750

Some Hassan Hajjaj photos of Moroccan musicians and others

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/arts/hassan-hajjaj.html

The ongoing series “My Rock Stars” is Mr. Hajjaj’s homage to his cosmopolitan crowd. (A sampler: the American artist Hank Willis Thomas; the Moroccan filmmaker Meryem Benm’Barek; the French-Algerian musician Rachid Taha, who died last year.) Some are famous, but styled by Hajjaj
In the Shoreditch shop, the grime M.C. Afrikan Boy, the Gnawa drummer Simo Lagnawi & the soul singer Bumi drifted in to rehearse. Mr. Hajjaj was developing a multimedia stage show, “My Rock Stars Experimental,” w/ video projections & live performance by musicians styled by him

Buscabulla’s tropical Puerto Rican synth pop w/ some r’n’b is nice enough

Whatever the fuck is going on here is the best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLF7JzUeVOY

They definitely have a vision:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHOcJIIU_5I

okay, i am very into this

perhaps predictably.

They play all the hits! Mainly Brazilian ones, but some foreign ones as well, including a mean “Billie Jean”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHSEJpsquis

They are Fundo de Quintal OFC btw
(please tag your musical links for searching and Posterity reasons, folx!)

ha that's classic