Graceland - The Tallest Man on Earth.
So they call him the new Dylan, but they said that about Conor Oberst as well. And that didn’t really go anywhere near Dylan’s authority. Ignore that music industry shortcut for actual description, and take a listen to Kristian Matsson’s beautiful cover of the Paul Simon classic. If you don’t have Tallest Man on Earth’s three albums yet, get hold of them. I favour The Wild Hunt.
Contributed by @chrisroper
#3 of #10AfricanClassics
Reggae sounds the message - Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars - Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars was formed by a group of refugees displaced to Guinea during the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991 to 2002, over 50,000 people dead, Liberia’s Charles Taylor one of the chief trouble causers). Since their return to Freetown in 2004, the band has been touring regularly to raise awareness for humanitarian causes. This song speaks to that - reggae sounds the message. Also has one of my favourite lines, “Reggae wipes away the weekend”, which I now sadly realise is “Reggae wipes away the wicked”.
#4 of #10AfricanClassics - James Brown Ride On - Orlando Julius & His Afro Sounders - Nigeria
#4 of #10AfricanClassics
James Brown Ride On - Orlando Julius & His Afro Sounders - Nigeria
Ah, Nigerian highlife. Excellent. This one courtesy of Orlando Julius. According to the YouTube entry from a site that now appears to be dead, “Orlando started off in the late 60s as a drummer and flautist, and then took lessons on the alto saxophone. He began working with Highlife bands in 1961…. [In 1966], with a band now called Afro Sounders, Orlando Julius set out to develop and distinctly establish his own brand of Afrobeat music. As composer, singer, electric organ player, and tenor saxophonist, he led a band that explored depths of rhythmic structures, a seamless blend of Yoruba/African rhythms and Black American R’n’B/Soul. With the fiery Moses Akanbi on drums playing mostly on the high-hat and snares, dexterous shekere rhythms, crisp clave beats, congas, and snappy guitar riffs (from his brother, Niyi), OJ created his rhythmic definition of Afro-beat.” (courtesy @JCharlesLeonard)
#5 of #10AfricanClassics
Like a chicken - Witch (Zambia)
“You look like a chicken, baby/ baby, you like a chicken.” Fantastically wacky lyric, by Zamrock band Witch, and great happy grooves.
This is how thequietus.com describes the members and their sound: “the immersive fuzz bass of Gedeon ‘Giddy Kings’ Mwamulenga, juddering organ of Paul ‘Jones’ Mumba and smoking guitar by John ‘Music’ Muma and Chris ‘Kims’ Mbewe. The patterns on some of the stone cold drumming by Boyd ‘Star McBoydie’ Sinkala give us a bit of a geographic clue but initially it is really only the vocals of Emmanuel Kanga ‘Jagari’ Chanda that give this away as the recording of an African band. And even then Jagari’s vocals are so mannered and hellaciously groovy, that he doesn’t sound all that dissimilar to Mick Jagger.”
Zamrock flourished in the 70s, and Witch were one of the top bands. Their name stands for We Intend To Cause Havoc. The sounds owes a lot to Airplane, Hendrix and their ilk. (Song via @JCharlesLeonard).
#6 of #10AfricanClassics
Kaxexe – Bonga (Angola)
Bonga used to be the Portuguese record holder for the 400m, in the bad old days when Angola was a Portuguese possession, so he’s a man who is multi-talented. Born in 1943, he was a supporter of independence, which caused him to have to go into exile in 1970.
According to Wikipedia, “after Angola’s independence Bonga established his main residence in Lisbon, and lived for some time in Paris and Angola. As post-colonial life in Angola disintegrated into corruption, squalor, brutality, and an interminable and bloody civil war, Bonga remained critical of the political leaders on all sides. Bonga’s voice of peace and conscience continues to make him a hero to the people of Angola no matter where he resides.”
2003/s Kaxexe features Bonga’s amazingly lugubrious voice backed by “the largely acoustic Semba Master band, which conceives percolating rhythms and melodic guitar and accordion passages to accompany his introspective lyrics.”
#7 of #10AfricanClassics - Ayo Ayo Nene - Mor Thiam (Senegal)
#7 of #10AfricanClassics
Ayo Ayo Nene - Mor Thiam (Senegal)
Mor Thiam, born in Dakar in 1941. is a Senegalese drummer, and is the father of the R&B/hip hop artist Akon. Thiam played drums from before the age of eight and began playing professionally by age 12. In 1973 and 1974 he performed with that great jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and has also played with Nancy Wilson, B.B. King and Lester Bowie.
This track is from 1973’s Dini Safarrar ( Drums of Fire). If you have a copy, they go for about $1225.00 USD. So don’t scratch it. (Song via @JCharlesLeonard)
#8 of #10AfricanClassics - Amathongo - Ntshuks Bonga’s Tokolosho (South Africa)
#8 of #10AfricanClassics
Amathongo - Ntshuks Bonga’s Tokolosho (South Africa)
Ntshuks Bonga is one of those jazz dudes who had to go into voluntary exile overseas to make the music work for them. This track, “Amathongo” (The Forefathers) is dedicated to the musicians that Ntshuks cites as influential : Chris McGregor and his Blue Notes, Charles Mingus and others. Ntshuks plays in Cape Town occasionally, so if you ever get lucky enough to get the chance, make sure you catch him live. Great sax player. This song is off 1999’s Abo Bhayi.
#9 of #10AfricanClassics - Better change your mind - William Onyeabor (Nigeria)
#9 of #10AfricanClassics
Better change your mind - William Onyeabor (Nigeria)
We’re pretty familiar with the greats that came out of Nigerian 70s funk, like Sunny Ade, Tony Allen and Fela Kuti, but here’s a track by William Onyeabor. Freaky synth thing going on, beautiful rhythm. Before getting into the funk thing in Lagos in the 70s, Onyeabor studied filmmaking in Russia. That must have been a great collision of sensibilities. Get into the second half of the song’s groove – you’ll glide around all day. (Song courtesy @JCharlesLeonard).
#10 of #10AfricanClassics - Shauri Yako - Orchestra Super Mazembe (Kenya)
#10 of #10AfricanClassics
Shauri Yako - Orchestra Super Mazembe (Kenya)
I’ll be counting down ten great African songs that you might not have heard. In this area, I bow to the knowledge of Charles Leonard (@JCharlesLeonard), who knows infinitely more about this area than I do. So he’ll choose 7, I’ll choose 3. Even though the ratio of knowledge is more like 10 – 0 in his favour.
First up, from Kenya, the Orchestra Super Mazembe. Formed in the then-Zaire in 1967, as Super Vox, the band changed its name in 1974. Super Mazembe is apparently Lingala for bulldozer, because the band bragged that their music had the same earthmoving effect.
According to National Geographic, “the group quickly found a willing audience and took the country by storm. They popularized their own dance style, mushosho, as they vied for popularity with rival groups Les Mangelepa, Les Kinois, Les Wanyika and Orchestra Virunga. Many bands were tied to specific venues by resident-band contracts, but this was not the case with Mazembe, who crisscrossed the country and also toured in Tanzania and Uganda setting audiences alight wherever they appeared. They became a household name. According to a Nairobi newspaper the group was so popular that “agricultural shows and top hotels scrambled to book them”. From the mid-1980s the group was beset with problems and vanished from the music scene. “
This is their most popular song, a cover originally performed by Nguashi Ntimbo and Festival Du Zaire. (Info from Wikipedia and National Geographic.)
#1 of #20forgottenSAsongs
This Boy - Sweatband
John Mair was a special guitarist. I must have watched Sweatband more than 50 times, especially when they had a residency at the Claridges Hotel in Green Point, and I never got tired of John’s guitar histrionics, especially on Johnny B. Goode. They had various singers, most notably Wendy Oldfield. Sadly, John died in a car crash in 2002.
Sweatband only made one album, which is a shame. That album was 1986‘s No Sweat. This song is lyrically naive in some ways, but very beautiful in others. I started these #20forgottenSAsongs with a Glee Club song, one about how you’ll never make it big in a small town. “This Boy” is John’s defiant insistence that you CAN make it big. I really wish he had.
#2 of #20forgottenSAsongs - Conceits - Not Even The TV
#2 of #20forgottenSAsongs
Conceits - Not Even The TV
Not Even The TV are from East London, or were from East London. Who knows where they are now. An early Sonic Youth-like experimental noise band, they strayed into industrial every now and then as well. The only time I saw them live, they were opening for Live Jimi Presley (if memory serves me), another amazing SA band who were among the first, with Factory Power Corps, to incorporate an angle grinder into their sound. Now even a rock band like Taxi Violence does this.
Richard Haslop, that great music writer, describes them thusly:
“Early audiences… thought they heard traces of Joy Division and the Birthday Party in the band’s psychedelically tinged post-punk row, and (lead singer) Masters himself, who has always displayed an interest in the obscure and the arcane, as well as a collector’s ear for the rock ‘n’ roll margins, has mentioned [Pere] Ubu antecedents the Electric Eels as an influence.”
This increasingly frantic dirge is from 1989’s Notes from a Quiet City. Apologies for the terrible album cover pic. If anyone has a better quality pic, please send.
#3 of #20forgottenSAsongs - Plague Cafe - The Radio Rats
#3 of #20forgottenSAsongs
Plague Cafe - The Radio Rats
If you asked me to name the best ever rock album, I couldn’t. Too many contenders. Same for best punk, best hip hop, best reggae. Best ever jazz is easy - John Coltrane’s Impressions, for reasons I might share one day. And best South African rock album of all time is also easy: Into the Night we Slide, by the Radio Rats. Melodies of simple genius, simple songs that will remind you of Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers, and the best part of The Jam. And lyrics of such effortless wit and incisive socio-cultural commentary that you can’t believe this album was released in 1979 by a band from Springs.
The usual song played from this album is possibly its least original, but its most radio-friendly, the gorgeously conceived “ZX Dan”. If you ever feel smug, remind yourself that you live in a country where we made an American called Rodriguez famous, and spurned our own homegrown geniuses like the Radio Rats. The songs are all by Jonathan Handley, whose subsequent band the Glee Club started off this list of #20forgottenSAsongs with the prophetic “You can’t make it big in a small town”. According to SA Rock Digest, “all the songs on Into The Night We Slide were generally written by Handley in the Wimpy Bar, The Palladium, and a café in Springs.”
An entire life, from youthful desire to inevitable aging, is encapsulated in one line from “Bomb Shelter”: “Dressed in robot red and rubber black / your shape gave me my first heart attack”. But the song I’ve chosen, “Plague Cafe”, is a beautifully rendered vignette of old school cafes in South Africa. “This place has a dead waitress and one million flies / orange tabletops that damage my eyes”. More on The Radio Rats here.
#4 of #20forgottenSAsongs - Master Jack - 4 Jacks and a Jill
#4 of #20forgottenSAsongs
Master Jack - 4 Jacks and a Jill
This is a super creepy song from 1968, which reached no. 18 on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart, and no. 3 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It also went to no 1. in no. 1 in South Africa, Malaysia (?), Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The words are an insane, eerie amalgamation of twee pop psychology and deeply disturbing domination, and Glenys Lynne’s voice sounds like a precursor to weirdly disjointed japcore covers of American songs.
It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack / You taught me all I know and I’ll never look back / It’s a very strange world and I thank you, Master Jack
I saw right through the way you started teachin’ me now / So some day soon you could get to use me somehow / I thank you very much and though you’ve been very kind / But I’d better move along before you change my mind
You’re a very strange man and I thank you, Master Jack / You’re a very strange man and I thank you, Master Jack.
I mean, listen to this stuff. These people would get arrested today.
#5 of #20forgottenSAsongs - Neva again (95 Remix) - Prophets of Da City
#5 of #20forgottenSAsongs
Neva again (95 Remix) - Prophets of Da City
Prophets of Da City released the first ever SA hip hop album, 1990’s Our World, and this is the song they played on stage with Nelson Mandela at his inaugaration. It’s got some massive rapping, and includes the great rhyming (listen to it for full effect) of “Excellent / Finally a black president / to represent” and “The black rights / always at a slack pace/ Cos freedom moves at a wack pace / it sometimes take a miracle to see my people free/ cos it’s not done / easily.” Imagine Madiba jiving down to that.
POC are from Cape Town, and they can lay claim to being one of SA’s finest groups every. They’re also on my list of Top 10 live acts I’ve ever seen, and that’s on a list that includes some great performers. They released some six albums, and some of the members are still out there doing music, most notably Ishmael and Ready D.
POC were the way hip hop should always be: political, unflinching, and about the conditions of society, not about getting rich and spending stupid. They suffered the usual hip hop malaise of misogyny, sadly, but on the whole they’re a group we can be justly proud of.
#6 of #20forgottenSAsongs
Johnny calls the chemist - Falling Mirror
There’ve been so many requests for this song that one almost feels it can’t qualify as forgotten. But I guess there are a lot of people out there who might not know it. Despite releasing (I think) five albums, Falling Mirror were an almost mythical band owing to their refusal to play live. I myself only ever saw them once, almost by accident. Guitarist Allan Faull was an unusual talent, and singer Nielen Mirror a singular front man. Faull once played for Rabbitt, believe it or not.
This song from 1986 is about an abortive love affair, but is popularly understood as being about drugs, paranoia and futility. The refrain “Johnny calls the chemist / but the chemist doesn’t come” conjures up a drug addict’s Waiting for Godot. If you want to know more about this truly unique band, read this long piece by Steve “Sugar” Segarman, a long time SA Rock archivist, and also the guy who features in the recent Oscar-nominated movie Searching for Sugarman.
“Johnny’s travelling faster now / he’s spinning in her head / Make no mistake about it / their history will be read / And Johnny calls the chemist / but the chemist doesn’t come / She’s back inside the twilight / and Johnny hears the hum.”
