[engl] Bongo is a small town and is the capital of Bongo District, a district in the Upper East Region of Ghana. It’s a twenty minute drive to the border of Burkina Faso; “we share water” one of King Ayisoba’s band members once said. King Ayisoba, one of Ghana’s most famous musicians, was born and raised in Soe, a small village just outside Bongo; a fifteen minute drive on a sand road. Each time I visit the Bongo District, I have to visit King Ayisoba’s family too and pay my respects. Ayisoba’s father and mother are old but vital, they still work the land. I heard that during the harvest time everyone is a farmer. Young people come back home from the big cities like Accra and Kumasi to help with the harvesting and most of them have herded cows and goats when they were young. Sitting on the back of Francis Ayamga’s motorbike we make many stops. Francis plays the traditiona drum in King Ayisoba’s band and he runs a studio in Bongo. He knows most of the people in Bongo, and there is always something new going on. Of course he has to explain why he has a white man on the back of his bike. The people in Bongo are proud of all the musicians and especially of King Ayisoba and his band who play the whole world and bring the Frafra tradition to all the continents. Actually he is teaching the world some Frafra along the way since King Ayisoba is well known for his powerful shouts and interaction with the audience. During one of the King Ayisoba tours Francis gave me a pendrive full of music he recorded in his studio. I listened through all and heard a lot of great music. I made a selection, sat down with Francis and King Ayisoba and then came the idea to make a compilation that represents the music from the Upper East, focused on Bongo, all in Frafra and full of variation: rap, gospel, kologo and traditional chanting, it’s all there. I spent a week at Francis’ Top Link studio and met many great musicians. One of them was Zenabu, a traditional singer who brought her whole women group. They did not fit in the studio so we recorded them outside and it sounds beautiful.

[engl] This compilation is an African initiative. King Ayisoba once told me “I want to make the world love kologo music like Bob Marley made the world love reggae music.” In 2014 I played on the launching of King Ayisoba’s V-CD “Kologo Spirit” at the cultural center in Kumasi, Ghana. The event started at three o’clock in the afternoon with a local children circus, then DJs and then a drumming group from the North East Region of Ghana, the region where kologo music is from. Around six the first kologo player entered the stage and the open-air theatre was filled with about two-and-a-half thousand people, mostly Frafra (the popular name for people from the North East Region and the name of their language). Many kologo players followed that night, which went on until three in the morning. I must have seen about twenty for sure. But backstage there were more guys who didn’t even make it to the stage but were playing anyway, backstage, outside and around the scene. Ayuune Sule, Sambo, Stevo, Guy One and of course King Ayisoba played, the audience was amazing, lots of people entered the stage throwing money at the musicians, others came to dance, the night was seriously on fire. It was one of the most amazing musical events I have ever attended. Ayuune Sule and King Ayisoba told me later there are more than eighty-five kologo players already in and around Bolgatanga, the capital of the North East Region. And two years later I was going to see more. In January 2016 King Ayisoba invited me to Ghana again to join in on his “Batakari Festival” (“batakari” is the name of the traditional cloth many of the kologo players wear). One night in Accra and one night in Bolgatanga and I sure did hear and see many more kologo players and not only on those festival nights. Also in the pito-bars (“pito” is a traditional drink based on fermented millet), cafes, FM stations, houses and studios and at a traditional funeral in Bongo (a village near Bolgatanga) I saw lots of amazing kologo players. The idea of making a compilation had been discussed on our European tours already a few times. In the van we listen almost solely to kologo music and there is no lack of great tracks. So together we started picking out the tracks we really liked. There was one dogma: “no computer beats”. King Aysioba wants to show what is the real kologo power and that is made by, as he calls it: “man power”. Most of the tracks are recorded in studios in Ghana. Some are sung in Frafra, others in pidgin English. Some are with a live band and some are just solo kologo and voice. But all songs represent a force and unveil a very strong musical power. The connection between kologo music and (delta) blues has been made more than once and that resemblance is not written on ice; the personal and the social messages, the strong rhythms, the push that this instrument -with only two strings spanned over a goatskin on a calabash- can give to people to make sure they do not ignore the dance floor, all that makes it worth the work and effort of making at least one kologo compilation. So in January 2016, when meeting all the kologo players, I had the change to take pictures and do interviews with everybody. Which you find on the insert. And you should know this is just a tip of the syncopating savannah iceberg, but it’s a good start I think.

[engl] This is the music being played on the cell phones, car speakers and sound systems in and around Bongo and Bolgatanga, the main city and capital of Ghana’s Upper East. This is the mix of local rhythms and melodies played on traditional instruments mixed with Ayamga’s Fruity Loops sample madness and Cubase programmed electro beats with on top of it all the words, rhymes, vocals and stories of the young people hanging around the Top Link studio waiting for an opportunity to throw down their voice on a fresh made track. The main language on this album is Fare Fare, the regional language in Ghana’s Upper East region. ‘Zologo’ means ‘crazy’ in Fare Fare (also known as Frafra).

[engl] Soul Safari presents volume Two of the Township Jive & Kwela Jazz compilation, featuring 18 rare gems from South Africa, recorded between 1930 and 1962. All titles on this compilation have been carefully handpicked from the ILAM Archives (the International Library of African Music), in Grahamstown, South Africa.

[engl] Soul Safari presents volume Three of the Township Jive & Kwela Jazz compilation, featuring 18 rare gems from South Africa, recorded between 1930 and 1962. All titles on this compilation have been carefully handpicked from the ILAM Archives (the International Library of African Music), in Grahamstown, South Africa.

[engl] On this great compilation you’ll find 16 early vocal & jazzy tunes from the Golden Age of Jive & Kwela in South Africa. All released originally on fragile shellac discs only, which is a very delicate material but the music survived thanks to the archives of ILAM. A truly great source of South African music is being preserved here for new generations, to inspire young and hopeful musicians and singers from all over the world. These treasures of musical genius were recorded in the glory years of Jive and Kwela, the years 1940-1965. On side A it is not very difficult to recognize the similarities to American popular music like R&B and small combo close harmony singing. But most of all notice that typical South African swing, that Jive, that incredible smooth form of African Jazz on side B; Kwela! The rarest and most treasured finds are collected here, some with the original spoken intros, ‘sketches’ as these were called. Characteristic conversations between the musicians, often in a humoristic slang, always extremely funny. The record is pressed to 180gram vinyl.

[engl] Originally released as a double CD in 2010, Wallahi Le Zein! has persisted as a cult classic, a collection of a rarely heard and utterly unique underground music scene, raw and unfiltered. The LP, cassette & digital version we now present is intended as an immersive entry into this music: gnarled and virtuosic electric guitars weave hypnotically throughout melismatic sung poetry and exclamations, pulsing hand drums, party chatter, buzzing rigged desert sound systems, and all manner of the ambient sounds of Nouakchott wedded to oversaturated cassette in all its swirling, breathing, psychedelic glory. Operating entirely outside of any local recording industry, these songs were collected from bootleg tape stalls, wedding souveniers, and networks of musicians, expertly curated, researched and produced by Matthew Lavoie. Drawing from the deep well of Mauritanian classical music, the gamut of musical modes and the tidinitt lute repertoire are transposed to the electric guitar - often with frets removed or additional frets installed, “heavy metal” distortion pedals and phasers built into guitar bodies, blurring the lines between Haratine and Beydane musical cultures, the ancient and the futuristic. At times transcendent and transfixing, and conversely a furious and cascading intensity that commands jaw-dropping attention. 160 gram black vinyl LP comes packaged in 2 color, reverse-board jacket with 8 page booklet with extensive notes on the musicians and songs, as well as a history of Mauritanian guitar music.