King Bucknor Jnr. (Afro Disk Beat Organisation) - Vol. II

 

Originally published by amazing digging4gold.tumblr.com!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

The world has come to know Fela as the undisputed king of afrobeat in Nigeria during the 1970s. Along with fellow co-creator, Tony Allen, Fela Kuti completely dominated the market.  Even band like the African Brothers and Ebo Taylor in Ghana, both heavily influenced by Fela’s direction, added their own signature elements, creating afrohilli and afrofunk in the process.

Such a domination in the genre has prevented us from hearing the direct influence Fela’s sound had on his fellow nigerian musicians.  People like Joni Haastrup, Harry Mosco, and Pax Nicholas (just to name a few) - all managed to incorporate and expand upon the afrobeat sound, creating something new in the process, but where are all the imitators lurking in the mist who capitalized upon such a golden opportunity.  This record by King Bucknor and the Afro Disk Beat Organization is a prime of example of such blatant imitation.

Before I get into the actual music, I have to point out one of my lingering suspicions that this may be the work or another well-respected Nigerian funketeer - Segun Bucknor. Was it a studio creation by some label to ride the success of Fela?  Does the name give away Bucknor’s association with the recording or is simply coincidence that they share the same name? I remember when Lion and I found this record and being in utter awe of the shamelessness of it all.  So far, I haven’t been able to find any info on this band except for one other record of theirs that popped on ebay some years back.  I could be totally wrong about Segun’s role… hopefully, one of you can put my suspicions to rest.
As for the music itself, it is unabashed knockoff. Long, drawn-out intros, social ad-libs, 15-min songs that play out like any number of Africa 70’s well-known tunes. It even has kiltered Saxaphone solos right smack in the middle. Close your eyes and you would think it was a Fela session out-take.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this project grew out of a  cover band some Nigerian club hired out for their weekend nights.

Judge for yourself.

GET IT!!!

From Ireland: Ajo Arkestra (Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble)

Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble are a 14 strong outernational group of afrobeat exponents from the four corners of the world. They are a musical crossroads made up of musicians that have washed up on our shores and share an ancestral understanding of the Underground Spiritual Game playing a blend of free flow afrobeat riddims and heavy dancefloor afro funk.

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Ajo Arkestra (Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble) are a 14 strong outer-national group of Afrobeat exponents from the four corners of the world. They are a musical crossroads made up of musicians that have washed up on our shores and share an ancestral understanding of the Underground Spiritual Game playing a blend of free flow Afrobeat riddims and heavy dance-floor Afro funk. The band was founded in 2012, when a group of Afro-beat enthusiast started meeting up regularly at down-town jam sessions. They began making plans to form a new collective that would combine their various musical interests with their particular world view.

Dublin Afrobeat Ensemble

Ajo Arkestra - History Of Money from edzillion on Vimeo.

Modern Photo: A golden age of popular music in Ghana as seen through the lens of S.K. Pobee by Samy Ben Redjeb

Originally published @ thisisafrica.me, written by Samy Ben Redjeb

 
African brothers @ Accra Airport circa 1976 (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

I´m scanning the negatives I received from Modern Photo, a laboratory in Accra that had built its reputation by taking pictures of political figures and musical events some 40 years ago. Those musical events are what I am interested in.

Until that point I hadn't really been able to picture the magnitude of what had been going on musically in Ghana during those days. All I had were tales and legends of what seemed to be forgotten times, but now, each developed frame feels like an additional piece to the puzzle. That musical scene I admired so much is taking shape, revealing itself in the form of pictures taken by one of the pioneers of modern photography in Ghana, Samuel Kobian Pobee (S.K. Pobee for short).

While working on the first instalment of Afrobeat Airways, I had found photographs with the stamp of the modern photo company and started asking around. It might well have been producer Max Boateng, now manager of Nana Ampedu of the African Brothers, who directed me there. In response to my question, he exclaimed "Modern Photo? Of course I know the place; it is just in front of what use to be the legendary Tip Toe night club - we can go tomorrow morning."

Max couldn’t make it the next morning but told me to call him as soon as I found a cab, so I did. "Let me speak to the driver,” he said. The cellphone that I handed over disappeared between the ear and the shoulder of the cab driver who, while speeding through Accra´s busy traffic, was trying to understand Max´s instruction while the radio was blasting the latest cheesy hiplife hit.

Once we got there, I knew I had arrived at the right place; photos of K.Gyasi, Papa Yankson, Pat Thomas and many more, all nicely framed, had been neatly hung around the main entrance of the store. I entered and asked if I could speak to the manager, not forgetting to say that it was Max who had sent me. I was taken to the offices of Sam Pobee, son of S.K. Pobee, the founder of the company.

I sat down and after handing him the first volume of Afrobeat Airways, explained that I had come to continue working on the series and was now looking for liner notes material to document the second volume. Sam, slightly unimpressed by "my labour of love", nonchalantly looked at me and said “Follow me.” I was taken to the store room where the negatives where stored. The place didn't have air conditioning and a part of the room had been exposed to dust and heat so I was wondering about the condition of these treasures. “Here is a box with pictures of K.Frimpong,” said Sam. That box was stored with others of the same kind, all written on with a thick black marker: ‘Fela Kuti at Napoleon Club’, ‘Uhuru Dance Band 1970’, ‘African Brothers at Accra Airport 1976’ and a few hundred more. "We had serious flooding few years ago and a good part of the our archive was destroyed", he lamented.

 
Uhuru Dance Band, circa 1970 (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

With two of Sam´s employees we started selecting photos of interest, and while doing so, I started to think that the pictures in good condition might become the basis of a beautiful book documenting what has to be described as one of Africa´s most vibrant musical scenes, something equal or beyond anything found in a major European or North American city. That’s a personal opinion, based on my taste perhaps, but even so, I can’t think of many places in the northern hemisphere that could be compared to, nor compete with, what was happening musically in cities like Accra, Cotonou, Kinshasa or Luanda in the ‘70s. After about three hours, some 400 negatives had been selected.

Only now did I start to understand the cultural legacy that the synergy between one of the best photo studios and one of the most important venues in the country had produced. I was curious and wanted to understand what had happened in this place. Here’s what Sam had to say:

"When Modern Photo was created in 1955, the Tip Toe night club just opposite of our offices was already operating. The manager was Mr Page, an American. My father S.K. Pobee, the founder of Modern Photo, wasn't too much into music then; he was mainly taking pictures of political figures. It wasn't until 1966, when he leased the Tip Toe, that his interest in all cultural things began to grow. 

 
At the Tip Toe night club (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

The first thing he did when he took over was to modernise and renovate the whole place. He bought new furniture, and ordered a new set of modern musical equipment. At that time every club had a residential band. For example The Lido night club, a few blocks away, had Broadway Dance Band, Napoleon club had Basa-Basa and Bunzu Soundz. Tip Toe had the Uhuru Dance Band and the Blue Monks, a group my father had formed and sponsored.

 
Gyedu Blay Ambolley circa 1975 (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

To keep up with the demand, every club had to invite bands from other parts of Ghana and also from abroad to stand a chance of surviving the fierce competition. One of the first groups my dad invited to Ghana was Fela's Koola Lobitos. They were followed by Victor Uwaifo, who had a big following here in Ghana, and then Ignace de Souza, a fantastic musician from Benin, just to name a few, but there were many. However, he was most impressed by a powerful band from Congo Brazzaville, Les Bantous de la Capitale, who stayed here for 6 months - by the time they left they were playing and singing Twi highlife perfectly. One of my dad´s main qualities was his sense of innovation; he started organising boogaloo competitions influenced by James Brown´s ‘mashed potato’ dance style. The people were dancing while the band were playing soul tunes, and we had bands who played that style incredibly well - especially P.P Dynamite and also the Hougas (with Gyedu-Blay Ambolley on bass). We also organised ‘Miss Tip Toe’, contests and the girls really looked nice in their mini skirts and their Afro hair. Today it’s all artificial.

 
Miss Tip Toe  (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

Additionally to the highlife and big band concerts, my father introduced another event called ‘Jazz Night’, on which he would have two drummers competing against each other. The most memorable one was between Kofi Ghanaba (a.k.a. Guy Warren) and Uhuru´s percussionist, Max Amah. Oh, you would have loved it, I tell you. That day Kofi took a beating.

 
Tip Toe dance competition circa 1971 (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

You know my father was also someone who was into advertising and promotion and he knew how to convince the musicians to be loyal to the Tip Toe night club. He would tell them "after the sound check come to the studio, I will make a picture of you and place an advert in the daily graphic to promote your next show". This is what made Tip Toe stand above the other clubs, the fact that we had Modern Photo. The promotion tools we used worked so well that on Saturday afternoon, when we had what we called the ‘Afternoon Bump,’ starting at 6pm. If by 1pm you were not inside Tip Toe you wouldn't come in - sold out. That’s the reason why so many bands and musicians wanted to work with my father and that’s what made our success.

 
Hedzolleh Soundz (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

My father left to the United States between 1973 and 1977 to improve his skills. When he returned, he found the place was going strong; I had perpetuated his work. But unfortunately my efforts would not be rewarded because in 1979 we were hit by a second curfew. It was serious. The first one, which took place in 1966, didn't last too long. It didn't hit us too hard, but it was the third that knocked us out. It killed social life and the music industry in this country. Everybody had to be home by 10pm: no parties, no concerts, no boogaloo, no Miss Tip Toe. When after two years that crazy curfew was over most of our musicians had already left the country and DJs had replaced the bands. Live music was dead."

 
Name unknown (Photo: S.K. Pobee)

I left Modern Photo and crossed the street to see what was left of the legendary venue. I wasn't too surprised to find that the place that had once hosted legends such as E.T. Mensah and The Black Santiago had now been bought by one of the many churches that had mushroomed all over the country. I entered the place and was shown around by a kind gentlemen who was trying to convince me that there were an infinite number of paths to accept Jesus as my personal saviour. Little did he know that my "saviours" had left the stage many years ago.

I walked back to the meeting point with my cab driver, 5pm sharp in front of the Lido Night Club, as I was told. Since the word “sharp” takes on a less uptight meaning in this part of the globe, I decided to take a walk through the nearby market. Crowds of people thronged the food stands, wandered past music and clothes stores, vegetable and fruit stands and breathed in the scents of tomato and spicy chilli sauce. Music was blasting from all corners and unlike the delicious gravy that was to be consumed with fufu and banku, the music I was hearing was all but hot. The frequencies reaching my ears were sterile and artificial - cleansed of sweat, breath and passion. Where had that “sweeter than honey” sound of Highlife gone?

Although everyone would like to blame the curfews, piracy and political mishaps - certainly a big part of the issue - producers and musicians might have been partly responsible for using technologies that did not do justice to the nature of West African music. In the early 80s, some instruments, especially horns and percussions, were sacrificed and replaced by the drum machines and synthesizers that were in vogue at the time. In turn those were replaced, a decade later, by midi and computers. If curfews were a bludgeoning darkness on the local music scene, the light at the end of the tunnel was stuffed with a big fat digital keyboard. The harvest of this dispassion is three decades of sonic mediocrity.

The 60s & 70s generation of Ghanian musicians had birthed unique sounds based upon principles of excellent musicianship and recording techniques, with deep respect for traditional music. They had excelled to such an extent that the new hybrids of music they created still command respect all over the globe 40 years later. They provided an example to follow. The music created in “the old days” is not, as I was so often told, “grandma and grandpa” music but world class music.

As Ambolley liked to say: “It doesn't surprise me that our music is finally travelling because, you know, if you do something good, it will be remembered forever. That's right, brother."

With the support of Eleonore Sylla and Robert Sobotta of the Goethe Institute in Accra, the Analog Africa team, comprised of Paula Adank Montanez (Label Manager), Vikram Sohonie (Analog Africa’s editor) and myself, we made our way to Ghana to interview some of the legendary artists and producers of what has to be described as “the golden age” of Ghanaian popular music.

Their memories on paper, their music saved, our hopes are to be part of a movement - created by dedicated labels and music collectors - that will make sure this music is be remembered for generations to come. Amen!

My hope with this essay is to generate interest for the pictures of SK Pobee and to find people that might be interested in exposing them in galleries. If you’re interested in exhibiting these photographs, please contact me at info@analogafrica.com.

Lemi Ghariokwu - A Dynasty of Album Cover Art for Fela Kuti!

 written by  Lemi Ghariokwu, 
published on 4th October 2013 @ granta.com


As a youngster and aspiring artist in the early 1970s, I learnt a lot from attending art exhibitions and visiting private studios and galleries in Lagos. It was a ritual for me to flip through newspapers eagerly to check out the cartoon page where the artists reign supreme with their take on socio-political issues in the country. My other pastime was to check out the street sign-writers and their organic form of art. The minibuses in Lagos always had philosophical slogans written on them.


In Nigeria, everyday life is noted not so much for the abundance of technology as for the fact that so much of it does not function. The country’s political rulers are not satisfying the needs of the people and are interested primarily in enriching themselves. A new enemy has also arisen in Nigeria – insecurity has intensified due to kidnapping and terrorist extremism. Yet despite the despair, the underlying attitude has remained irrepressibly optimistic. In the last three decades or more, a couple of artists have started using the tools at their disposal to analyse political developments. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was one major artist; with his Afrobeat music, he challenged the forces of repression and corruption in governance in the state of Nigeria. He suffered great consequences but never gave up the fight till his death.



In 1974, I earned Fela’s trust and friendship through my acquaintanceship with the journalist Babatunde Harrison. Fela had just experienced his first beating and incarceration by the police and this gruesome experience inspired the hit song ‘Alagbon Close’, which was the first cover I designed. Having listened ardently to recountings of the harrowing experience from the man himself and having been privy to the stages of the composition of the tune, the cover was a fait accompli. It actually started with a drawing of Fela I had in my portfolio prior to my chance meeting with ‘Tunde Harrison, which showed the musician dancing on a mishmash of mud and rubbish. The final design of ‘Alagbon Close’s’ cover showed Fela’s ‘Kalakuta Republic’ in the background standing solidly on the left and Alagbon Close jailhouse on the right, a broken chain leading from the walls of the jail, half of which is still attached to Fela’s left wrist as he dances triumphantly over a capsizing police patrol boat and is helped, in effect, by a prodigious whale.

 

The next two album covers for No Bread and Kalakuta Show followed the tow of Fela’s vitriolic statements on vinyl. No Bread was an elaborate oil painting; portraying a mélange of social ills plaguing a developing nation; the cover forespoke of the doom to come. This cover took the best of two weeks and a trip to ‘cloud nine’ to achieve. Fela had insisted I try out a concoction of igbo (marijuana) to ‘elevate’ my talent. Not wanting to let my great friend down, I tried the herb and the resultant effect was superb, but being a teetotaller and someone with a mind of his own, I learned to be myself and thereafter tune into the right frequency. Kalakuta Show is another oil painting, this time illustrating the arrogant sacking of the ‘Republic’ in another Fela-versus-Police drama, featuring a portrait of Fela with the smoking Kalakuta Republic in the background, while Fela, his aides and his radical lawyer are hotly pursued by a baton-wielding policeman!
My association and friendship with the maverick was very cordial. I was treated like a son, friend, adviser and comrade by the Afrobeat legend. I was a travelling companion, sharing the great ideology of Pan-Africanism on some of the trips across the West African coast. Between 1974 and 1993 I designed twenty-six album covers for his music career.

 

I designed the Yellow Fever cover in 1976. The song is an admonition to African women who are fond of using bleaching creams to lighten their dark skin tone, and I did use a model to express visually what Fela has orally illustrated in the song. Points of emphasis include the bad effect the bleach has on the face and bum. My life model was a girl named Kokor who was a member of the household at Kalakuta Republic. I decided it was going to be a straight-in-your-face image of misinformed African beauty. Fela had already expressed disgust at the belief that skin lightening enhances African beauty. I showcased a typical ‘offending’ cream in the top-left corner of my cover art. ‘Soyoyo Cream Skin Bleacher’ was actually my own creation. The word soyoyo is a Yoruba expression for ‘bright and glow’! I painted in the price tag of 40 naira which was high end for a cream, and yet so harmful to beauty and the psyche of African women. Fela reacted very positively when I submitted this cover for his approval and in his characteristic manner said glowingly ‘Goddamn!’, wittily adding ‘Lemi is a mutherfucker me-e-n!’ just to round up.

In 1976, the then-military government in Nigeria had instructed soldiers to horsewhip erring drivers on the highway. The soldiers carried out this order without impunity and with a fervour reminiscent of zombies. That was why, having been severally harassed by military personnel, Fela came up with the idea to compose ‘Zombie’. Everyone, including some military personnel from the nearby Albati Barracks, fell in love with the catchy rhythm and martial tempo, which galvanized the dancers, who wouldn’t let the song end. Fela’s saucy reprise of the Army Bugle call and horn riff got them jumping and whooping with the release of being able to mock oppressors they both feared and despised. The song became an anthem of protest for people, which was chanted under their breath anytime they felt oppressed by military personnel.

 

When the time came to do to create the cover art for this landmark song, I found myself unable to focus on the right idea initially. The breakthrough came right on time one Kalakuta morning just as Fela was asking how the sleeve was coming along. Tunde Kuboye, the photographer, film-maker, jazz musician husband of Fela’s niece, Frances, walked in with a bunch of his photographs taken at that year’s Independence Day military parade at Tafawa Balewa Square in central Lagos. With Tunde’s permission, I selected ten military images, and a few of Fela. I was set on making a graphic collage. Back in my studio I laid a cardboard mat on my drawing board and edited Tunde’s ten shots down to four. I was feeling like a shaman, and as I put them down, the pictures just dropped into a position reminiscent of an Ifa divination . . . subconsciously! Not wanting to take any chances, I fixed the pictures down with masking tape, then traced their position in pencil. I overlapped the photos and cut and pasted them down. Then, using a hard paintbrush and thick poster colour paint, I wrote, in freehand, the album title, Fela’s name and his band directly over the picture, outlining the result with a Rotring pen. Finally, I added the shadows.

The sleeve was an instant hit at Kalakuta, in Nigeria, Africa and around the world. It led new listeners to wonder what lay on the vinyl inside. For the initiated, it told the story of life under an oppressive military dictatorship – and what it takes to come through it feeling that you’re still somehow in command of your destiny.

 

Beasts Of No Nation (B.O.N.N.) was Fela’s attack on his jailers for an eighteen-month undeserved incarceration from a trumped-up currency trafficking charge. Smarting from his experience in jail, Fela throws his punches like an enraged prize-fighter. In typical Fela style, Beasts Of No Nation made the acronym BONN, which is a disguised reference to the once de facto capital city of West Germany and the days of Adolf Hitler’s Nazism.

The music is as powerful as it gets and beneath his knife-edge, cutting sarcasm, Fela’s voice rages. It would take a serious sleeve to convey that acid tone. I knew I had to depict the evils of South African apartheid, and the failures and hypocrisy of the United Nations. I made the delegates look like rats, and I portrayed the oppressors with animal’s horns and fangs; the slavering vampires of Margaret Thatcher, South Africa’s Prime Minister, P.W. Botha, Ronald Reagan and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire cram the frame. The quote used on the top left of the cover art is from a speech by Botha, and among my beasts are Generals Mohammed Buhari and Babatunde Idiagbon, the men responsible for Fela’s 1984 jail stint. The images of Beasts of No Nation seethe with primal urges – greed, control, vengeance – and the spirit of defiance is embodied in the demonstrators waving a placard with a line from the song, ‘Human Rights Is Our Property’. The demonstrators wear Black Power sunglasses and their pink tracksuits pulsate with pastel against the sombre palette of their enemies. Fela’s costume is the same exuberant pink, and their gestures are echoed in his triumphant Black Power salute, as he faces them across the frame, while the offending judge cowers at his feet.

Fela decided to make an incursion into the various untouchable aspects of our society. He took advantage of the sweet and seductive power of those things that are looked upon as taboo and he invited Nigeria to the debate, and I stand with resoluteness behind him to this day.

 

Lemi Ghariokwu illustrated ‘Teju Cole’s Water has no Enemy’from Granta 124: Travel. See his illustration and read an excerpt from the piece here.

All images courtesy of Lemi Ghariokwu

De Frank Professionals - Psychedelic Man (get it)

Originally published by amazing digging4gold!

 

Well Folks, here it is.

Yet another highly sought-after gem from Ghanaian funketeer - De Frank.  Much like other renown West African funk artists - Ambolley, Geraldo Pino, Harry Masco - De Frank’s catalogue affirms his admiration for American funk and soul.  On “psychedelic Man” he  goes all in and does away with most of the highlife and other Ghanaian rhythms found on some of his other recordings - one which we featured a while back - and replaces it with english-induced afro-soul and the occasional reggae number.

Most often, the record is noted for the track “Call Me frank,” but the real standout is the song right after. “Waiting for My Baby” embodies everything I love about Afro-funk:  moody organ chords, dirty horn lines, and a driving pulse, all accented by De frank’s signature high-pitched vocals. De frank allows the band to breath over the instrumental, adding little more than the title name as a chorus, with the occasional added line, which he sings just long enough to give the listener a break before ushering back the horns.

This track is beautiful in every way and yet another testament to De Frank’s gifted musical ability.

GET IT! 

Tracklist

A1		I Don't Know The World Is One
A2		Think Of The Future
A3		Psychedelic Man
B1		Let's Make The Music
B2		Call Me Frank
B3		Waiting For My Baby
B4		Man No Cry

Post No. 650: Esbee Family ‎– Peace Of Mind (get it)

 

GET IT!

Tracklist

A1		Peace Of Mind
A2		Gin And Lime
A3		My Man Understands
A4		Falling In Love
B1		Come Party
B2		Cheerful Giver
B3		Chics Are Magnets
B4		All Alone (I Dont Know What To Do)

Voodoo Funk: An Exotic Creature in West Africa

Voodoo Funk: An Exotic Creature in West Africa 
(originally published @ hyponik.com)

Whilst most of us are slaves to the 9-5, Voodoo Funk’s Frank Gossner has been busy fulfilling his dream. Refusing to adhere to the norm, he’s dedicated his life to acting on impulse and travelling the world with an incredibly refreshing attitude that one can’t help but admire. Having previously lived in New York and Berlin, 2005 marked a landmark in Gossner’s life as he decided to give up everything and spend 3 years of his life living in West Africa with the direct intention of collecting records. 5 years later and one amazing blog later, he’s running one of the best re-issue labels around in the form of Voodoo Funk. The imprint brings you the best funk, soul and disco Africa has to offer to a Western audience, with a focus on the slew of superb and largely unknown music the area has to offer.
With a recent run of 12”s proving to be essential purchases for any aficionados of the genre, we caught up with Frank as he relaxes in his current location of Costa Rica to discuss politics, cockroaches and the pursuit of happiness…

Hey Frank, how’s it going? You’re in Costa Rica at the moment, what are you getting up to over there? Any digging?

No, I’m not doing any digging around here, I’m still 100% focused on West African music. I moved to Costa Rica with the intention to enjoy the country, do some surfing, hike the mountains and collect epyphitic orchids and bromeliads. I’m also still going to Africa at least once a year and working on various re-issue projects.

Going back to the beginning, how exactly did you get into African music?

I was friends with Phillip Lehman, the owner of Desco Records, when I lived in NYC back in the 90s and got to see some of the very first performances of Antibalas. It was then that I started listening to some Fela Kuti records. I was doing this Deep Funk night in Berlin from 2000 to 2005 and kept going over to the US to go on digging trips. Sometime in 2004 (I think) I was digging for funk 45s at this defunct old record store in Philadelphia and for some strange reason they had an few dozen mint releases from the Nigerian Tabansi label sitting in their office, amongst them the incredibly rare Pax Nicholas album that I would later re-issue on Daptone Records. At around the same time I bought the first few Soundway releases and it became clear that there must be much, much more exciting stuff out there than just Fela records.

What was the tipping point for you to go from a guy who just seeks what he can get his hands on in the Western market to going to the source? It’s a sign of dedication that few people have.

Well, if you’re anywhere outside of Africa, you are limited to reissues – which at around 2004 or 2005 wasn’t too much. Sure there was the occasional obscure looking original African record you could buy on eBay but those rarely had sound clips, often looked very intriguing but then the music wasn’t always what I was looking for. A lot of people have been going to Africa for records for years now, so there’s been a lot more African vinyl floating around on eBay. In fact, I think we’ve actually reached a threshold now as these records become increasingly harder to find in Africa itself.

I always love going places. Even when I was still collecting and DJing US deep funk 45s and bought loads of records online, it was still important to me to go get at least some of my records from the source. This way you can experience the culture out of which the music was born. You get to see the places, eat the food, maybe take in some live music. That’s a much more rewarding thing to do than staring at a computer screen.

In 2005 I had just unexpectedly run into a significant amount of money so I just decided to go for it and move to West Africa. I had originally aimed for Ghana or Benin but then my wife managed to get a job in Guinea which had, and to some extend still has, an incredible music scene. The capital Conakry is only a few hours by car away from Sierra Leone and it’s capital city of Freetown, which had just come to peace after a long and horrible civil war. Freetown was where Nigerian funk superstar Geraldo Pino had begun his career and there were several indicators that records could be found there and because of the long war it was clear that no other digger had been there in recent years. So we just went, packed our stuff and moved to Africa.

It’s admirable that you’re willing to drop everything to follow your dreams, whether it be moving to Africa to collect records or Costa Rica to collect orchids. How do you perceive the way you live your life? I think a lot of people would love to have the conviction to fulfill their ambitions like you do but maybe don’t believe it’s possible…

I’m a firm believer that anything is possible if you really want it, at least if you’re willing to put in the work and to accept the risks and possible consequences. Leading an impulsive life that focuses on enjoying myself to the fullest works for me because I don’t have a family to raise and never had any interest in pursuing a conventional career, owning a house or even having a retirement plan.

Did you get any strange reactions being a white Western guy who’s obviously really into African music? Did some of the locals have a bit of trouble getting their head around it?

Not really. Away from the bigger cities, just by being white you already stand out as an exotic creature and get lots of attention. Once you explain that you’re looking for records the first reaction is never surprise or disbelief but people immediately start thinking how they can help you and you find yourself being led though alleyways, from one house to another on a never ending string of wild goose chases. Older people often revel in remembering their youth and seeing these bands live and just love hearing their old records being played again on your portable turntable. And after all, collecting old records is probably the least alienating white man eccentricity they might have experienced or heard of.

Of course, your trips are about far more than just collecting records. What is it about Africa that you really love and makes you keep coming back?

It’s hard to explain, I’m sure everybody who’s ever been to West Africa knows what it is though. There’s the feeling that just about anything, good or bad can happen at pretty much any time. I mean taking an overland bus in Nigeria for one example is pretty much like playing Russian roulette. Traffic anywhere in West Africa can be pretty mind-blowing but Nigeria is on a whole other level. There are huge potholes everywhere that would snap an axle right in half and yet everybody’s driving at break neck speed like they are on the Autobahn. The unbelievable speed, the condition of the road and vehicles and the added constant danger of being stopped by armed highway robbers make for a pretty intense adrenaline rush. Then you have the serenity of some of the smaller towns you stay at where time just appears to stand still, the intensity of the heat, cold beer and good conversation with people you just met. Each different area of every country can be extremely different to anything you’ve seen before, it’s hard to put it in words but it’s all very addictive.

Fela Kuti is probably the most prominent artist in West African music, with a real focus on the political. How far do you think that the political message is important in African funk?

Political messages are always bogus regardless how they are packaged. I’m not a believer in any form of political system. To me, they’re all flawed and all men who are in any position of power are evil. They don’t all start out that way but that’s what they become. Some hide it better than others of course but they are all full of shit.

There is actually very little African music besides Fela that is openly political. Fela’s lyrics can be amazing descriptions of the flaws and the problems Nigeria has had at the time (unfortunately today it’s even worse) but when it comes to his own political aspirations I’m more than skeptical. Most African dictators had originally started out as freedom fighters, liberators, rebels and the like…

I have to tell you that while of course I’m a huge fan of Fela’s music and especially of his earlier lyrics, especially Shuffering and Shmiling, ITT, Yellow Fever, to name a few, I don’t at all like the way he’s being portrayed as some sort of freedom bringer or messiah by people in America or in Europe. Generally I don’t support the glorification of any person. People are always flawed. There’s always a dark side. Glorification distorts and simplifies a person and insults the complexity of human nature. Fela surrounded himself with some pretty hardcore street thugs that he had hired as security at his compound. Some of the EMI producers talked about having received death threats if they don’t do what they were told and Fela treated his musicians mostly pretty badly and I also don’t think they enjoyed being beat up by police and thrown in jail because of Fela’s antics. That’s one of the reasons why they refused to go back with him after that ’78 show in Berlin, that and the rumours he was going to use the proceeds for the European tour to fund his presidential campaign.

Politics in Africa is an incredible topic. There is a ton of material online for anybody who’s interested can read up on. I don’t think pop music is the adequate forum though.

A lot of the places you went digging in Africa didn’t have the best conditions. It seems that pretty much everywhere was crawling with cockroaches and caked in mud. Is there anything that would stop you looking through a crate?

No, I would never be stopped looking though a crate for any reason, I always found amazing stuff just towards the bottom of the most un-promising looking vessel. With time I’ve grown completely indifferent to cockroaches. In coastal West Africa they’re everywhere, you’re in their natural habitat. After moving onto our house in Conakry I dug up a small field to plant vegetables and the soil was literally crawling with roaches, there were whole nests of them.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to follow in your footsteps?

To not expect too much. Unfortunately, countries like Ghana, Togo and Benin have been pretty much run dry by now. I still have a steady stream of records coming from Nigeria but over there you need a network of local diggers otherwise the chances of finding anything worthwhile are fairly slim.

You’ve found a lot of unique records on your travels, do you ever think there’s an issue of the rarity of a record over-shadowing the actual quality of the music? Sometimes in record collecting I get the feeling that people just want a record because no-one else owns it, rather than because they truly love the music.

I don’t know, I think that’s a matter of your own personal decision. If somebody wants to collect rare records why not? Of course there is an appeal in owning unique things. If a DJ wants to put together a box of records that nobody else has then this puts him at an advantage towards the competition and it offers other people the chance to hear music they haven’t heard before. Every consumer has the option to buy or listen to whatever music they want and I wouldn’t want to judge over their motives. At least they’re listening to music and listening to music is always good for you.

 There’s a bit of a jump from collecting records to running a label. What’s your vision behind Voodoo Funk as a label?

I’m not sure if I have a vision. I’m a very impulsive kind of person and never really have a long-term plan for anything… For now I’m in the middle of a series of 5 Nigerian Disco and Boogie 12″s and there’ll be an amazingly deep Afro Funk album by the Martin Brothers coming out in a couple of months. Once these 6 releases are on the market we’ll see what the numbers look like and if this seems like a sustainable venture there might be more or maybe I’ll decide to spend more time surfing the beaches and hiking the cloud forests of Central America.

You must have an absolutely huge collection of music, how did you manage to decide what records you wanted to reissue?

At this time most my entire collection is in a storage facility on Berlin. I decided to not move my records to Costa Rica with me because of the high risk of house robberies, earthquakes (we had a 6.5 a few months ago and a 4-5 every couple of weeks) and mould because of the tropical humidity. Right now I’m selecting my reissues from whatever new stock I have coming in from my friends in Ghana and Nigeria.

How do you process the sheer volume of music that must come into your hands. Do you have a system to make sure every record you receive is listened to, or is it a bit more relaxed than that?

I don’t have much of a system. When I have new records coming in, I always clean them up as best as possible. Then I wait for a good day to listen to them, put aside what goes into the DJ pile and decide what to keep for my own, personal collection. Everything then usually gets stored away in my record room and whenever I feel like listening to a certain record, I go in there and usually emerge an hour or so later with a stack of stuff that more often than not doesn’t include what I initially set out to find… I’m not really a librarian. Right now I actually don’t have too many records at the house because I shipped everything off into storage last year so I basically started again from scratch. It’s going to be interesting once I’m reunited with my main collection.

You seem to be a fan of the aesthetics of African records, at least judging from the time you’ve put into the presentation of the latest 12″s. Would you say that’s true?

Yes, of course. It was important to me to do something special with the packaging, I wanted to put them into company sleeves to give them that typical Disco Maxi Single look but then I also wanted to represent the look of the original record the songs were taken from. I figured the best way to do this would be to add a poster. Nobody puts out records with bonus posters anymore and I just love posters.

I’m a big admirer of the artwork on African records from all musical genres and eras. For years I’ve been planning on doing a coffee table book with my friend Uchenna Ikonne from Comb & Razor, who’s also been facilitating the licensing for most of my releases and some day I’m sure we’re going to do it. You’ll need a strong coffee table because this thing is going to be heavy…

What’s your plans for the future of Voodoo Funk? The last two 12″s came out in a pretty short period of time, can we expect to see this rate maintained?

Oh yeah, we’re going to keep knocking them out one after the other. All 5 should be out before the first snow.

Finally, what’s your most prized possession? I assume it might be a record?

I actually prize my freedom and the joy of living much higher than any object. Records are just pieces of plastic and cardboard. Don’t get me wrong, records are great things as far as things go. They provide a unique thrill when you try to hunt them down and finding a great record that you never knew existed can be quite exhilarating. It feels really good to play them for people and to get a crowd to dance to music they’ve never heard before. I also love to listen to music all by myself and I also can’t deny that it’s nice to have objects around that mean something to me but I can be just as content while sitting down with a book or drinking with a good friend.


Thanx for an interesting interview, 
Patrick Henderson!