VARIOUS ARTISTS - Marvellous Boy – Calypso from West Africa/World is Shaking – Cubanismo from The Congo (Honest Jon's)

Bedecked with retro black and white photography so redolent of the era covered, garnished with first class informative sleeve notes contained in tactile gatefold cardboard sleeves, Honest Jon’s albums - culled from EMI’s extensive Hayes archive of worldwide 78s - are enough to bring out the gotta-collect-‘em-all inner anorak in the best of us, especially when the music therein is as excellent as that on the London is the Place for Me series of calypso music that has achieved such acclaim.

Marvellous Boy – Calypso from West Africa is a more than worthwhile companion to those albums, covering recordings that cover the period from (roughly) the early ‘40s to mid ‘50s when Caribbean influences spread from the Creole (or Krio) artists of Freetown in Sierra Leone to the highlife sound of the other English-speaking West African countries, Ghana and Nigeria. Many of the songs here are consequently English-language, and bear the Calypsonian trait of humorous tales (or serious tales told with wit) told over a loose, playful backing. Bobby Benson and his Combo utilise their ballroom-band past on a playful cover of the Calypsonian classic Taxi Driver (I Don’t Care), all punchy sax, yelping trumpet and don’t-care-what-she-does attitude. Horn sections were crucial to the distinctive highlife-isation of this music, Ghana’s E T Mensah leading the way across the region, and represented here with the languorous and ever so slightly disturbing The Tree and the Monkey. Another big influence was Freetown’s Ebenezer Calendar, who brings his half-Barbadian roots to three tracks lightened by banjo-player Famous Scrubbs, excellent in his own right on Scrubbs Na Marvellous Boy, the S E Rogie-a-like Krio song that lends itself to the title of this consistently engaging collection, as calypso stepped into - and finally, permanently, out of - highlife and other local guitar styles.

The World is Shaking- Cubanismo from the Congo takes us back to the seminal years when Congolese musicians took the jazz and Latin-influenced music of their predecessors, mixed it with a picked - mostly dual, acoustic - guitar that imitated the Cuban son mutano piano style, and dropped likembe thumb piano into the mix plus occasional kazoo and fiddle to produce a dance music with a strong folkloric feel that reflected the nascent cultural confidence of the nation (reflected also by lyrics that were changed from Spanish to Lingala and Kikongo where applicable).

European-style polka piké, plus Latino biguines and rumba rhythms were still extant during this period, but the rudimentary recording standards can’t hide the increasingly sophisticated musicianship as those influences were bent and twisted around local styles, and despite one or two modest selections the biggest surprise listening to these cheerily attractive sounds is how quickly some of the artists here seem to have disappeared from history (perhaps through the advent of electric guitar?).

Boniface Koufoudila is the most traditional and exciting of the relative unknowns, an artist operating at the crossroads of the various styles with songs driven by likembe and fluid, attacking Cubano-Congolese polyrhythm, over which are laid sawing violin and chanted vocals. There’s plenty of sweeter stuff elsewhere, not least the five tracks by the most enduring of the artists captured here. Adikwa Depala went on to record with the-then Zaire’s Loningisa label – home to Franco’s OK Jazz – and Moni, Moni Non Dey, his version of El Manisero (Peanut Vendor), is typical of the album, containing early bubbles of the well-spring of interlocking guitar rhythms out of which a revolutionary musical flood was about to burst. History in the making.

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine

KASAI ALLSTARS - In the 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of his Enemy by Magic (Crammed Discs)

The third in the Crammed Discs series of mesmeric traditional trance rhythms and urban do-it-yourself din showcases a cong(o)lomeration of artists that assemble under the name Kasai Allstars, a shifting line-up of twenty-five artists (including six different lead vocalists) from a number of disparate ethnic Congolese groups. “Play it loud” is the exhortation on the album cover, which gives rise to the suspicion that the only way this music can truly appeal is by battering down the listener's defences, creating a thunderous wall-of sound by closing off all other sensory avenues. This might well have been a requirement for the somewhat repetitive, atonal attack of Konono No 1 (subject of the first Congotronics album), but despite the use of similar sonic components – buzzy, distorted likembe thumb pianos, chiming guitars, improvised percussion and chanted vocals, all delivered through ageing amplifiers – with the Allstars there's more purpose and melody under the general organised cacophony.
If the turn-it-up instruction works at all, it's in the way it reveals a surprisingly sophisticated, multi-layered approach to the group’s song craft. Each tune starts with the guitar laying down a liquid melody or the likembes beating out a dry, dusty hum, over which a thick mesh of instrumentation and voices builds its insistent, frenzied momentum, with various dissonant sounds and wild vocal declamations drifting in and out of focus, before coalescing into a trance-like rhythm which resolves itself in a just-short-of-shambolic way half a dozen or so minutes later. It's a gorgeous, eerily sumptuous sound, and when they slow the pace on the charming, airy title track or enhance their melodic side with rich, layered vocals on the album's exultant highpoint Analengo, the results are irresistibly compelling. Visa restrictions recently prevented the Kasai Allstars from bringing this magnetic sound to Europe, a massive loss for both them and audiences already seduced by the unique Congotronics sound. Judging by In the 7th Moon, there was more seduction to come, so let's hope that the appropriate authorities extract the requisite digits from over-stuffed orifices soon because this is a sound that cries out to be witnessed in the flesh.

SARA McGUINNESS

Midway through my conversation with Sara McGuinness we’re interrupted by a couple who have ventured over to express their thanks for her help in a recent project of theirs.
"It was an exercise in communication through music with a bunch of refugees from Yemen, Afghanistan, and various parts of Africa", Sara explains when the clearly very grateful couple have departed, "15- and 16-year olds who have only been in the UK about six months. We had this lad from the Ivory Coast, he hadn't said two words since he got here, but by the end we had him up singing a whole Craig David song."
When she’s not persuading hapless new arrivals to imitate doe-eyed beigebeat crooners, Sara McGuinness can be found employing her wide-ranging talents as sound engineer, producer, songwriter, keyboardist, band manager, teacher (knowledge-spreading trips to Cuba and Mali swiftly followed our interview) and all-round feisty fixture on the UK Latin and Congolese scenes, which she stumbled into nearly twenty years ago. “I did my degree in engineering, which led to a friend asking if I could have a go at doing the sound for his soul band. Somehow I ended up as their keyboard player, and started playing in various soul and reggae bands. I found that a lot of the music I listened to had Latin styles in it, so I took lessons in Cuban and Latin piano. That was about eighteen years ago, and I was really lucky to meet and work with people like the Afro-Cuban All Stars, Sierra Maestra and my mentor [the late Paris-based Cuban piano player] Alfredo Rodriguez."
Eventually McGuinness formed El Equipo with ex-pat Cuban Jimmy Martinez and ace Colombian timbalero Roberto Pla, as well as a number of British-born players. They released an album on their own Malecon label in 2001, and have since been consolidating their place on the live circuit. But it's getting progressively harder for bands to make a living this way, according to Sara: "The live scene has changed quite a lot over the years; it's tougher to get Arts Council touring grants. Salsa dance seems to have contributed to the drop in demand for live music. Only Europeans could take music and dance and separate them”, she jokes, “but many people do only want to dance to the tracks they've already learnt to dance to. So, a lot of musicians feel quite negative about it, but I can see the good side because finally people are starting ask about hearing the music played by a live band."
Sara’s latest project is Latin-Congolese band Grupo Lokito, which she formed two years ago with Kinshasa-born singer Jose Hendrix Ndelo. “I met Jose at a course at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and we started writing songs together. The Congolese scene in the UK is not entirely underground, but it is a long stronger amongst Africans than locals these days. I play sebene [the guitar-led gear change that ratchets mid-tempo Congolese rumbas up into hip-shaking dance tunes] with these guys for hours and it’s great, all cheesy chords, lovely marimba lines and stabs of horn, with guys in their designer gear and bling dancing away. It’s a scene that’s dominated by Africans of all nationalities, but everybody who is part of it welcomes me as part of the family; I’m sure they asked who that funny white woman was when I first started playing, but now when they see me on the bus or tube its ‘ah, there’s Sara keyboardy’!”
The natural link between Cuban and Congolese styles is well-documented of course, but Grupo Lokito have their own, unique Anglo-Afro-Cuban approach to the music; there’s a charming sweetness to their sound, one that's infused with El Lokito’s international take on Latin music but which will readily appeal to admirers of fans of acoustic rumba veterans Kékélé and Kanda Bongo Man alike. With a shifting line-up around core members Ndelo on vocals, McGuinness on keyboards, guitarists Burkina Faso and Limousine (“fantastic musicians, with a great groove”, enthuses McGuinness) and drummer Eugene Makuta, Grupo Lokito can be found rocking the regulars at their Sunday night (make that Monday morning: they rarely start before midnight) residency in Canning Town, East London, as well as branching out into less niche venues.
"We are working hard for more exposure, which we are getting more and more from the World Music scene, getting gigs via people like Jamie Renton and his Chilli Fried night in Clerkenwell. But some people seem to value musicians more if they come from abroad,” she claims, “there’s a bit of an authenticity problem, people booking gigs want to know if the musicians are based in Africa. I say the bands are made up of musicians who have chosen to make London their home, why not give them a chance here? And when they know that I’m a white English woman, that’s even more of a problem. Maybe I should stress my Irish-American-Lithuanian-Jewish background more!”

Myspace site for Grupo Lokito

This feature first appeared in fRoots magazine.

WENDO KOLOSOY - On The Rumba River (Marabi)

After more than 60 years of making music, octogenarian Congolese singer and guitarist Antoine “Wendo” Kolosoy is still going strong, and this half-retrospective/half-soundtrack is a welcome primer on his remarkable career.

The album is named after the 2004 film made about the ex-boxer who became one of Congo’s early recording stars with the 1948 rumba classic Marie-Louise, the song on which many claim guitarist Henri Bowane introduced the sebene, the point at which slow to mid-tempo soukous numbers are ratcheted up into speedy dance tunes. A delightfully fluid 1993 acoustic version of that classic track opens proceedings, and the collection then weaves its seductive way between live recordings from the film and highlights of Wendo’s resolutely old-school Congolese rumba albums of the past.

Wendo frequently takes a back seat on the live numbers as various cohorts and colleagues work their way through a series of rudimentary praise songs, likembe (thumb piano)-led improvisations and horn-led rumbas. But thankfully his frail but still affecting voice is to the fore on the best of the 2004 batch, and although Kolosoy has never been the greatest of African singers — lacking the sweetness of many rumba singers or the power and poise of the more declamatory West Africans — there’s a delicate woody timbre to his singing that suits the earthy yet beguiling nature of the music.

The older tracks swing blissfully around that voice, an uplifting marriage of horns, acoustic guitar and percussion that bring a welcome levity to the album as a whole. All we really need now is a truly definitive collection of the great man’s work.

This review first appeared on www.flyglobalmusic.com