349: I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits, by Various Artists

Various Artist (Botswana)
I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits (2018)
11 tracks, 43 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I only actually have two albums of Botswanan music in my music library and they both made it into this blog, which tells me I really should be finding more of it to listen to!

Chances are, if you love music (and I know you do) and you have access to the internet (I’m not sure how you’re reading this otherwise), you’ll have come across this video sometime in the last 10 years:

That’s Ronnie Moipolai, playing a guitar with four strings in an unusual overhand manner, complete with little party tricks, and just absolutely bossing it. That video went viral on the musically-interested side of social media when it came out, and it became the impetus for this album: here’s one brilliant guitarist from Botswana making beautiful music, how many more are there?

Well, certainly more than enough. Inspired by the Youtube videos of Bokete7, David Aglow came to Botswana, tracked down a bunch of the musicians captured in the Youtube series – including Ronnie – and got them into a recording studio in the capital Gabarone. The results are wonderful. All 11 tracks are solo performances of singer-musicians, and this lends a real clarity of style on each one. Their acoustic and electric guitars pick out crystal clear patterns around simple chord sequences, and their voices sing joyous sounding melodies around topics of every shade, making melodies that sometimes sound South African, sometime Zimbabwean and sometimes all their own.

The intricate guitars are the focus, but that’s not all that’s on display here. There’s Annafiki Ditau singing with a Casio keyboard backed by one of those preset drum patterns, and there’s also interesting sounds of traditional fiddle instruments: Oteng Piet plays the segaba, a giant and ancient one-stringed instrument played with a bow in a circular pattern, which creates all sorts of crazy harmonics, and Babsi Barolong plays a homemade fenjoro, a three-stringed violin with a plastic tub as a resonator. No matter what instrument, the songs sound just as sweet.

In a time when it feels like at least half of albums of African music released into Europe are reissues or compilations of music made between the 1960s and 1990s, it’s really refreshing to hear an album like this: still a compilation of sorts, giving an overview of an overlooked musical culture, but with musicians that create the music now and recording them especially for this project. The record supports the music as it is being made, rather than looking back into a ‘glorious past’ and, I would hope, remunerating the musicians in real-time rather than relying on luck to find the makers of long-forgotten recordings. And, most importantly, I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits is just full of really good music from somewhere that doesn’t usually get the attention it deserves.