New Memories (1993)
10 tracks, 40 minutes
Spotify • iTunes
Here’s an album to get you through a tough Wednesday. It’s all just Henry Makobi and his acoustic guitar – together they make really lovely, jolly-sounding music to put a smile on your face and a warmth in your chest.
A lot of music from East Africa, taking its cues from Congolese rumba, has a strong Latin influence. In many iterations, such as benga, this influence results in hot dance styles with electric guitars, drum kits and horn sections. Henry, though, takes it another direction. He takes those chord progressions and rhythms from Cuban music, but plays them on the guitar using interlocking patterns inspired by the local Luhya lyre, the litungu. He even emulates the rattling tone of the litungu in the simplest way – he just stuck a bunch of coins into his acoustic guitar. Whatever works! Add in little bits from country music and calypso and you have Henry’s very own style that he called sutuki.
His music is uplifting in the way that it is somehow both perky and gentle at the same time, and there’s something really sweet in the simplicities of his melodies and lyrics (especially the wording of the song ‘Take Me Home and Kiss Me There’). It puts me right into the mindset of a hot summers day, playing in a park or maybe relaxing under a palm tree; it's a guaranteed cheerer-upperer.
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