194: Ave Africa: The Complete Recordings 1973-1976, by Sunburst

Sunburst (Tanzania/Zambia)
Ave Africa: The Complete Recordings 1973-1976 (2016)
29 tracks, 108 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I enjoyed this album when I reviewed it upon release (or rather, reissue), but I don’t think I realised just how much I enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve cracked it out on the regular, as it fits so many atmospheres. I think what’s so cool about Sunburst is that the sounds reflect the African-soaked Latin styles popular all around the Central and East African region at the time (including Congolese soukous, Zambian kalindula and Kenyan benga), but there is much more influence from American styles than in any of these others. So you have all of the things that make 70s African music great – the jangly, interlocking guitars, the conga-heavy rhythms – but over the top of it there’s just layers of funk, soul and surprisingly heavy rock too.

This collection is everything the band ever recorded – just 29 cuts, including their only album, Ave Africa, a few radio sessions and some otherwise unreleased recordings. Not that much, then, and in fact, really, all you really need here is the first disc, which holds the entirety of the proper album; the second disc of miscellanea is interesting, but their album is the real fire. It’s so infectious, so dancy and so cool, complex enough to find new, exciting elements with every repeat listen, but simple enough for its execution to feel completely free and natural.

When you consider how accomplished their only release is, it’s kind of amazing that their entire life as a band only lasted four years. It’s sad that they only made one official release in this time, but they certainly made the most of it. If you’re only going to release one album in your career, why not make it a perfect one? Sunburst did, and now we get to enjoy it for the ages. Dance!

148: Chibite, by Hukwe Zawose

Hukwe Zawose (Tanzania)
Chibite (1996)
10 tracks, 66 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Dr Hukwe Zawose was a master musician of the Wagogo people of central Tanzania. Chibite was recorded near the beginning of Hukwe’s short but bright international career. As well as an amazing and powerful cover (the art direction of Real World Records in those first decade-and-a-bit was absolutely stunning), the music is likewise, especially given that the performance is almost entirely solo and built up through overdubs.

On this record, he shows just how he attained that role of patriarch: he was a master of such a wide range of his people’s music. He is most well-known for his performances on the ilimba thumb-piano, but here he also shows his equal prowess on the filimbi flute and izeze fiddles. And then there’s his voice – or should that be voices? Depending on the setting, Hukwe’s voice takes on so many forms. It could be crystal clear and forthright; at other times it could be so high-pitched and loud that it was like a whistle; then again, he sounds harsh and growling, reminiscent of Sámi joik or Siberian throat-singers.

There is something really special about this music that I cannot quite describe. It sounds like…what? A deep, placid lake, perhaps, or the movements of the universe, or a gentle breeze. I’m not even sure what I mean, but I think there are three things that all work together to give the music that effect. Let’s see:

• A lot of it comes down to how the music is tuned – again, a difficult thing to describe with words, but the pentatonic scales that this music works within seem slightly further away from each other than the equal tempered music we are used to hearing in modern music. Each new note comes as a slight surprise to the unconscious area of the brain, which leads to a pleasant tingle in the back of the skull throughout.
• In a related note is the harmonies that are created by the different instruments playing together and when he sings together with his nephew Charles, the only other musician on the album. I think this is actually best heard on a track from Hukwe and Charles’ later album Mkuki Wa Rocho called ‘Mkatale Kulonga’ (you can hear a lengthy clip of the track on the BBC’s website). The harmonies are super open – all perfect fifths and fourths, and loads of directly parallel movement. As you can hear in that track, they are so exactly perfect in their movement across quite complicated speech-rhythms that it sounds uncanny, like one person singing with two voices.
• And then there’s the buzz. I’ve talked about buzz before, most recently regarding the gyil and it’s used in the same way here. Many of Hukwe’s ilimba are absolutely covered in rattles on both the instrument’s lamellas and the body itself, meaning that when they are played, the complicated, interlocking lines are underpinned with an almighty buzz which highlights every one of every note’s fundamental frequencies. It would be cacophonous if it weren’t for that special tuning mentioned above. Instead it becomes intoxicating and rapturous. Add in the jingling of the nguga ankle bells and the harsh tones of the izeze and Hukwe’s voice and it is like a sound bath, a whole overbearing atmosphere of ecstatic noise.

Those are a lot of words attempting and failing to describe the indescribable. It’s no wonder why, after Hukwe Zawose first performed in the UK, he was invited back again and again until his death at 65 in 2003. His music was something incredibly special and, together with Charles Zawose who died just one year later, remains sorely missed.

029: Vol. 4: Liwalo Na Liwe, by Jagwa Music

Jagwa Music (Tanzania)
Vol. 4: Liwalo Na Liwe (2000)
6 tracks, 59 minutes
Awesome Tapes From Africa · YouTube

This is my first feature on here of an album sourced from an online blog. This one in particular is from one of the most well-known and best of them, Awesome Tapes From Africa. The guy who runs it, Brian Shimkovitz, is understandably putting much more time and effort into the record label of the same name nowadays, but the website is an amazing repository of music from all over the continent, almost all of it stuff you would never find outside of its home region. (I actually interviewed Brian for an article in Songlines Magazine last year, check it out on my other blog).

Jagwa Music play mchiriku, a style from Dar-es-Salam. It’s a super-fast clash of tinny, overdriven Casio keyboards and traditional drumming. The stylistic origins lie in Zanzibari taarab and Congolese rumba, maybe with hints of funk and reggae, but those are only particularly noticeable now and then – otherwise it is just unrelentingly frenetic, major-keyed, looping madness. Yep, it’s my love of ostinatos again: one tiny phrase on the keyboards repeated over and over and over for ages. Play this late at night, in a sweaty club and you could dance yourself into a purely natural ecstasy with this stuff. In a typical act of injustice, mchiriku is banned in its city of origin…not that it stops it from being popular of course; that sort of stuff never does.

As you would expect from an album sourced from Awesome Tapes from Africa, this is a locally-produced cassette, volume four of over a dozen. It’s not the greatest sound quality – it’s probably a copy of a copy of a copy and so on – so it’s kinda wavy and distorted now and again, but that all works with the DIY aesthetic. ATFA puts it brilliantly: ‘In its own way, this whole tape feels punk to me.’ The group made a worldwide release on Crammed Discs in 2012, Bongo Hotheads, but it just doesn’t have that rawness. The tracks are shorter, there’s less distortion, it’s not quite as fast…it just feels too clean. Better to stick to the tapes. Liwalo Na Liwe is obviously the one I’d recommend, and if you’re hooked, ATFA also has Vol. 5: Tumechoka Hoi to feast your ears on. Enjoy!