afrofunk

Been sittin’ on this one for so long, too long actually. Los Angeles’ soul orchestra Breakestra is soon to release their 2nd full length From Dusk Till Dawn on our favourite groove provider Strut.

I’m a huge fan of Michigan’s Nomo, No.7 on my last.fm after a total of ~110K listens, which means something. I’ve been listening to their new one Ghost Rock for a month or so and it’s simply another amazing album under their belt. I first heard the term Post Fela Afrobeat while reading reviews of their previous album “New Tones” on the net.

Today’s story is about Ottawa’s groovy Souljazz Orchestra. Now we all know Ottawa is the capital of Canada, and Canada’s primary export is multiculturalism. I’m just kidding!. The Turkish education system never teaches you cool stuff like this, I learnt this by myself on the internet.

Montpellier’s Fanga is one of the two Afrobeat bands that’s released a new album recently (The other being Kokolo). Frankly the selling point for me was the involvement of the legendary Fela Kuti sidekick Tony Allen as I haven’t heard about their 2004 debut “Afrokaliptyik“. Thank God for that because this is an essential piece of modern afrobeat.

In this not so new-but one of the most highly acclaimed albums of this summer so far, Jimi plays the sweet surprise factor as always. I don’t know if it’s because of his broad friend circle of Finnish jazz musicians or the fact that he enjoys dressing like Zeki Müren, or simply because he’s a damn good musician with an open mind, he never loses the surprise factor, always open to experimentation and versatile without losing his own jazzy essence.

Our first shows were less sentient, not bad or random but more like recent faves glued together (at least mine were, since mersenne has more musical output experience than me), but upon the 11th show, i can see we’ve matured and although we still have a long way to go we’re starting to grasp the whole integrity thing.

I came across this one while searching for some nice afrobeat pieces to play on the show (and i have to admit that’s mostly because fela kuti songs are neverending stories between 8 to 13 minutes…too long for the show) Anyway i’m very happy to have stumbled on this compilation since every song is a gem of spicy afro-funky taste for all Africa 70’s fans.