Nigeria Soul Fever - Compilation

Sometimes the stars seem to align and you find your interests slotting right into the Zeitgeist. That's the time I find myself in right now and it's bloomin' great! 

As an enthusiast for Nigerian music from the '60s and '70s and a collector of original Nigerian highlife records, the latest craze for everything Afrobeat, Fela Kuti and African has given me plenty to get my teeth stuck into. Whether it's the ever growing Felabration, the annual celebration in honour of Fela Kuti on the 7th of October, or the gigs happening across Europe by some of Nigeria's greatest musicians including Dele Sosimi, Tony Allen and Orlando Julius, not to mention the numerous club nights blasting some killer grooves from this musically rich part of the world, Nigerian, African and so-called "World Music" (what a horrible phrase) is booming in popularity.

Truly cementing Nigerian music as part of the current Zeitgeist was The Guardian and Boiler Room's joint series of videos and articles all about the scene. Nowadays there's seemingly always something or someone celebrating Nigerian music and it's been a bit of a treat for me personally. Something especially exciting has been the sheer amount of reissued CDs and vinyl albums of some of the best, and previously horribly rare, music from the country. I've already written a post about one such release, the Keni Okulolo reissue on Hot Casa Records, and another about the Freedom Sounds compilation on Soul Jazz Records. 

Well, Soul Jazz just keep wanting to spoil me for some reason as they've done it again with Nigeria Soul Fever, described as a compilation of West African Disco Mayhem! As a fan of disco and funk in general, the combination of everything I love from West African music - the infectious percussion, chorus vocals, the sunny guitar playing - with classic funk and disco grooves is something pretty irresistible to me. My knowledge of Nigerian disco had been pretty much limited to William Onyeabor or the occasional funky Afrobeat or Soukous tune from the likes of Joe Mensah or Ebo Taylor. 

Nigeria Soul Fever is a fantastic introduction to the vibrant and varied disco scene from the late 1970s/early 1980s in Nigeria. Spread across 3LP (or a 2xCD), the package is typically polished with liner notes and pictures giving a taste of the time and track lists giving details of each track. 

Joni Haastrup is the star of the show with 4 tracks in the compilation, each one a perfect example of classic funk grooves with the addition of killer Nigerian horn arrangements, vocals and clunking percussion. They're all absolute bangers, from the dance-floor filler Do The Funkro, to the fuzzy guitar of Greetings and the sultry opener to the compilation, Free My People, that sounds like a funky disco banger that could easily have been a club hit in 1980s New York. 

Many of the tracks strongly show their influences but my favourites keep that Nigerian quality. Angela Starr's track, Disco Dancing, is a great example. It's a chilled out boogie track and is clearly influenced by b-boy tracks such as (Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew by The Rock Steady Crew, which came out three years previously in 1983 in New York. It's got the b-boy effects and bass and the vocal delivery style but with some Nigerian style percussion in parts and Starr's honeyed vocals making it a tune to hum all night long. 

Christy Essien's You Can't Change a Man is also heavily influenced by New York disco and has a fantastic bass line and a buzzing guitar riff throughout. Afrikana Disco by Akin Richards & The Executives probably has some of the best Nigerian flavour; with highlife type instrument arrangements, traditional instruments and that unmistakable percussion. 

"Boogie boogie boogie down, Afro disco all around!"     

One of the things I particularly like about this compilation from Soul Jazz is how it treats the artists as funk and disco musicians before Nigerian musicians. I find that with many compilations of African music in particular, but also other "world musics", the music on the compilation can often be only linked by the fact that it has come from Nigeria or Africa. Imagine creating a compilation of music from Britain, from Germany, from America, or, if we're honest, from any "white country". No such compilation could do justice to the diverse music scenes in these countries so why can we get away with vague compilations of music from Nigeria? I understand that these can act as an introduction to many to the music of a nation, but a little curation and direction in the content of a compilation, like we have here, makes those featured musicians into musicians to sit alongside James Brown or Nile Rogers rather than a simple foreign curio. 

This compilation from Soul Jazz is a fascinating insight into the funk and soul scene emanating from Nigeria in the '70s and '80s and a true testament to the skill of these musicians is that these tunes are in demand and able to fill a dance-floor 30 years after they were made. Long live the Nigerian Zeitgeist! 

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Compilation

Nigeria Soul Fever

Soul Jazz Records

Triple Vinyl LP or 2xCD out: NOW! at Sounds of the Universe 

Nigeria Freedom Sounds! - Compilation

As someone who now finds the need to vent their enthusiasm for music through a blog on top of the trawling through Youtube playlists, the buying of music in numerous forms, going to live gigs, DJ sets, reading interviews with artists, boring anyone who'll listen to me by taking about such musical topics as the demise of the flute in popular music and buying into all that paraphernalia that go along with following a band; T-shirts, tote bags and I even own fax papers from 1983 sent between a venue in Amsterdam and the manager of the legendary musician Fela Kuti which list things as mundane as Fela wanting 15 litres of coca-cola, 6 garbage cans and for the venue to be heated at 20 degrees for his arrival. As that guy, it might be surprising to know that I have only been interested in music since my late teens and early twenties. This is usually the time when people's musical tastes "mature", as horrible as that phrase is, but for me, there was nothing to mature. I was late to the party and the world of music opened to me as others were beginning to send their guilty pleasures from their CD collections to the charity shop. Somehow I'd avoided all the pop that my friends were raving about and all those classic songs by the likes of ABBA, Wham!, Michael Jackson and beyond. I just wasn't interested. 

I think my first true interest in popular music came through seeing the video for Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen for the first time on Youtube. Rather than Queen, it was Youtube that I was checking out amid warnings from school that the new video website might be a dangerous site full of unsuitable content and viruses. I somehow ended up watching the Queen video and I was immediately drawn in by its theatricality and just how bonkers both the video and song are, not to mention the hair. They hooked me in and I moved out from there, discovering more classic songs for the first time.

The reason I'm waxing so lyrically about my "discovery" of music is because I'm interested in the way that people do those first steps and their continued forays into music. Most start off like me, although perhaps a little earlier and with more help from their parents. They get to learn the classics of Motown, pop, rock, rock 'n roll etc. You then listen to your friends, the radio and whatever else is happening around you and find that stuff that sounds a bit like your favourite tune from the '60s, '70s, '80s or whatever, is coming out now, sounding a little different perhaps but happening now. That's exciting. You can be the one who goes out and queues for the album on release day, you can actually see the band live in some sweaty, dank club, you can create the stories your Mum tells you about when she saw Rod Stewart live in the '70s, but about your band. 

This band for me was The Horrors and I did all of those things; getting their album Skying (still probably my favourite album) on the day of its release and going to see them live as my first gig (definitely my favourite gig). From there you discover the band's influences, how they take from a host of psychedelic bands from the '60s and '70s; The 13th Floor Elevators, early Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground. 

Then something comes along from an unlikely place which makes you start all over again. For me, this unlikely source was Mr Elijah Wood or as I know him, Frodo Baggins. Elijah Wood changed my life enough through The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but it's this video that opened the next door in my musical journey:

It's a video of Elijah Wood at the American record store, Amoeba, chatting about the records he's bought on his visit. Among them he picks out the eponymous debut album by Gal Costa from 1969. He describes her as "super psychedelic" and as a part of the "Tropicalia Movement in Brazil". My interest in psychedelic rock, that started with The Horrors had grown into an obsession with the genre so I just had to check out the "super psychedelic" Gal Costa, and the Tropicalia Movement sounded pretty cool too. I discovered Gal's incredible debut album and discography and the Tropicalia Movement of the late '60s and '70s in Brasil - a group of musicians who made psychedelic music as a resistance to the oppressive government regime. This lead me to more bands and musicians from the movement; Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Secos & Molhados. I realised that up until then, my musical tastes were white men from Britain and America, often wearing paisley shirts or denim jackets. My musical discovery started again, and I discovered the big names in Brazilian music like I had in pop and rock and Motown, before delving into the more obscure gems. Through the music of artists like Lula Cortes, Arthur Verocai, Jorge Ben and Baden Powell I learnt not just about the music of Brazil, but also about Brazil itself; its people, history and its culture, all of which I had previously no knowledge nor interest in. 

   

This lead me to want to hear more, discover what else could excite me and what I could learn from. In my musical travels I've been to Turkey through the music of Erkin Koray, Ajda Pekkan, Ersen and Baris Manco. To Italy with Ennio Morricone, Piero Umiliani and Nico Fidenco. To France with Serge Gainsbourg, Alain Goraguer, France Gal, Jean-Pierre Massiera and Brigitte Bardot and all aboard Youtube, Soundcloud and Spotify airlines.  

That's what music does best. It takes you places you may never have even thought about before. It makes you interested in all sorts of times in history, countries, communities and cultures. More so than any other, my fascination with Nigeria was first sparked by its music. Introduced, as so many are by the music of Fela Kuti, I discovered Nigeria's other genres and artists and I have since got quite a large collection of original LPs from Nigeria, mainly from the 1970s. The music has lead me to go to gigs of Nigerian and other West African music, attend exhibitions on Nigerian art and to read books or go to talks on its history and its future. 

So imagine my joy when one of my favourite labels, Soul Jazz Records, announce the release of a compilation of popular music from post independence Nigeria. I popped down to the excellent Sounds of the Universe store in Soho, London, which is linked with Soul Jazz, and bought it on release day. 

Nigeria Freedom Sounds! collects together 24 songs across two LPs, documenting popular music between 1960, the year Nigeria gained independence from Britain, and 1963. It's the kind of music that you can imagine a packed dance hall in Lagos dancing to - a mix of jazz type horns, Afro-Cuban style dance tunes and sunny guitar. It's music to make you shake your shoulders to and it all has a distinctive Nigerian and African feeling from infectious, rattling percussion. 

The compilation covers a variety of artists and styles and is great at painting a picture of Nigeria at the time. The gatefold album sleeve and the two inner sleeves come covered in extensive notes detailing the history of colonialism in Nigeria, Independence and a little on post independence Nigeria. There is also a section dedicated to the evolution of music in Nigeria; from the initial first recordings in the 1920s to an explanation of the different styles in the compilation, which I was thankful for as apart from Highlife, I wasn't really sure of the characteristics of each genre. There's also details on each artist and their songs. It really is the full package and leaves very few questions due to its thorough explanation of the period. There are also some fantastic pictures of adverts from the time, which are both incredibly beautiful and often fun artistically, yet these optimistic and celebratory images are tinged with sadness at the knowledge of the horrific Biafran war to come and of Boko Haram currently terrorising the people of Nigeria. Below's a track from the compilation by Chris Ajilo and his Cubanos, one of the only tracks from the compilation on Youtube:

Compilations, when done well, are the perfect way into the history and culture of a country and Nigeria Freedom Sounds! is a perfect starting place to become enthusiastic and informed by this fascinating nation and its people. 

Compilation

Nigeria Freedom Sounds! 

Soul Jazz Records

Double Vinyl LP out: NOW! at Sounds of the Universe