Friday, January 19, 2007

African psychedelia and heavy metal

I wrote here once that as a teenager (an eccentric one, let me tell you that) I dreamed of a new music genre: African garage rock and rock'n'roll. I wrote my own hypothetical reviews of garage punk bands coming out of Nigeria and Senegal. A year ago, I found a song that fits my scheme: Vum Vum's "Muzangola". I wrote about it here.

Now I've been listening to a collection of Nigerian funk from the seventies. It's great stuff throughout, but the most interesting thing is that there are two pieces that also fit my dream about the new genre: Tunji Oleyana and the Blenders's "Ifa" is a moody piece of weird psychedelia and Ofo The Black Company's "Allah Wakbarr" (sounds like a religious piece) is quite heavy and rollicking rock'n'roll tune, almost without any African elements. The guy - whoever he is - plays his electric guitar like Jimi Hendrix on speed.

Here's a review of the album. It says pretty much the same thing about Ofo The Black Company.

It would be interesting, though, to hear real garage punk bands from Africa. There must've been at least some in countries like South Africa and Rhodesia. But I don't think they had any African influence.

2 comments:

;ore;ei;imp said...

http://www.garagehangover.com/?q=Gonks

;ore;ei;imp said...

V.A. - African Scream Contest - Raw & Psychedelic Afro Sounds From Benin & Togo 70s (2008)

http://lysergia.blogspot.com/2008/07/va-african-scream-contest-raw.html