• Music

    Various Artists – Ecuatoriana – El Universo Paralelo de Polibio Mayorga 1969​-​1981 (Analog Africa No​.​37)

    Analog Africa, one of my favorite reissue labels, is going well above its mission of reissuing African treasures and is now delving deep into the music mines of South America – in this case, Ecuador.  Polibio Mayorga was a hit-writing machine during the early days of Ecuadorian rock, but he also had an interest in sci-fi, weirdly lounge-influenced music and his native cumbia.  From the release’s Bandcamp site: “In the decades after the second world war, outer space was on everyone’s mind and the ‘space race’ of the 1950s and 60s not only produced groundbreaking efforts to launch artificial satellites,…

  • Music

    Ernesto Dj​é​djé – Roi Du Ziglibithy (Limited Dance Edition Nr. 15)

    Analog Africa released a disc of music from Ivory Coast legend Ernesto Dj​é​djé recently, and it was rather eye-opening to see that even in a place as far away as Côte d’Ivoire, they had the same problems of so-called foreign influence getting in the way of local music, with Ernesto complaining about the Congolization of the local music scene.  Dj​é​djé more than remedied that situation with this burner of an album.

  • Music

    Various Artists – Legends Of Benin: Afro Funk, Cavacha, Agbadja, Afro​-​Beat

    Benin (formerly Dahomey) has produced so much good music, yet it’s suffered from a lack of availability in the West, meaning that only the most expert crate-diggers or West African music specialists were able to enjoy these artists. Thankfully, Analog Africa has been doing their best to make sure this music gets documented, digitized, and publicized around the world.  Some of the composers included on this disc are Gnonnas Pedro et Ses Dadjes, Antoine Dougbé, El Rego et Ses Commandos and Honoré Avolonto.  These were the cream of the crop of Beninois balladeers during the 1960s and 1970s.  The comp…

  • Music

    Various Artists – Cameroon Garage Funk

    Analog Africa produces yet another astounding compilation.  Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait a while for this one, because the release date is scheduled for September 3, 2021.  Still, considering the high quality of pretty much everything this label has produced, I’m expecting some fine music. Over on the Bandcamp release page, a question that had been in mind for a while has been answered.  How could Cameroon, with a rich musical history, be so poorly represented?  As it turns out, there was no infrastructure so speak of, so promotion outside the country would have been impossible in those days. From…