Better than Paganini

April 5, 2010 6:11 AM

Condomise, sings Babsi! Babsi, born 1933, playing the song Mabelete (Bitches) on the "Fenjoro" which he built from a plastic container, wood and strings from a handbrake cable of a car: it normally has 4 strings like the violin, but one broke.
posted by flapjax at midnite (10 comments total)

Cool axe, good tunes.
Thanks.
posted by Jode at 6:54 AM on April 5, 2010

Wow, neat.
posted by Forktine at 7:11 AM on April 5, 2010

People will make music no matter what. Even if they only have scrap to make it with.

Great stuff. Thanks.
posted by ardgedee at 8:01 AM on April 5, 2010

This is too cool. I love finding homemade instruments being played.
posted by parmanparman at 8:43 AM on April 5, 2010

I'm hoping Kutiman (or someone like him) makes a follow-up to Thru-You with musicians from more diverse locations. It's awesome what he did with traditional western instruments and people on their webcams or whatnot, but there is so much more out there, waiting to be discovered by the world at large.

What I'm saying is not everyone is lucky enough to hang out with flapjax at midnight online, and I feel sorry for them.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:10 AM on April 5, 2010

This shows that when you love something only takes ingenuity.
posted by datta at 10:01 AM on April 5, 2010

I guess I wouldn't be the first guy to notice that South African music and zydeco have some serious similarities going on. But god damn, you can hear an awful lot of Canray Fontenot in this guy. Something about the shape of the melody he's singing, and the real heavy sort of foot-dragging syncopation on the fiddle playing, and I don't even know what else. This is completely fantastic, thanks.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:02 AM on April 5, 2010 [1 favorite]

Here's another one of the guy, this time on guitar, and check out that (self-taught, I'm guessing) left hand technique!
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:11 AM on April 5, 2010

Newsflash! The excellent Bokete7 YT channel has JUST added another from Babsi. Check it out!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:59 PM on April 5, 2010

-pipedream- someone needs to do Alan Lomax field recordings and have them sell records so that these people can get paid at least a bit of how many youtube views these videos get /pipedream
posted by tmcw at 5:45 AM on April 6, 2010