MetaFilter posts tagged with afropop

The Ultimate Dr. Sir Warrior

ocherdraco — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:37:40 -0800

Forty years ago, just after the Biafran War, Nigeria was home to a cultural boom that paralleled its skyrocketing oil revenues. These heady days not only produced afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, but also, in the genre of music called highlife, created a star known as the Ultimate Dr. Sir Warrior (born Christogonus Ezebuiro Obinna) a member of the nebulous Oriental Brothers International Band. Listen to the music of Dr. Sir Warrior and the Oriental Brothers International Band. Warrior's popularity rose as the boom ended and Nigeria's troubles increased, inspiring devotion which hasn't faded:

once I was in Ghana and in the cab I boarded I was surprised that the music of my favourite musician, Warrior was playing, so surprisingly I inquired on the cab driver, a Ghanaian if he understood the language of the lyrics, the driver who never stopped moving his head for once in response to music said no but he was told that the man is advocating for peace and orderliness to return to the world. The man looked at me again and inquired from me on the availability of the Great Sir Warrior; my response as I danced to the music of warrior was that he had died long ago. The Ghanaian looked at me with a grief and surprise and asked me when, as I drew closer to my point of destination, I began to imagine just how I could miss hearing the music of Warrior with which I had been thrilled, but I had no option than to set-down, so I did, leaving the rest of the passengers to continue to derive pleasure from warrior’s fine tune.

Sir Warrior was a musical prodigy, who started at age 11 in an ensemble of Ese singers who accompanied traditional Igbo drum music. Highlife, the genre he's most associated with, developed in Ghana in the late 1940s, in the years leading up to its independence in 1957. It derives its name from the nightclubs that originally catered to the European upper class but that were beginning, with the end of colonialism, to cater to an African clientele.

'We urgently wanted an indigenous rhythm to replace the fading foreign music of waltz, rumba, etc,' [\[Ghanaian highlife pioneer E. T.] Mensah told the writer and highlife archivist, John Collins.* 'We evolved a music relying on basic African rhythms. A criss-cross African cultural sound, so to speak. No one can really lay claim to its creation. It had always been there, entrenched in West African culture.'

Though it started in Ghana, highlife spread across West Africa through the fifties and sixties. Dr. Sir Warrior's brand of highlife took the guitar-driven music and combined it with traditional Igbo proverbs, making it a distinctly Igbo form.

Joyous juju from the king

madamjujujive — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:45:26 -0800

Me Le Se and Dance Medley - live clips of King Sunny Ade and his African Beats in Seattle last month just before being inducted into the AfroPop Hall of Fame. More clips from the show ... More clips from KEXP: Iyi Ti Odidere Ni Oluwa No'o Jeun Kan / Sijuade Mori Keke Kan Also, hear his 10 minute interview with Jon Kertzer and view a clip from the Afropop Hall of Fame induction ceremony. In a 2005 interview, KSA talks about how as an actual king in his native Nigeria, he had to defy his family and break with tradition to become a musician. So good he persisted - he and his 20+ band of talking drummers, guitarists, vocalists & dancers were early pioneers in bringing Afropop and juju music to the world at large. More stuff: Juju Music - a 4 minute trailer for a documentary, which features KSA among others Ja Fun Mi (not live) - his signature song, which means "Fight for me" Afropop - a great resource for African music nickyskye's awesome post on glimpses of the African Rock n' Roll Years -You really can't go wrong with surfing any of the africa+music tags on Mefi!

The Dark Continent

klangklangston — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:17:06 -0800

No Condition is Permanent. World music, and African music in particular, often falls into two categories: pleasant and inoccuous, or the fetishized other. Even speaking of "African" music is misleading. Senegalese mbalax doesn't sound that much like Camaroonian makossa. And I don't say this as some great authority; I'm still just at the beginning of the learning curve. So come along with me. There's the broad Benne Loxo du Taccu, the sidebar of Mudd Up!, the great (and self-explanitory) African Hiphop, Stern's Music (this link going to a more accessible Thione Seck), Aduna (for Francophones— my middle-school French gets me by, but I'm really there for the music), Du Bruit (more Francophones, with an emphasis on vinyl sharities), and Worldly Disorientation (which covers all sorts of world music, but has some excellent African stuff). Have I missed anything great? Recommend it in the thread. I tend to prefer the psychedelic and dubby stuff more than straight folk styles, but that's me.

Rail Bands and Super Motels

languagehat — Thu, 20 Mar 2003 12:44:42 -0800

A history of Malian pop music. Confused by the interlocking names and associations of the stars of West African music? This lively account by Lisa Denenmark should help (and a follow-up is promised). Via the indispensible Afropop Worldwide.