Very welcome

Imagine getting your masters degree in Economics AND in Statistics. What are you going to do next? Get your PhD? Go corporate? Or go to Africa and start a record label? Well that's exactly what Benjamin Lebrave did. His label Akwaaba Music (Akwaaba means 'welcome' in the Ashanti language from Ghana) has been on my radar for some time now (I blogged about their Angolan kuduro compilation in 2009). Always on the look out for the best contemporary African music, they digitally release more trado stuff as well as the latest hard core dance music from countries like Ghana, Angola, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo. Let's listen to the good man himself telling more about his label:

Global Bass : interview with Benjamin Lebrave/Akwaaba music from Videomit on Vimeo.

This January Akwaaba Music is celebrating its 2nd birthday! And therefor they're treating us to a special compilation of 50 songs they've released so far: Chop Our Music. You can buy it for just $10 (that's just €7.35 or £6.30) over at Bandcamp! And this is one of my favorite tracks on it:


DJ Djeff - Elegom Bounsa feat. Maskarado (Main Mix). Get it here (YSI). But I really urge you to buy it as 50% of the proceeds goes directly to the artist! Yes yes, Akwaaba Music is a 'fair trade' label :-)

The cherry on top of their birthday cake is a FREE hour long supermix by DJ Zhao (download it by clicking on the arrow on the right). It gives you a good taste of the music that's being released by Akwaaba. I personally really enjoy the latter part where the tempo goes up hehe.

Djzhao - ChopChop Akwaaba Supermix by Akwaaba Music

Kuduro Riddims

Woohoooo, tomorrow morning I'll be off to Manchester for what might well be THE best party of the year. Annie Mac invited the creme de la creme of DJs and artists around to play at the Warehouse project, a temporary club under Piccadilly Station. It's going to be an exhausting night with live performances by Major Lazer and Buraka Som Sistema, and Toddla T, Fakeblood, Skream, Boy 8-Bit and DJ Zinc behind the decks!!!!! More exclamation marks: !!!!!!!!!

I think this is a very exciting time for dance music, with rhythms and musical elements from all over the world seeping into mainstream club music, entering the dance floor and making us shake our booties. Take tomorrow's artists for example. Diplo, the guy who played an important role in bringing baile funk out of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, has now turned to dancehall with his latest project Major Lazer, in collaboration with Switch. With great success. Also Toddla T has a taste for Jamaican riddims (as well as for club house and garage). Buraka Som Sistema brings us kuduro, a genre which originated in Angola and was later transported to Portugal (its colonizer). And apparently kuduro is now huge in France, thanks to the substantial Cape Verde community. I stumbled on a selection of some excellent kuduro tracks at the Masala blog (a great blog BTW, even though I can only read half of it - they're from Montreal, so most is written in French). I pass two of those tracks on over here, both by Angolian artists. It's raw. Very raw. But that's how I like it!

Dog Murras - Midexa. Get it here (YSI).

Noite E Dia - Tiramakossa. Get it here (YSI).

Taken off the compilation Akwaaba Sem Transporte.

the very best since Township Funk

With the new Dutch Dolls website online, and a break from my regular illustration work due to the summer holiday, I finally found the time to start working my picture book. I’m not giving away too much about the plot, but I can tell you it’s about music and various types of animals, especially lots of apes…

At first I thought it would be fun to do a musical blog post with an ape-theme (The Apers, Can Your Monkey Do The Dog, etc.). But as I was doing lots of studies of apes from books, I was taken to tropical places like the jungles of Southeast Asia and the savanna’s of Africa. I decided it might be more interesting to post some tracks based on their geographical origins. I'll do a post on Southeast Asian tunes later, I now present you a few songs from Africa. Enjoy the very best of what has come from this continent since Mujava’s Township Funk!

Hip hop artist K’naan was born in Somalia and has been living in Canada since he was 13. His third album, Troubadour, has just been released and I dig it a lot!! On the album are guest appearances of artists such as Damian Marley and Mos Def, and now Afrikan Boy joins in on a remix of T.I.A..

K’naan- T.I.A. (Remix feat. Afrikan Boy). Get it here (YSI).

Husband and wife Amadou and Mariam are what you could call musical veterans. They’ve been playing together ever since they met at Mali's Bamako Institute for the Young Blind in 1975! Their popularity has been growing steadily over the years, and jumped when Manu Chao worked with them in 2003. Now they seem to have entered the realms of mainstream, with even a Bmore remix of their single Sabali!

Amadou & Mariam - Sabali (Uproot Andy RMX). Get it here (YSI).

Now for The Very Best, that's what the two guys from Radioclit (from London) and Esau Mwamwaya (from Malawi) call themselves. And I must say, they live up to their name. I'm a fan! They are working on their debut album Warm Heart of Africa and Ezra Koenig (singer of the afro-indie-pop band Vampire Weekend) lent his vocals to their first single. We’ll have to be patient, the album isn’t coming out until this fall. But they’ve got a mixtape/bootleg album out, which you can download for FREE from their MySpace!

The Very Best - Warm Heart Of Africa (feat Ezra Koenig). Get it here (YSI).