Afro-Blues. Orlando Julius and the Afro Sounders. 1973. Phillips.

 Two years prior to the Biafran surrender that ended the Nigerian Civil War, a report entitled “Industrial Survey Nigeria 1968” disclosed the sobering statistic that 70% of the nation’s 625 largest manufacturing businesses were owned by non-Nigerians. In addition, less than 6% of Nigerians controlled fixed foreign assets, while Britain controlled 56% and the US 20%. In an effort to take back their economy the west African country issued the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree and took other assorted measures that became known as “Indigenization” and “Nigerianization.” A year later, at Ginger Baker’s recently constructed Batakota Studios in Lagos, Orlando Julius and an assortment of musicians recorded the material that would become the legendary LP Orlando Julius and the Afro Sounders. Julius was already well known in Nigeria first as a saxophonist on the colonialist-friendly Highlife scene, then, along with the great Fela Kuti, as reinvented Afrobeat master. Anthemic, horn driven, and polyrhythmic unto perfection, Afro-Blues is a heralding funk instrumental that, like Bitches Brew and Voodoo Chile, seizes, redefines, and ultimately transcends Black Power discourse through artistic dynamism and clarity. The song is broad and expansive, arranged to draw the mass audience it so rightly deserves, and it’s structured around key pop elements like solos—tenor sax, trumpet, and organ—and verse that only heighten the sophisticated musicianship of the august group into stratospheric pop greatness. It’s a sexy, aggressively personal declarative statement about soul-based indentity that, at a time when Nigeria was struggling to gain its footing globally, also functions on a national scale. From the 2010 Soundways release Nigeria Afrobeat Special: The New Explosive Sound In 1970s Nigeria

June 15 021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

City Slang. Sonic’s Rendezvous Band. 1978. Orchidé.

  Near the start of Sonic’s Rendezvous Band—The One That Got Away, Ken Shimamoto’s authoritative online account from 2002     of that band’s searing yet short lived history, which can be found with a Google search, you come across an anecdote told by SRB bassist Gary Rasmussen about a backstage encounter between Fred Sonic Smith and Eric Clapton, following a Cream show at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, which the MC5 opened. What is remarkable about the recollection of this exchange isn’t so much what it’s about—the absence of a Cream rhythm guitarist—as its setting. Shimamoto, a practicing guitarist with stage and studio experience, whose influences span Hendrix to Pete Cosey, arranges his interviews with band members Rasmussen and Scott Morgan—along with Radio Birdman founder Deniz Tek, MC-5’s Wayne Kramer, Michael Davis, and Dennis Thompson, Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton, and Detroit bassist Ron Cooke—along traditional narrative/oral history structures, and features a recu...
Read more

Ça Plane Pour Moi. Plastic Bertrand. 1978. Sire.

  According to internet data, the Lollapalooza tour, 1995, reached Dallas, Texas, on August 10, a Thursday. Five of us rode in one car that I drove from Fort Worth to the Starplex Amphitheater; my fellow passengers were Jo, Pat, Trina, and that woman who lived in Azle, whose name I no longer remember, and who used to come into the record store often, along with her boyfriend. Her musical tastes tended toward the abrasive, commercial metal so popular with the white suburban kids of privilege: Nine Inch Nails, Iron Maiden, Alice In Chains. Her personal style was not that of a typical metal fan, more like Ally Sheedy after her character’s disastrous Breakfast Club makeover. I admired her bright and casual style, her propensity to good humor and cheer, and for not succumbing to conformity and becoming a metal clone like so many of our peers. She rolled joints during the entire car trip to Lollapalooza with the hurried precision of an efficient professional working against a deadline, a...
Read more

Circles. The Fleur de Lys. Immediate. 1966.

Is there any more durable a symbol of middle class consumer excess than an outdoor neighborhood shopping mall with manicured grounds and vigilantly maintained water fountains, and a semi-detached General Cinema twin screen, first run movie theater, featuring nationwide major distribution titles? My childhood enchantment with Seminary South Cinemas I & II began in an edifice erected as an environmental correlative to the late century American personality; non-descript and functional. The lobby, a vast and empty square room with two glass half walls near the entrance, and beyond that, crimson red upholstered walls, is where the intrigue began. From the ticket dispenser machine, a dull silver contraption that functioned at the ticket seller’s wrist level, elegantly spitting out a stamp sized ticket when one of two buttons on a register was pressed, to the mysterious relationship between the concessionaires and their wide variety of candied snacks and sodas, which inventory never seeme...
Read more