If you check out an earlier post titled Blaxploitation, Afrique, funky tunes, and early 70’s film, I posted up a pretty funky “old analog” song from Fela Kuti, an African.  Boy did I have that wrong, check out his wikipedia page. For about 20 years I’ve been hearing really funky Nigerian tunes mostly from tapes my old man has brought back.

It turns out the Fela Kuti, this hip little artist I thought “I’d discovered” (I mostly liked his songs of some random compilations out there) is actually sort of a big deal, including his major human rights work.  He’s also not only a lot older than I thought he was, he’s also unfortunately dead having been born in 1938.   I’ve heard a lot of his style music from a band called Groove Collective that I’ve been listening to high school and saw a couple times in college.  In college they were pretty unimpressive but a bunch of their tunes are actually pretty good.

Anyway, a lot of what I mentioned holds true. I just had the era long but a lot of really good music is still coming out of Nigeria. There is still a wave, that’s a lot like the early reggae and the best of the music that came out of Jamaica.

It’s kind of a nice sigh of release. I have always had the spam problem under control until just a couple months ago I somehow made it on some sort of list where started receiving “Dear Mr. Shoumatoff, my name is barrister…” (and you know how the rest goes, if not read about it hear). So it’s nice to see so some good stuff from this country that now has such a bad name, via it’s crap that’s coming out of its Internet cafes.

Click play to start listening. The first song has about a 30 second intro. Be sure to listen to this!

The first song is a style of music they call “Afrique,” in this case from Ghana. The name of the song is based off an old African proverb. It’s a pretty killer style of music that’s a lot like some of the stuff coming out of Congo and other central African countries that actually reminds me a lot of the early reggae that was coming out of Jamaica in the 70′s. So, rest assurred a lot of us missed that boat but if you want to catch another one just as good, check out some of this music… For more info about the artist, google “Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Afrika 70.” You can hear their organs and pianos. These songs, though relatively recent, fit right in with that old 70s mantra and “the analog,” as discussed on other posts (click “the analog” category to the left for more info).

Second song: the old famous hit originally written by the heroin addict (still battling the drug), Gil Scott-Heron from Detroit. Gil has a killer kind of zapped-out voice but most (including me) find the bulk of his tunes to be a little blander than they should probably be. Gil had major problems with heroin use to the point where it basically ruined him, and his music is largely representative of that unfortunately. This version of the song is a smoother, more upbeat, lively, and soulful version sung by the powerful Esther Phillips. The song is really about what heroin can take away from a community. You should really enjoy it, and the words are very powerful.

The reason I mention heroin use so much is the drug is such a reoccurring demon in so many of these artists that it was a real problem. Also, heroin use, which is a real killer, was widespead in the 70′s in particular. It wasn’t uncommon to find 2-3 dead bodies a day in a tenement in New York in 1971 from people who’d OD’d or gotten bad drugs or both.

There are also some real powerful movies about this as well. Check out the 1973 film Serpico with Al Pacino (this movie is unreal), the fairly recent move American Gangster with Russel Crowe and Denzel Washington about the first big black mafia guy, which is also parts of the story of Serpico from a different angle. Or some of the “Blaxploitation” movies from the early 70′s.

The country was in really bad shape back then. Not only was all that late 60′s stuff and the resignatioon of Nixon very very fresh but the cities were plunging into deep corruption and crime and aweful drug use. New York is actually pretty clean these days. Back then you literally couldn’t go into some parts of town or under certain bridges or whatever, for fear of being raped or murdered or whatever. Also, something like 90% of New York’s cops were on the take during this period.

There will inevitably be a “blaxploitation” post or two coming shortly. This is a trend in black music and film from then. In fact, that Esther Phillips song I first discovered of one of the blaxploitation film chonologies. It yielded 90% aweful films but yielded yet another pretty killer a American black music/culture wave that my guess felt probably a lot like rap music was in the 80′s, sort of ambiguous and weird and new and no one knew if it would stick around. This wave, though, either died or perhpas through its progressions parts of it sort of morphed into disco music. This music is also about 90% crap too, but that 10% actually was some killer songs and trends. A popular star out of it, for example, was Isaac Hayes and his soundtrack for Shaft, which was also a “blaxploitation” film about a strong charaismatic super hero ladies man private dick, who was kicking asses in the slums and drug culture of the cities of the US, against the junky crime ridden inner city.

Another film that plays against that is the famous Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro, which is basically about how the slum of the inner city can make someone crazy.

If you want to see another movie about how fucked up inner city corruption and drug use can be, about the deepest dregs of a cop gone bad, check out the film Bad Lieutenant with Harvey Keitel. He plays such a rotten, evil motherfucker in this movie, it is almost sickening. And amazingly powerful. I love Harvey Kietel so I have a feeling there will be a post or two about him too…