Deep Excursions into Afro Vol. 1 (LP)

Description

Deep Excursions into Afro Vol. 1 gathers rare 7-inch sides and a white-label 10-inch from Ghana and Nigeria's early-1970s Afro scene, music made when a song could be a dance, a sermon and a statement all at once. Most first appeared on EMI, HMV and Parlophone in Nigeria and have been hard to find for half a century. In the early 1970s, African musicians were artists, storytellers and social commentators in one. Nigeria had come out of civil war in 1970 into an oil boom and a surge of cultural confidence. Musicians absorbed rock, soul and funk from abroad, then turned them toward home: the rhythms of the village, the wisdom of elders, the songs women sang in the evening. The politics of the moment was a politics of national pride. It celebrated the beauty of Africa, its people, languages and dress. It reached back to folklore and proverb to teach young people how to live. And it looked south, where the struggle against apartheid made a free South Africa a cause shared across the continent, as Lagos prepared to host FESTAC '77, the great festival of Black and African arts. At the heart of the compilation is Mike Toma, a singer raised between Kano and Warri who learned to sing in a Catholic choir and laced his music with a hard-won philosophy. On "Till I Make It Better" and "Have Fun" (EMI, 1973–74) he is backed by The Edzayawa, the short-lived Ghanaian band in Lagos who built their sound on the 6/8 rhythms of the Ewe people. With his own group, the Associates, he cut "Charity" and "Learn Your Mistakes" for HMV (EMI sub-label) in 1972. "The concern I have is the message," he says today. "People listen to the message." Amazing Adams brings "Yere Ye Ako" and "Music of the Shrine" from 1974. The Expensives open the set with "Soul Lips" on Parlophone. And Shadow Abraham and Monomono close it with "Cosmic Flight (Part 2)", taken from a rare unreleased white-label 10-inch produced by the Sound Master Odion Iruoje.