Victor Uwaifo - Guitar Boy Superstar

PUBLISHED ON TP AFRICA IN AUGUST 2008

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"Many rains ago, at the beginning of summer 1965, on the west African coasts something that had never happened before happened. Something hectic like the obsessive rhythm, powerful and weightless like an of African drum feast, kidnapped all the black souls of north, of east, of south and of West Africa. It rode the wings of the dry winds from the Sahara and on the routes of the air companies that would travel from Africa to Europe. Beautiful hostess with a dark mahogany skin used to enter in the exotic European night clubs with a song on their lips and a new way of dancing. White boys and girls with no heart were all enchanted. They normally are deaf to the rhythms and blinded by the unexpected beauty; unexpected because of their racial prejudices. They asked with a shining light in their eyes what was that new song that they would sing and that new dance that they would dance. From London to Lusaka, throughout Europe from east to west, the curious people would always get the same answer . . . the song is Joromi, and our dance is Akwete!"
(From Sir Victor Uwaifo) web site

Born in 1941 in Benin City, capital of the Edo State in Nigeria, Sir Victor Uwaifo belongs to the Benin or Bini ethnic - nothing to do with the Republic of Benin, ex Dahomey - one of the most ancient Empires and one the most sophisticated cultures of West Africa. The Oba - the king - of the Bini is still today the most powerful and respected traditional individual in Nigeria, even more powerful than the Yoruba Oba.

Victor Uwaifo is one of the biggest names in the Nigerian seventies musical scene, a legend, one of the few whose fame has also gone beyond the borders of his country and of Africa to reach the international show business circuits. Joromi, his single published by Philips Nigeria in 1965, was the biggest success of Nigerian music of all times, even more - although I can't believe it - than Sweet Mother by Prince Nico Mbarga and it became the first golden record of the musical African history. Guitar Boy, another single of 1967 had a similar success.

After having studied in Lagos and after having served for some years in the Cool Cats of Victor Olaiya, Uwaifo set up his Melody Maestros, from whom later emerged Sonny Okosuns, he also was a Bini, who then became one of the first African reggae performers.. During the seventies, Uwaifo founded the ekassa sound, a musical style based on a mix of rhythms and traditional highlife, rock and soul.

"I can not say that I have created the ekassa, as it already existed in the indigenous dances of the Benin Empire since the beginning of the XVI century. It was a dance which took place during the coronation of a new king. The dancers would wear stripes of dried nuts filled in with small stones around the legs, so that the crackling would accompany the dance. Some say it is a sacrilege to listen to ekassa when the king is still alive, but I say to them that it is unbecoming that the ekassa should be heard few times per generation, or even less. I also say that the first song of ekassa that I have played had a brilliant success and that many have followed it. Ekassa is the fusion of the tom-tom rhythm and the agba drum together with western wind instruments, two guitars plus naturally, me on guitar and singing in Edo."

"My music is based on our culture, this is evident in our rhythms and lyrics. The fact that I use modern instruments doesn't change the base character, just like a historian writes and ancient story with mondern instruments, as a Parker pen and paper. The ancient African culture evolves thought experimentation and my music is not an exception."

Today Guitar Boy lives in Victor Uwaif Avenue, a road in Benin City that carries his name, he is considered one of the fathers of the Edo art and culture and other than the music he dedicates himself to painting, to sculpture (his monuments also embellish the roads of his cities), to poetry, to writing, to philosophy and to the teaching of History and of traditional Culture. His popularity is so vast that as his web site says “he doesn't need a postal address as this for him would only be a formality. Whoever wants to write to him should write on the envelope "Sir Victor Uwaifo, Nigeria" and with more than 150 million Nigerians the envelope will surely reach his door” The way his character is proclaimed - visit his web site - represents a true triumph of the African megalomania.

Guitar Boy Superstar is the rabbit coming out of Miles Cleret's hat. We have hoped for a monographer like this to come out and now we are pleased. After the three excellent volumes of the Nigeria Special series, any other label would have waited at least some months and created an expectancy before having released the new album, but instead Miles didn't manage to wait, with his childish, enthusiastic and impatient spirit that we well know, a spirit who doesn't give a damn about any commercial logic and for this reason we feel very close to him.

The booklet is about his encounter with Mr. Uwaifo, about his visit to the grotesque Hall of Fame implanted in his residence in Benin City, and about the veneration he enjoys from his people. It is about his story, his discography and various phases of his musical productions, from the first highlife - which he called akwete - to ekassa of the seventies which coincide with his return to Benin City after 13 years of permanence in Lagos and about his change towards reggae and disco music in the eighties, when his group became His Titibitis.

But Guitar Boy Superstar is concentrated on the ekassa sound period "his most productive" so says Miles. Each of the 19 songs is explained by the words of Sir Uwaifo. The lyrics are eradicated into the bini tradition, they are about every day life, marriages, chiefs and kings, magic rituals, children education, social costumes and respect for elders. The rhythms are articulated and relaxed, the melodies are simple and solar. Victor's guitar sometimes makes crazy improvisations, changing from highlife to rock up to colour itself with light psycadelic colours.

Sir Victor Uwaito's music takes us in the heart of Africa, into his joyful and melancholic soul and his ancient values. He takes from Europe some formal ideas, but is not raped by it because the majority of the ancient African cultures have miraculously and proudly resisted to the pressure to which they are forced to for centuries if not in appearance for sure in the substance. Today, our society is on the border heading towards a steep drop, they could teach us something about the balance and the power that comes from being together. The courage to listen and the will to understand would be enough.


Listen Tracks
1. Idogo
2. Iye Iye Oh
3. Do Lelezi


Author: Sir Victor Uwaifo
Title: Guitar Boy Superstar - 1970-76
Year: 2008
Label: Soundway Records

Tracks:
1. Kirikisi
2. Igboroho
3. Idogo
4. Egbe Natete
5. Edenederio
6. Obodo Eyo
7. Talking Instruments
8. Agho
9. Iye Iye Oh
10. Mother Witch-Shu Husu Hu
11. Atete
12. Ebibi
13. Osalobua
14. Do Lelezi
15. Akuyan
16. Dododo
17. Madaka
18. Happy Day From Me To You
19. West African Safari

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Afel Bocoum - Tabital Pulaaku

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During the course of the centuries, in the Sahel region which is wet by the abundant waters of the inner Niger delta, big western African civilizations arose, the Malinke empire, the Songhai empire, the Segou Bambara empire, the Hausa empire of Sokot, the Fulbe empire in Macina region and the Tukolor empire. Incredible stories of ancient cultures and victorious battles, cancelled in ten years by the French colonialists and forever removed from the Westerns memoirs who today are still trying to understand and recognize the cultural and human richness of these civilisations.

The Peul are one of those populations. Between the 18th and 19th century the Macina kingdom, the Sokoto kingdom and above all the Tukolor Kingdom of El Hadji Omar which reached the peak of development and played a crucial role in the islamization of the Sudan area. They are also called Fulbe or Fulani, mostly known for their nomads’ herdsmen activity, for the transhumance of the animals and also for the beauty of their women. They are spread throughout all West Africa from Senegal to Nigeria and in Guinea they amount to almost half of the population.

Afel Bocoum is Peul from Niafunke, a sand village on the margins of river Niger almost ten kilometres from Tombouctou. Niafunke is also the place where late Ali Farka Toure spent most of his life, where he invested a large part of his income, beginning when he won the Grammy, rewarded with the album Talking Timbuktu together with Ry Cooder. He invested in irrigation works, electricity and in agriculture.

Afel began playing in Ali Farka Toure's band when he was 13, therefore one could say the "donkey" of Niafunke, this is how they would call Ali, has been for Afel a real teacher. Not only music wise but also he inspired him to become an upright and spiritual man. He taught him not to be seduced by illusory values and to remain thankful and to love his land and his culture..

Tabital Pulaaku is his third album, released this year after Niger dated 2006 and after Alkibar his debut album dated 2001. It is Peul music, but also Songhai. Close to him we constantly find the same musicians and same friends. Directed by Hama Sakare, one of the most extraordinary musicians of the old ensemble of Ali Farka, the big calabasse becomes even more aggressive than an ensemble of percussions, and together with the bass of Barou Diallo gives life to a deep groove over which the njarka - a one string violin - of Kipsi Bokoum, the njurkle - the four string lute - of Yoro Cisse and the second guitar of Manmoudou Kelly interlace their themes of sounds. The result is a massive and inexorable sound within which the intense voice of Afel introduces itself and vibrates in the throat and nose to which the chorus responds to, and his ability in playing the guitar; clean, rough and essential.

Immigration
Affluence has created a rift in society
I cannot but mention this disapointment
Watch out, the world is in turmoil

At the start, the countries of the north spoke of cooperation
At the end, they speak of immigration
They point their finger at us
But that's not bad.
Because it's not an accusing finger
It's a finger encouraging awareness

The Spain that exists in your head
Is a far cry from paradise
And its sea is merciless

Count the number of your dead
Along its coasts
And you will realise
That there is no place
Like home

We have always highlighted poverty
Now ask yourselves
How and at what price
Did the North achieve this level
That you envy so terribly?
It is certainly possible to create
Better living coniditions here at home
Just by changing our behaviour

We have land
We have animals
We have water
We have our culture
We have intellectuals
All that remains is for us to become
Conscious of that.

Everybody should be mobilised
Marabouts, heads of villages
To make the youth of Mali aware
They who are our contry's future

Chorus: In life, everything comes and goes
But it's true at present we are suffering here


Fina Tawa
This song speaks about Bankaina, the hellhole.
This strange place is situated 4km north of Niafunke, in the village of Ngoro.
Bankaina is known for its extraordinary capacity for perception of all voodoo events taking place across the world.
Voodoo is an ancestral heritage, cloaked in mystery, practiced since the beginning of time.
It predicts the future, good or bad
It breaks evil spells
It cures certain illnesses
It protects travellers.
But contemporary society, and above all our young people, want to grasp the precise outlines of this occult science.

The point of no longer being satisfied with vague answers and well-kept secrets.
meanwhile, it is also our original patrimony and we cannot renouince it nor completely reject it.
We have to reconcile our ancestral heritage and modernity.
We must do everything to safeguard our traditions and make people aware of the importance of leaving written testinony of our culuture and history.

Choir: Let's devote ourselves to work, it is our only way out.


There is a music that plays out of time, as sculptures on granite or sandstone. There is a music that evokes vividly images of its own birth places as if they were truthfully dreamt from earth. There is a music that is essential and that does not contain anything that is useless, just like the lives that tightly are tuned with a hostile nature, the Malian territories where the dry and stony Sahel gradually turns to Saharan sand, slowly moving forward.

This is the case of Afel Bocoum and his Alkibar, the rivers' messengers, the big Niger that placidly crosses the desert without drying. Each of their albums is a new little masterpiece. Both for the music and the lyrics - in Peuhl, Songhai and Bambara - it is not keen in flattering, it doesn't linger, it is coherent with their own roots and with the example left behind by Ali Farka Toure, it is full of energy and it excites.


VIDEO:
Afel Bocoum & Alkibar Gignor - Hommage ad Ali Farka
marzo 2007
Video recorded at Niafunke, for the Celebration of ali Farka Toure, one year after his death.




Listen Tracks:
1. Tabital Pulaaku
2. Diadie
3. Fina Tawa

Author: Afel Bocoum & Alkibar
Title: Tabital Pulaaku
Year: 2009
Label: Contre Jour

Tracks:
1. Mali Men - 3'44
2. Tabital Pulaaku- 3'37
3. Immigration - 4'20
4. Soku Sondu - 4'06
5. Sambe Sambe - 3'28
6. Diadie - 4'22
7. Allah Tanu - 3'13
8. Fina Tawa - 4'44
9. Gando - 4'32
10. Hassey - 5'34
11. Waaju - 4'34
12. Turi Gna - 4'53

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Djeli Moussa Kouyate & Ousmane Kouyate

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The guitar reached the African coasts with Portuguese ships, centuries ago, when the slave commerce had not yet even started. The sailors would play it to calm down the melancholy of their long trips.

African music already had its own instruments; the harp, the lire, the lute and the guitar. All of them found their own place in the native music only when Africa was colonized. It was at that time that Europeans would establish actual communities residing not only where they worked but also where they would set up their hobbies.

As from the mid 800’s and beginning 900’s in the urban settlements that were growing close to the mines in the south and in the port cities of the coast - Dakar, Conakry, Freetown, Monrovia, Accra, Porto Novo, Lagos, Brazzaville, Luanda, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Maputo, Harare - while mixed white and black orchestras would play valzer, polka and beguine at the colonies parties, in palm-wine bars, in the streets black minstrels would tune in their poplar motives and their miserable stories, accompanying themselves with simple arpeggios to that new magic exotic instruments.


When the guitar arrived without mediation into the hands of local musicians, they used their music to play, reproducing the tunings, the melodies and mostly the typical rhythm of the traditional instruments it was replacing, like the xylophone, the lute and the harp. Infact in Zimbabwe the guitar was played like a mbira, in Congo like a sanza, in the Mandengue Africa like a balafon and kora or a n'goni.

Today the mandengue guitar represents one of the artistic marvel of the African contemporary music. The names of the big guitar players in this subject are too many to be named here, it is enough to remember Djelimady Tounkara (Rail Band), Zani Diabate (Super Djata) and Bouba Sacko del Mali, Papa Diabate, Sekou Bembeya Diabate (Bembeya Jazz), Sekou le Docteurs Diabate (Balladins) and Manfila Kante (Ambassadeurs du Motel) from Guinea.

I will stop here because my intention is not to write exclusively of the African guitar but about two records released during the past few months from two Guinean guitar players - Djeli Moussa Kouyate and Ousmane Kouyate - who during their long carrier, together they created many master pieces of the mandengue music, giving their sophisticated final touch.

Djeli Moussa Kouyate was the rhythmic guitar of the Rail Band together with Djeli Mady Tounkara on first guitar and with Mory Kante. Ousmane Kouyate played with the Ambassadeurs du Motel, rival orchestra of the Rail Band headed by the albino prince Salif Keita and by the first guitar of Manfila Kante. Both have accompanied the majority of Africa mandengue big stars, firstly Salif Keita who has deeply influenced them. But we can not name them all, hundreds of recordings where National Badema, Bembeya Jazz, Sekouba Bambino Diabate, Kandia Kouyate, Toumani Diabate and Cheick Tidiane Seck participated


Djeli Moussa Kouyate comes from Siguiri, a village in Guinea famous for the oral heritage of it's griots. He does not like the role of protagonist, also in Le Temps, his second solo album, his delicate arpeggios and his solid groove represent the bones that uphold the music, but rarely do they play over the other musicians. Maybe for this reason, as a lot of liberty is left to the guests, Le Temps is the delicate and fascinating music, it's atmospheres varies and it's roots are ancient. Salif Keita, Abdoulaye Diabate, Amadou Sodia, his sister Mamani Keita interchange on vocals together with other big griot who are a little less known. They form a collage made up of timbers and sounds. Djeli Moussa's guitar is accompanied, not only by French musicians, but also by some big musicians of contemporary mandengue music, like the guitar of Ibrahima Soumano, Ousmane Kouyate and Manifla Kante, forever companions, Adama Conde on balafon, Kemo Kouyate on the sikou and kora, Moriba Koita on n'goni and Mare Sanogo on djembe.

The voices of the singers carry the songs from bambara-funk to a distressing ballades, to the jeli’s solemnity that creates stories and glorifications, accompanied by traditional ensembles. In the rare moments where the voices are silent, then the music becomes intimate and it cuddles around memories and stories without words, like in Kenani Foli - dedicated to an Ivorian griot friend of Babadjan Kaba - a dream that floats around the strings of the guitars.


Ousmane Kouyate comes from Dabola, in the heart of Guinea, it is also the village that entitles his new album. Guiatarist, composer and singer with a beautiful voice, his music is full of life and whoever loves dancing can not resist and he is always the central character. The album is maybe less variegated compared to Le Temps, but more solar and festive. The songs go from traditional Guinean sonorities, to Mande dance, to jazz and afro-Cuban atmospheres.

As opposed to Djeli Moussa, he plays mainly rhythmic guitar with short solos and minimal variations. Ousmane is also a cultured and sophisticated virtuoso and his beautiful solos flutter over the tradition and enrich the songs. He plays relaxed both in the balafon style and in the kora style and builds up brave harmonies that taste like jazz. In addition to the usual French musicians close to Ousmane we find the guitars of Djeli Moussa Kouyate, of Fantamady Kouyate, of Ibrahima Soumano and Manfila Kante, the piano of Abdoulaye Diabate, Guinean kora of Djeli Moussa Diawara and of Djeli Moussa Conde, the flute of Ali Wague, the balafon of Kaba Kouyate, and the bolon of Amadou Sodia.

Le Temps and Dabola are both records that risk being unfairly ignored. Djeli Moussa Kouyate and Ousmane Kouyate are not known names, they don't tour and the publicity they get is almost null - on no magazines, not even on the specialized ones took notice of them - and their music doesn't explode immediately but one can enjoy it slowly thanks to it's nuances. It is the result of a long and extraordinary artistic carrier, which allowed both to mature a vast and deep experience. Thanks to this, their personal styles can not be catalogued.

We will point these out because in some way they represent a different way of creating music, not around a star that overrules all the others but like a true assemblage within which each one plays his role with passion and art


Listen Tracks:
1. Kenani Foli (from Le Temps)
2. Iden - vocal: Abdoulaye Diabate (from Le Temps)
3. Na Kankou - vocal: Salif Keita (from Le Temps)
4. Dabola (from Dabola)
5. Yarabi (from Dabola)
6. Nana (from Dabola)

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Author: Djeli Moussa Kouyate
Title: Le Temps
Year: 2008
Label: Emarcy

Tracks:
1. Iden
2. Je Sais
3. Na Kankou
4. Ketow
5. Tugna
6. Siguiri
7. Na Fonié
8. Kenani Foli
9. Le Temps
10. Na Toma
11. Doukouren Mousso
12. Siya

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Author: Ousmane Kouyate
Title: Dabola
Year: 2009
Label: Universal

Tracks:
1. Dabola
2. Diamanake
3. Djeliya
4. Nana
5. Tenter
6. Super Kefimba
7. Yarabi
8. Molagna
9. Mansaba
10. Fediya

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