Afro-Psych

A few weeks back I mentioned Luaka Bop's superb  Love's a Real Thing compilation, which claims to be a collection of "psychedelic" music from West Africa. Although Senegal's short-lived Etoile 2000 existed outside of the loose 70s time span covered by the collection, musically it's as psychedelic as anything ever produced in Africa. The band is one of the countless spin-offs of the might Star Band (there was also Super Star Band, Etoile de Dakar, Number One de Dakar), but none of them pushed the gritty ferocity of mbalax further. Singer El Hadji Faye sounds like he passed up a calling as muezzin to sing these tough songs, delivering his Wolof lyrics with a spine-tingling intensity that pierces the cerebellum like an icepick. Meanwhile lead guitarist Badou N'Diaye didn't seem capable of playing unless his foot was dancing upon a wah-wah pedal--his densely textured leads are clearly inspired by Hendrix, but he was more obsessed with tone-shifting than narrative. Not to be outdone, tama player Yamar Thiam beat his talking drum with like-minded aggression, trying to keep up with N'Diaye's high velocity solos. This is breathless stuff; the real sound of African garage rock.

Boubou N'Gary

Buy it here.

Comments

[brent]

I'm completely speechless, this is great stuff