We take a break from the focus on Brazil to tap into the riches of a new reissue of killer 70s recordings by Zimbabwe superstars the Green Arrows, the first band in the nation to release a full-length album. It seems like the Chimurenga of Thomas Mapfumo gets all of the attention, but the country produced lots of other great stuff and a new German label called Analog Africa, distributed in the US by Alula, has been rectifying the situation this year with two great reissues (the other one is by the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, with whom Mapfumo got his start). Much of the music by the Green Arrows was produced by the South African jive saxophonist West Nkosi –and, indeed, there’s an appealing South African lilt to their stuff--in rudimentary Harare studios, but the sound they got was nothing short of extraordinary. As with so much African pop, the real thrills are provided by the dancing basslines—handled primarily by Zexie Manatsa, who also was the lead singer—but the group’s three guitar players forged a magical lattice of criss-crossing lines and leads that both reinforced the bubbling grooves and added even more melodic heft. There’s some nice experimentation with wah-wah and distortion pedals, but even without such effects this stuff slays. The group disintegrated in the early 90s, but has recently started performing again. I’m posting one of the group’s few English-language tracks, a stylistically atypical rock-driven song that tells the story of the Irwin Allen disaster yarn Towering Inferno, a big hit on the continent in the mid-70s, but all twenty tracks are stellar.
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Awesome tip. Never heard of the Green Arrows before! I'll be looking into this whole series for sure.
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