The NY Daily News today has an article about Frank being the illest afrobeat record collector there ever was. I can't find a link to it on their site, google that shit.
The unlikely savior of a vanishing African musical tradition is a German expatriate in Park Slope, Brooklyn ??? and he's packing parties full of hipsters by playing records from before they were born.
Frank Gossner has become one of the world's preeminent collectors of Afrobeat records, made in the late 1960s and early 1970s as American funk met traditional West African styles.
He roams deep in the back roads of Ghana, Nigeria and Benin to scour piles of decomposing records by long-forgotten artists. Then he ships them back to Brooklyn, posting some songs on his blog at voodoofunk.blogspot.com and rereleasing some of the best albums for a new generation.
"You still find stuff that was unknown," Gossner says. "It is weird to see such a vibrant scene completely cease to exist."
Earlier this month at the Williamsburg bar Zebulon, twentysomething clubgoers shimmied past midnight to his latest release, a long-lost 1973 record by the Nigerian singer Orlando Julius.
A friend in Lagos had found what may be the only remaining copy of the record. When Gossner tracked down Julius, the singer had forgotten the record ever existed ??? so Gossner emailed him mp3 files of the songs to remind him.
"You can't even begin to salvage everything," Gossner says. "What I have is only just a small piece of a big, lost puzzle."
With its heavy beats and swirling synthesizers, Afrobeat made for irresistible dancing across the continent, generating an explosion of bands that put out pulsating records in wildly colored sleeves.
Fela Kuti, subject of the Broadway musical "Fela!," is the best-known Afrobeat artist ??? but countless bands pursued similar sounds in those days, developing African funk and disco sounds as well.
"There isn't really anything that compares," Gossner says, as he spread s some favorite albums on a table in the apartment he shares with his wife, their three dogs and a collection of African totems.
Gossner, 43, is a longtime music fan and DJ who discovered old American funk and soul sounds when he first lived in New York in the 1990s ??? then moved to Berlin and built a following by playing them in clubs there.
He regularly scoured the U.S. for forgotten records, and one day in 2005 found himself in the storage room of a Philadelphia record store where the owner casually mentioned he had a box full of Nigerian albums.
Gossner listened to one of them ??? "Na Teef Know De Road of Teef" by someone called Pax Nicholas ??? and was hooked on the sound.
"That was really the stepping stone for me," he says. "That's the record that really made the decision for us to go to Africa."
His wife Manuela is a diplomat in Germany's foreign ministry, and they were trying to choose a country where she would be posted for the next four years.
They ended up in Guinea, on the coast of West Africa. Gossner quickly got to work touring the markets of the capital, Conakry, for old records ??? then expanded his hunt deeper across the continent.
Afrobeat fell out of popularity in the mid-1970s with the rise of disco, he says, and cheap bootleg cassettes killed off the African record industry in the 1980s.
By the time Gossner started looking, many records had vanished or been destroyed. He put flyers in small towns, placed "records wanted" ads in newspapers, and hired local agents to hunt down records for him.
"They thought it was funny," he says. "They're always surprised that someone in the Western world would be interested in their stuff."
Eager to share his finds with the world, he started his blog and posted audio files of his best mixes.
When his wife's tour in Guinea ended, they moved to New York, where he used his ever-growing African collection to start deejaying parties once more.
Then, emboldened by the response, he began reissuing some of his very best finds, starting with the Pax Nicholas album he found in Philadelphia. His record turned out to be the only known copy ??? but pristine enough for Brooklyn's Daptone Records to faithfully reproduce the music and the cover art.
Gossner is still trying to find more hidden gems in Africa. He regularly gets shipments from a network of record scouts there, and travels back for long hunting trips himself.
On his blog, he has pictures of himself wearing a dust mask to protect himself from mold as he digs for gems in a 7-foothigh pile of records in an abandoned Nigerian warehouse.
"If you move that stuff around, you have clouds of dust," Gossner explains. "You can get horrible sinus infections."
The next chance to hear the collection comes April 16 at Zebulon, where he will spin records all night and complete their improbable four-decade journey from African ears to Brooklyn dance floors.
"There's a big interest now by the young hip crowd for African funk," Gossner says.
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DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Saturday, March 26th 2011, 4:00 AM
The unlikely savior of a vanishing African musical tradition is a German expatriate in Park Slope, Brooklyn ??? and he's packing parties full of hipsters by playing records from before they were born.
Frank Gossner has become one of the world's preeminent collectors of Afrobeat records, made in the late 1960s and early 1970s as American funk met traditional West African styles.
He roams deep in the back roads of Ghana, Nigeria and Benin to scour piles of decomposing records by long-forgotten artists. Then he ships them back to Brooklyn, posting some songs on his blog at voodoofunk.blogspot.com and rereleasing some of the best albums for a new generation.
"You still find stuff that was unknown," Gossner says. "It is weird to see such a vibrant scene completely cease to exist."
Earlier this month at the Williamsburg bar Zebulon, twentysomething clubgoers shimmied past midnight to his latest release, a long-lost 1973 record by the Nigerian singer Orlando Julius.
A friend in Lagos had found what may be the only remaining copy of the record. When Gossner tracked down Julius, the singer had forgotten the record ever existed ??? so Gossner emailed him mp3 files of the songs to remind him.
"You can't even begin to salvage everything," Gossner says. "What I have is only just a small piece of a big, lost puzzle."
With its heavy beats and swirling synthesizers, Afrobeat made for irresistible dancing across the continent, generating an explosion of bands that put out pulsating records in wildly colored sleeves.
Fela Kuti, subject of the Broadway musical "Fela!," is the best-known Afrobeat artist ??? but countless bands pursued similar sounds in those days, developing African funk and disco sounds as well.
"There isn't really anything that compares," Gossner says, as he spread s some favorite albums on a table in the apartment he shares with his wife, their three dogs and a collection of African totems.
Gossner, 43, is a longtime music fan and DJ who discovered old American funk and soul sounds when he first lived in New York in the 1990s ??? then moved to Berlin and built a following by playing them in clubs there.
He regularly scoured the U.S. for forgotten records, and one day in 2005 found himself in the storage room of a Philadelphia record store where the owner casually mentioned he had a box full of Nigerian albums.
Gossner listened to one of them ??? "Na Teef Know De Road of Teef" by someone called Pax Nicholas ??? and was hooked on the sound.
"That was really the stepping stone for me," he says. "That's the record that really made the decision for us to go to Africa."
His wife Manuela is a diplomat in Germany's foreign ministry, and they were trying to choose a country where she would be posted for the next four years.
They ended up in Guinea, on the coast of West Africa. Gossner quickly got to work touring the markets of the capital, Conakry, for old records ??? then expanded his hunt deeper across the continent.
Afrobeat fell out of popularity in the mid-1970s with the rise of disco, he says, and cheap bootleg cassettes killed off the African record industry in the 1980s.
By the time Gossner started looking, many records had vanished or been destroyed. He put flyers in small towns, placed "records wanted" ads in newspapers, and hired local agents to hunt down records for him.
"They thought it was funny," he says. "They're always surprised that someone in the Western world would be interested in their stuff."
Eager to share his finds with the world, he started his blog and posted audio files of his best mixes.
When his wife's tour in Guinea ended, they moved to New York, where he used his ever-growing African collection to start deejaying parties once more.
Then, emboldened by the response, he began reissuing some of his very best finds, starting with the Pax Nicholas album he found in Philadelphia. His record turned out to be the only known copy ??? but pristine enough for Brooklyn's Daptone Records to faithfully reproduce the music and the cover art.
Gossner is still trying to find more hidden gems in Africa. He regularly gets shipments from a network of record scouts there, and travels back for long hunting trips himself.
On his blog, he has pictures of himself wearing a dust mask to protect himself from mold as he digs for gems in a 7-foothigh pile of records in an abandoned Nigerian warehouse.
"If you move that stuff around, you have clouds of dust," Gossner explains. "You can get horrible sinus infections."
The next chance to hear the collection comes April 16 at Zebulon, where he will spin records all night and complete their improbable four-decade journey from African ears to Brooklyn dance floors.
"There's a big interest now by the young hip crowd for African funk," Gossner says.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2011/03/26/2011-03-26_funk_finder_dj_frank_gossner_tracks_down_longlost_afrobeat_records.html#ixzz1HpOh9fMm