African Video Face Melters
ppadilha
2,244 Posts
yesterday I stumbled onto this video:
and was reminded that this youtube channel constantly uploads some insane videos of what I assume are mainly TV appearances by various legendary African musicians. Sometimes I'll scour youtube looking for live footage of Fela, but I'm frustrated because usually it's from the 80s (so it's never his real classic jams) and it's in Europe (shots of skinny eurocrowd not quite dancing). So plaese to share more face melting live videos from Africa.
make with the face-melt, people.
and was reminded that this youtube channel constantly uploads some insane videos of what I assume are mainly TV appearances by various legendary African musicians. Sometimes I'll scour youtube looking for live footage of Fela, but I'm frustrated because usually it's from the 80s (so it's never his real classic jams) and it's in Europe (shots of skinny eurocrowd not quite dancing). So plaese to share more face melting live videos from Africa.
make with the face-melt, people.
Comments
But I was watching the Fantastic Man documentary again the other night. Is the video for When the Going Is Smooth & Good real or is that just something the producers put together? If it is, has anyone ever seen it in it's entirety?
I thought the same thing when I watched that. It looks legit, don't think the producers would've gone through the trouble of making that, and it would be awesome to see that video in its entirety.
If you haven't noticed already, the "documentary" does not include a single picture or even a single word of an audio interview with Onyeabor. And as with anything else Luaka Bop related, it's corny as hell.
my friend Uchenna has once brought a Beta video recorder to Nigeria in the hope of transferring loads of old tv footage onto his computer... sadly most tapes he found were damaged... apparently pretty much every Nigerian EMI record for some period had video clips done, often for each single track on the record only to overdub the tapes when the music seemed outdated. Tapes were expensive...
I'd invite Uchenna to elaborate himself but the whiff of Dickbreath and co-horts in here is just too offensive, I'm embarrassed to introduce anybody to this board at this point...
I think they maybe exaggerate the fact that he's hard to deal with or is some kind of recluse, but doesn't he show up at the very end? And apparently he's giving an interview to the BBC next week.
Here's an hour and a half of prime era Fela ('78) in excellent quality:
I think this was the last ever show w/ Africa '70 btw, they left after this because Fela was using all the money to run for president of Nigeria. I was talking with Kofi from Marijata the other day and he said like half the band moved in with him after this in his tiny apartment in Berlin.
No, I think that's pretty accurate.
Yeah he shows up. But what audio were they playing over top? Audio he recorded for them?
And I still really hope that music video is real and I get to see it one day in full.
I think they tried to turn his refusal to be on camera or otherwise help the promotion of the records into a schtick by trying to create a mystery around him. Onyeabor is easy to find and he's not at all a recluse, he just does not want anything to do with his old "secular" music. He's chased one of my buyers off his grounds brandishing a handgun while selling his remainder of Good Name stock copies to someone I sent to his house a few months later.
There are also different accounts of what his personal musical input. Some sources say that most if not all of his stuff was played by hired musicians... from what I heard about him, I quickly abandoned any ideas of re-issuing his stuff many years ago... there's way too much good music out there that was made by genuinely nice people...
The '78 Fela show is amazing... this was the last time he played with the Africa 70 cause instead of returning with him to Nigeria, the band defected and asked for political asylum. To me nothing he did after ever came close to the pre'78 stuff.
Funny side note about the Ginger Baker in Africa footage: Baker asked for all footage with T- Mack in the picture to be removed cause he's light skinned (Swiss mother) and Baker wanted to be the sole non-100%-African in the picture in order to not spoil the exoticism of it all...
King Ayisoba from Northern Ghana:
H2O Assouka from Benin:
:shreddin_it:
it's a cover of this song, is it a local classic?
Balla et ses Balladins was probably first... wouldn't be surprised if there were more versions.
I'm basically a sucker for anything that has that trance (NOT RAVE-R) quality
Here is a really nice doc about music in Zimbabwe. Def some face-melting moments.
I only now clicked on this post and the linked video. Boom. Memories!!! How could you forget these hats - or the music!?!?!
I saw Zani Diabate live in the 80s in my hometown of Hannover, Germany: Unbelievable concert. I had seen King Sunny Ade, Thomas Mapfumo and Etoile De Dakar with Youssou N'Dour but this beat them all. I was so enthusiastic afterwards, that I wrote a letter to Black Music / Blues & Soul where Chris Stapleton gave me a name-check in his Afro Heat column later on when recommending Super Djata.