The First Case of the Underserved African Markets

The show is serving up music from 3 West African countries that are largely ignored in the American consciousness:  Burkina Faso, Benin, and Guinea (try locating those 3 countries on a blank African map!).

The first third of today's 2-hour set focuses on Burkina Faso. This small landlocked country borders on 6 other countries and a wide range of musical influences, including Manding music from Mali and Niger, and more modern Latin and Western influences from Ivory Coast and Ghana. Burkina Faso, which was known as Upper Volta when this music was recorded, was a musical melting pot, but also a very poor country. These voices are an important and underserved facet of the West African music scene, but the songs were largely recorded on field recording equipment rather than proper studio equipment, so listeners today will notice the rough quality of the recordings.

The second country featured today is Benin. This country gave birth to one of the great West African bands of the 70's, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, along with a host of lesser known acts. Like Burkina Faso, Benin was a musical melting pot, and the "Poly-Rythmo" in the lead band's name is testimony to the playlists of most Beninese musical acts, including a local musical style "Sato" or "Vodoun" that was seldom sampled outside of Benin. Thanks to the popularity of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, music of Benin has been well documented in the past decade on LP compilations on the Soundway and Analog Africa labels. 

The third country on today's menu is Guinea; one of Africa's poorest countries, and a country at the center of the current Ebola crisis. In the late 60's and early 70's, however, Guinea played a key role in the development of Western African music. In the late 60's most professional bands across Western Africa were feeding public demand for modern Latin and Western dancefloor material. But Guinea was one of a handful of Communist countries in the region at that time, and all musicians were paid by the government, rather than by promoters and record labels. The government mandated a policy of "Authenticite" that required all bands to feature compositions and instruments that reflected traditional local music, rather than playing purely modern, Western music. You may not agree with Communist politics, but this policy of authenticity caught fire across Western Africa from Senegal to The Congo; as with Reggae in Jamaica, West Africans would develop a musical style in the 70's that was filled with cultural identity.