keeping track of african and africa-related culture in the media (film, photography, television, and print)

Weekend Music: Pan African Funk

Posted: October 17th, 2008 | Author: kamau | Filed under: music, music video | 2 Comments »

So … it is early 1970’s Nairobi. Petrol is still cheap. The city is clean, safe and orderly; the City Council picks up garbage regularly. The Kenya Bus Service is still the way to get around town. Matatus are not yet ubiquitous (who wants to ride in the back of a pickup outfitted with benches, anyways?). Kenyatta Conference Center, the coffee boom, inflation, economic collapse, the deaths of JM and Ouko, stifling corruption, AIDS, famine, megaslums are all still in the future. And from the Voice of Kenya (VoK), a University of Nairobi campus student can pick up on his transistor radio a newfangled African urban music, the cultural response to James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Isaac Hayes, to post-civil rights/post-independence Black pride and a re-energized vision of pan-Africanism.


Manu Dibango: “Soul Makossa”


Osibisa: “Music for Gong Gong”


Fela Anikulapo Kuti: Early performance from “Ginger Baker in Africa”

2 Comments on “Weekend Music: Pan African Funk”

  1. 1 Louis said at 2:27 PM on October 22nd, 2008:

    Hey have you heard of an artist by the name Caiphus Semenya from south africa. he was quite influential and got an oscar for the color purple worked on the beat street soundtrack and worked with quite a number of artis and released hes own music
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85N4BsuAARo

  2. 2 kamau said at 4:37 PM on October 22nd, 2008:

    YES! Caiphus Semenya made this really amazing afrosoul/afrojazz. I haven’t much of his work, but I recently heard a song by his wife Letta Mbulu, who was a primary collaborator (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0QLHa7hUv0) . Thanks, Louis, for reminding about Semenya!