We Got Sound: An Afro-Funkified Mix
Mold, dirt, sand, dust, red clay, and suspect powder-like substances covered these records. If you don’t mind a few crackles and pops, turn up the volume and enjoy the groovy sounds of West Africa. Funky recordings with tight on-the-one beats punctuated by poly-rhythmic flourishes and self-confident themes, declaring…We Got Sound!
Artwork is a piece entitled "Return of the Asante" by Marcellous Lovelace
compiled & arranged: Taran Escobar-Ausman (Insta @taran_ea) & albertjenkins (Insta @djalbertjenkins)
mixed: albertjenkins
artwork: Marcellous Lovelace (www.infinito2017.com)
Eshu's Dance: Jerk, Afrobeat, & Afrofunk 45 Mix
Pictured is a participant of a vodun ceremony in Benin where they are summing the Equngun, spirits of the ancestors. Before you can summon any spirit, however, you must reach Eshu to gain permission to the spirit world. Eshu, the trickster god of the crossroads, guards the gateway of chance. Tricksters in every culture and myth are artus workers, which means they operate at the joints of existence; the crossroads of chance and serendipity (It is more likely Eshu that Robert Johnson met at the crossroads rather than the Christian devil figure.). Here they are able to make changes in the hopes of rearticulating the cosmos to their mischievous will. In other words, they are the gods of accident; sometimes happy one and other times not so much. At tumultuous times in the late 1960s and 1970s of Benin, when repeated military coups and uncertainty plagued the people, funk music from America, itself a child of the blues, spoke back to its ancestors where they combined it with traditional vodun rhythms giving us Jerk, Afrobeat, and Afrofunk. Surely, Eshu is at play here during this influential time in music.
Here is a short and sweet mix of dusty and crackly 45s to represent those new sounds to Benin (and one from Ghana, notice the call and response) collected over the years. Enjoy.