Awesome Tapes From Africa Vinyl, CD & Tape 15 Items

It's been a little over ten years since Hailu Mergia reemerged on the international music scene. Following the first in a series of his classic recordings reissued in collaboration with Awesome Tapes From Africa, Mergia assembled a band and began performing live again after many years driving a cab in Washington, DC. His first show back appeared on the front page of the New York Times along with a stellar review and he took off from there performing his flavor of Ethiopian jazz all over the world in the years since, including Radio City Music Hall and Montreal Jazz Festival. Finally, we have a recorded document of the keyboard player's powerful DC-based trio _ which practices each weekend in his basement _ featuring Kenneth Joseph on drums and Alemseged Kebede on bass. Beautifully captured at one of their fiery live shows at the venerable Brooklyn non-profit cultural center Pioneer Works on July 1, 2016, the concert was recorded by PW staff and mixed by Ted Young with mastering by ATFA's expert audio extraction collaborator Jessica Thompson. The performance clarifies what many people across the globe already know: in his fifth decade of music-making Hailu Mergia continues to push the boundaries of his remarkable abilities. Mergia and his veteran band energetically and playfully unpeel layer after layer of harmonic and rhythmic interest out of a spectrum of Ethiopian repertoire. Modern jazz demands constant reinvention and improvisation, night after night creating new works out of known modes and classic standards. This band is unstoppable when it comes to turning age-old melodies (like "Tizita" or "Anchihoye Lene") upside down and inside out until they emerge as molten new works, often spontaneously. Mergia's original compositions (like "Yegle Nesh") shine brighter than ever here as well. Moving from keyboard to organ to accordion to melodica, he deftly switches instruments _ often during the same song. Mergia at 77 years old seems to be working harder than musicians half his age. "Pioneer Works Swing (Live)" brings into focus the kind of onstage group improvisation and deadly solo passages that reach for places Mergia and the band have never gone, on festival and club stages across four continents. Now that Mergia has released two new recordings along with four classic reissues, he is eager to let everyone hear what he's been doing on the road since he re-took the global stage for his victory laps. So much more than an old act from yesteryear, Mergia balances his legendary Ethiopian recordings with good old fashioned sweat-soaked live concert triumphs such as the one we have here.

Dur-Dur Band emerged in the 1980s, during a time when Somalia's contribution to the creative culture in the Horn of Africa was visible and abundant. Seeking inspiration outside the impressive array of Somali traditional music that was encouraged at the time, everyone from Michael Jackson and Phil Collins to Bob Marley and Santana were fair game. This recording, which was remastered from a cassette copy source, is a document of Dur-Dur Band after establishing itself as one of the most popular bands in Mogadishu. The challenge of locating a complete long-player from this era is evidenced bythe fidelity of this recording. However, the complex, soulful music penetrates the hiss. In a country that has been disrupted by civil war, heated clan divisions and security concerns, music and the arts has suffered from stagnation in recent years. Incidentally, more than ten years after Volume 5 (1987) was recorded at Radio Mogadishu, the state-run broadcaster was the only station in Somalia to resist the ban on music briefly enacted by Al-Shabab. Dur-Dur Band is a powerful and illustrative lens through which to appreciate the incredible sounds in Somalia before the country's stability took a turn.

In many ways, DJ Black Low's debut album, Uwami, shows the signs of an artist's first offering in any musical genre. Showcasing fluency in a broad range of styles and stuffing a number of ideas to the record's brim is the 20 year-old producer's attempt to both introduce himself to a wide listenership and stamp a recognizable sound in their minds. In other ways, somewhat out of the young South African producer's control, Uwami goes against the grain. The album comes at a time when South African electronic music is being fundamentally disrupted. Amapiano, the electronic music movement which first gained popularity with a small, core group of followers, now dominates the mainstream. Well-known and pervasive, amapiano borrows from a diverse palette of musical styles which are popular in South Africa's largely Black townshipsjazz, kwaito, dibacardi, deep and afro house among them. Instead of pandering to the seemingly insatiable local appetite and growing global penchant for amapiano though, on Uwami DJ Black Low seeks out the limits of the sound du jour and tries to stretch them. On his solo productions, he uses the samples and compositional norms that make amapiano hits the bedrock on which to experiment and improvise. With collaborators, DJ Black Low improvises within the boundaries of listener-friendly grooves. The sound he creates has foundations of what could easily have progressed into captivating amapiano songs on their own. But he uses improvised but structured electronic percussion and distortion sounds to drive the tracks in a particular direction. What remains is something like a deconstructed amapiano. For a young producer living in the townships of the greater Pitori area of South Africa's Gauteng province, there were few avenues available for Radebe to pursue a career in music. His trajectory shows the vulnerability of this pursuit. "I had started producing in 2013 and it so happened that I lost my equipment in 2014. I couldn't afford to buy equipment. In 2017, a friend of mine who had been making music found a job and decided to quit music. He gave me his equipment and I was able to start producing again. That's when I started getting back to it. I tried to pick up where I had left off, with hip hop and commercial house but I found that amapiano was the popular music. I liked it, so I started producing it."

The past five years have seen amapiano, South Africa's electronic music movement born in the townships of the country's Gauteng province, evolve from an underground sound to a nationwide mainstream staple. Even with its commercial success though, amapiano's DIY ethos has continued to disrupt music creation and distribution in the country. Most amapiano commercial successes today began their careers on cracked versions of production software like FL Studio, distributed their work through file sharing platforms like datafilehost and marketed it using social media pages they controlled and influenced. Amapiano Selections, the debut album by DJ and producer Teno Afrika, gives listeners outside the movement's online release economy an insight into the high-burn nature of amapiano that has spawned a distinct typology under its larger umbrella. Twenty-one-year-old Lutendo Raduvha has spent the bulk of his life moving between different townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg and Pretoria in the Gauteng province. The palette of amapiano styles on the album reflect these influences. But at first, South Africa's youngest electronic music movement lived underground with a small, loyal following. "Amapiano is a genre that I chose because I have a passion for it," says Teno "I started following amapiano in 2016 because I wanted to explore how it's produced. It was not taken seriously in our country." Interestingly, Teno Africa only gives vocals prominence on the closing track "Chants of Africa." As a way of making their music recognizable and relatable for broadcast, amapiano producers have sometimes overly relied on vocals in the form of singing, catch-phrases and party refrains for the purpose. "It was my decision not to use vocals on this project," says Teno "The reason is I wanted people to feel my instrumentals and style because this is my first album." On his closing track the young producer gives a glimpse of the considered approach to music which buoys anticipation for greater things from his future releases.

The rags-to-riches chronicle of Penny Penny's life would be remarkable if he had only released his smash debut Shaka Bundu and packed houses for a few years. But the inimitable South African singer and dancer known for his trademark top ponytail and emphatic anthems was no one-hit wonder. In the aftermath of Shaka Bundu's nationwide explosion, far beyond his country the album resonated with ever bigger audiences. He performed up and down the continent, building fanbases in more than a dozen countries. So his sophomore album Yogo Yogo - released in 1996 - solidified Penny Penny's standing in pop music nationally and provided new energy to his pan-African stadium-filling adventures."I was very busy between Shaka Bundu and Yogo Yogo. Shows every week, local and outside the country. There was no relaxing from 1995 until 1999."The album also reflects the era in which it emerged. If Shaka Bundu arrived triumphantly amid newfound political freedom in South Africa with the end of Apartheid and Nelson Mandela's election, Yogo Yogo was a next level expression for the maturing artist. He wanted to get a message out. Composed with Joe Shirimani, who also produced the album, the sound and compositional style echoes the earlier recording but the topical nature of the lyrics became more deliberate, more didactic. In the song "Ingani" Penny proclaims, we are all one people even though we may speak different languages, we are all NguniâÇ"a larger historical grouping that includes many of the ethnic groups in modern South Africa. "Kulani Kulani," which means grow up, urges young people to say no to drugs and yes to education. Ama Owners, referring to the public transport drivers involved in violent rumbles, asks the nation's drivers to relax because we need them for our safe arrival. Penny's success as a Xitsonga artist should not be under-estimated in the context of popular music at the time in South Africa. "When I started with my own style and image, first time in Shangaan we had artist like me," Pen...

A 1994 tape by Ghanaian musician Ata Kak called Obaa Sima is being reissued by Awesome Tapes From Africa.

The release is the culmination of a 13-year story for Awesome Tapes From Africa founder Brian Shimkovitz, who bought a cassette copy of Obaa Sima from a roadside stall in Cape Coast, Ghana, in 2002. The tape was the subject of the first post on his Awesome Tapes From Africa blog in 2006—the blog spawned a full record label in 2011.

Shimkovitz began searching for Ata Kat and says "Google and endless phone calls provided no leads." It was eventually discovered the musician, real name Yaw Atta-Owusu, had recorded Obaa Sima in Toronto before moving back to Ghana in 2006.

The restoration of the tape proved challenging. Only about 50 copies of the original tape were produced, and Atta-Owusu's master DAT had disintegrated, so the second-hand copy purchased by Shimkovitz was used as the source for the reissue.

4th strike on Awesome Tapes From Africa, another stunner! The classic Somali band's 1987 recording captures some of the incredible sounds happening in Mogadishu during that era.

- Backed by Hailu Mergia - Legendary singer/instrumentalist at her mid-1970s prime -
Double LP carefully extracted from cassette and remastered by ATFA family engineer
Jessica Thompson There is perhaps no woman more cherished in modern Ethiopian
history than Asnakech Worku. As a musician, actress, dancer and cultural icon, Asnakech
inspired and challenged society for decades, until her death in 2011. From her beginnings
as Ethiopia's first theater actress in 1952 to her climb to become one of the most famous
actresses at the National Theater to her days as a club owner-turned-master musician,
Asnakech's inimitable confidence and charm made her a household name. She earned
endless accolades across the artistic spectrum. She made seminal recordings of
unforgettable original compositions, as well as legendary renditions of traditional songs,
that became national staples. With a singular sense of style, glamour and sex appeal that
sometimes stunned mainstream society, Asnakech wore clothes no one else wore and
said things no one else said. Staid notions of how women should dress and behave didn't
apply to her. Battling a mentality that until the early 1950s had men wearing dresses to
play female roles in the theater, Asnakech became a national treasure on her own terms.
Her family wasn't pleased with Asnakech becoming an azmari_an itinerant praise
musician who sings, often in bars, for tips_and didn't bother her, especially after Emperor
Haile Selassie I began to emphasize theater and music in society, officially legitimizing her
career. Asnakech became an internationally-celebrated performer of Ethiopia's ancient
harp, the krar, making her one of the most visible female musicians of the 20th century.
All this while leaving controversy, broken hearts and a changed cultural landscape in her
wake. In 1975, keyboardist and bandleader Hailu Mergia got a call from the owner of
Misratch Music Shop to do a recording with Asnakech and he went for it. This recording
is a nearly-forgotten artifact of the remarkable icon's singular legacy, remastered and
available outside Ethiopia for the first time. It also provides a rare glimpse into Mergia's
work as a arranger-sideman in the Addis Ababa music scene. This trio recording
featuring Mergia on organ and Temare Harege on drums using only brushes is starkly
minimal but deeply evocative. The minimalist arrangements ensure the focus is on
Asnakech's incisive_and occasionally romantic_lyrics and her virtuosic krar performance.

This remastered reissue of Mergia's 1985 solo cassette features the multi-instrumentalist handling accordion, analog synth, rhodes piano and drum machine. The all-instrumental album has a distinctly futuristic (circa mid-80s) approach to classic Ethiopian songs and modes.

There's more than a hint of ambition on the double LP sophomore effort from Sam Austin Rabede, the producer known as DJ Black Low. Pretoria, South Africa-born and based, the young man makes amapiano with new ways of expressing this local- turned-global style of dance music. In DJ Black Low's musical imagination, the songs manage to smoothly vacillate between dreamy and firmly-grounded. Adorned with vocalists across most of the twelve tracks, there's a new dimension to Black Low's now-signature approach to abstract, angular deconstruction of the rhythmic developments in his songs. The album references influences and ambitions in its song titles and lyrics while the music itself is anthemic in its sonic and structural aspirations. On many of the songs a slow-burning tension transforms into something unexpected until you're somewhere else as the track concludes. There is an emotional and compositional maturity that builds on his earlier work. Vocals and lyrics are in focus. Production collaborators among Black Low's Gauteng Province circle add to the constantly churning array of ideas that populate this consistently surprising release. Despite being a relative newcomer, DJ Black Low is onto something here.

It's been a little over ten years since Hailu Mergia reemerged on the international music scene. Following the first in a series of his classic recordings reissued in collaboration with Awesome Tapes From Africa, Mergia assembled a band and began performing live again after many years driving a cab in Washington, DC. His first show back appeared on the front page of the New York Times along with a stellar review and he took off from there performing his flavor of Ethiopian jazz all over the world in the years since, including Radio City Music Hall and Montreal Jazz Festival. Finally, we have a recorded document of the keyboard player's powerful DC-based trio _ which practices each weekend in his basement _ featuring Kenneth Joseph on drums and Alemseged Kebede on bass. Beautifully captured at one of their fiery live shows at the venerable Brooklyn non-profit cultural center Pioneer Works on July 1, 2016, the concert was recorded by PW staff and mixed by Ted Young with mastering by ATFA's expert audio extraction collaborator Jessica Thompson. The performance clarifies what many people across the globe already know: in his fifth decade of music-making Hailu Mergia continues to push the boundaries of his remarkable abilities. Mergia and his veteran band energetically and playfully unpeel layer after layer of harmonic and rhythmic interest out of a spectrum of Ethiopian repertoire. Modern jazz demands constant reinvention and improvisation, night after night creating new works out of known modes and classic standards. This band is unstoppable when it comes to turning age-old melodies (like "Tizita" or "Anchihoye Lene") upside down and inside out until they emerge as molten new works, often spontaneously. Mergia's original compositions (like "Yegle Nesh") shine brighter than ever here as well. Moving from keyboard to organ to accordion to melodica, he deftly switches instruments _ often during the same song. Mergia at 77 years old seems to be working harder than musicians half his age. "Pioneer Works Swing (Live)" brings into focus the kind of onstage group improvisation and deadly solo passages that reach for places Mergia and the band have never gone, on festival and club stages across four continents. Now that Mergia has released two new recordings along with four classic reissues, he is eager to let everyone hear what he's been doing on the road since he re-took the global stage for his victory laps. So much more than an old act from yesteryear, Mergia balances his legendary Ethiopian recordings with good old fashioned sweat-soaked live concert triumphs such as the one we have here.

The next Awesome Tapes Africa release is by Penny Penny, a legendary pop singer and current politician from South Africa. Shaka Bundu is his 1994 debut LP, a genre-defining Shangaan disco record of Xitsonga language anthems that launched the impoverished record label janitor into national renown.