Sam Mangwana
You wish you looked this good in white fringe

Yesterday marked two great birthdays. Most importantly it was my wife’s birthday. We celebrated by going to Sam’s Club and buying a giant bag of shredded cheese. I know, we’re wild.

Another birthday that was celebrated yesterday (or thereabouts) is an audio blog that I’m very grateful to have stumbled upon: Benn Loxo du Taccu. Sites where hipster youth do their darndest to discover cool music before everyone else are a dime a dozen (like mine for example). A new one pops up every day. We can all thank Blogger for clogging the internet with more stories of getting drunk, pictures of people’s cats, and MP3s from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!. I should call it Clogger. Any schmuck with internet access can start an MP3 blog, but only a few have enough specialized knowledge and stick-to-it-ness to pull off a blog about African music that was primarily made after 1960.

Matt Yanchyshyn has been publishing BLT (as I like to call it) regularly and I’m grateful that he does. I really dig African pop music, but have never really had many ready sources to turn to for information and leads. I can name some of the better known African performers like Salif Keita, Geoffrey Oryema, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Daniel Owino Misiani & Shirati Band, but Matt can throw down more obscure artists complete with historical context like they are his childhood friends:

After 1959 most African nations started gaining independence. Portugal, then ruled by super-fun dictator Salazar, wasn’t so quick to free its African colonies. In fact the opposite happened: despite numerous uprisings by rebel groups Portugal upped its troop levels in Angola to 40,000 by 1964 and began a massive campaign of intimidation and repression. Angola became a police state in various stages of war for over a decade. To give you an idea of the scale of the conflict, up to 40,000 Angolans died fighting or as a direct result of the conflict between 1961-64.

…

This all came to a big halt when May, 1977, the new Angolan government silenced the arts community that it felt was critical of the new regime. Several well-known musicians and artists were murdered, including the two featured today, Urbano de Castro and David Ze. For years many of the records of the 1965-75 Angolan golden age were lost. Luckily, recent re-releases like the one featured today have brought the music back.

I wish I had stories like that to accompany the tracks I share.

Give a man an MP3 and his listens for a day. Give a man a quality MP3 site and he listens for the duration that the site exists. Today you get both.

Recommended Tracks: (Just click the link to begin downlaod)

• Nairobi / Tabu Ley Rochereau
• Muzina / Tabu Ley Rochereau (Right click/Cmd click this one to download)
• Bania Irene / Tabu Ley Rochereau
• Sala Noki Pascal / Tabu Ley Rochereau