#crate digger

This collection, curated by Alphaville Records’ Tom Cottrell, includes both the very famous and the lesser known. Miriam Makeba is the disc’s biggest star, here represented by her 1978 cover of Jorge Ben’s “Xica da Silva.” The song tells the story of a slave who rose to become part of the Brazilian nobility, and Makeba’s slinky, syncopated version — all slanted jazzy piano chords and undulating bass — lilts and swaggers under her. It is probably the best-known cut in this compilation, but also the best. Also at the more famous end of things, the Lidaju Sisters (one of whom eventually married Ginger Baker) contribute “Danger” which pulses with high, whistling keyboards and a squalling electric guitar in the background  The cut’s adrenalized girl group choruses make it sound like a Supremes song gone slightly off the rails.

A lot of these tracks blur the lines between funk and disco, with swoops of strings and shushing high hat rhythms and giddy massed vocals. “Kilimanjaro, Take Us Higher” by the South African singer Letta Mbulu is one of these, sleek and synthesized and hedonistic; it makes perfect sense that the artist sang on an early Michael Jackson song. Yet others feel much more raw and rooted – like Carmen Ezumah’s “Tala La,” a torrid funk cadence overlayed with eerie, vibrato-fluttering singing or Akofa Akoussah’s wah-flickering, horn blasting “Tango.”    

Nearly all of these women were vocalists, not players of instruments, and if the barriers against singing in public were high, imagine how much more difficult it might be to gain access to an instrument (and the time to play it) in a traditional society where gender roles are strictly enforced. Mona Finnih, here represented by “Ani Kewa” was not just a singer but a composer and bandleader in Lagos during the 1970s; a quick google check finds her still writing and recording.  

Many but not all of these tracks have been anthologized elsewhere, in most cases taking up that one or two slot space for women artists on non-gendered African funk compilations. It’s nice to have them all together though, spanning countries and styles and levels of outside recognition. It is, indeed, a garden, small but well-tended and making space for things that normally get crowded out.