Cool Stuff

I think a lot of stuff pertaining to music (and especially music of different cultures) is pretty cool, so I had a difficult time narrowing my "cool stuff" down. I was most interested in learning more about the popular music of different cultures.

The first item I found: Congotronics. (Also known as Konono #1 but I like "congotronics" much more)
Congotronics is essentially electronic african music. The singing style is very similar and it uses many of the same traditional instruments (notice the thumb pianos and the gankogui, and barrel drums). However, there are a few modern instruments such as the snare drum.

Next I discovered "Afrobeat"

Afrobeat is a type of African-Funk music and was created in the 70s by Fela Kuti. Fela died in 1997, but his music is kept alive by his sons, former band members, and other musicians who have adopted this style.

Here is a music video made by one of Fela's sons, Feti Kuti. The instrumentation is pretty modern (includes saxophones, trombones, and snare drums) but the music is jazz-like in nature with much improvisation. Pay attention to the dancing and you'll notice what is called "traditional aesthetic booty dance". I did a wikipedia search on that type of dancing to learn more, but the first 100 results only provided links to more videos of this "booty dancing". If anyone knows more about this dance.. please enlighten me.

I also discovered this guy from West Africa, Abdoulaye Sylla (also known as Abou Sylla). He's a super-good African drummer and dancer and has toured all over teaching others about traditional dance and drumming. This video was taken when he was visiting NC. My favorite part is where he plays "Happy Birthday" on the balafon.

And finally, this last video is related to the one we watched today in class of the 2-year old playing the jali and balafon. I'm sure many of you have seen this, but it just goes to show that despite the geographical and cultural differences, we have a lot more in common than we realize :)