Four songs for the fourth day of the week, Sound Travels Thursday travelled hard and flew fast. Into sounds like Francophonic grage rock from Montreal's Le Kid et les Marinellis, wicked Congolese music from Patcheko, hot hot afrobeat by way of Brazil's Bixiga 70 and Oumou Sangare, the queen of Malian Mali in the mix as well.
Bixiga 70 was what we started with and you can read more about them i n a post I dedicated to their new album Ocupai which by the way is pure fire. Ten instrumentals that will be instrumental in my groove when it gets just a wee bit warmer.
You know what's a damn shame? War in Congo; and the human tragedy of our need for her minerals and lack of morals in obtaining said substances. What's almost as big a tragedy, given the country's influence on the music of the whole continent, is how little we in the West hear it. (cue Sound Travels theme...). So today I gave you that taste in 6/8 time; btw 6/8 time signatures are so quintessentially African that they're literally in every culture on the continent. I played music from Patcheko, a dense dose of futuristic rumba with a touch of hip hop on the single "Tshaku".
Malian musical icon, Oumou Sangare in the mix with a bouncy cut called "Yala." Had a request for Ms Sangare on Saturday's request show and thought it desrved an encore. I get so lost in the search for the 'next' song that I forget the stuff that was once that 'next' sound. Truth is, I've been marinating in her music for years; her sound so good she's known as "The Songbird of Wassoulou." She started singing 'professionally' at five to help feed her family and music has been good business for her as she's taken that hustle straight to the top; she runs hotels, designs cars and is the queen of the scene in Mali.
Last up, some sweet garage rock en français from a group outta Montreal called Le Kid et les Marinellis. Not too much out there on them, but they do in fact rock and playing this is an act of pennance for skipping the request I got from a cool cat a couple weeks back for the Request Show... "T'es pas d'ici" translates to "You're Not From Here" if you were wondering.