Cazumbi African Garage

Doctor Nico and African Fiesta – Save Me

Les Krakmen – Krakmen Twist!

Teta Lando – Muato Wa N\'gingila
From: Cazumbi African Sixties Garage Vol. 1 (No Smoke, 2009)

In the last year No Smoke has released two African garage rock compilations.  The second was released just a few months ago, however this post features songs from the first released at the beginning of the year.  This compilation is really interesting.  Many people have been digging around into the archives of highlife, afrobeat and many other african genres from the 50’s and onward lately, but there were many bands on the continent playing fuzzed out R and B, blues and rock and roll.

What is really interesting is that in the 60s and 70s you could hear many american and western bands emulating some of the sounds found in African genres and being adopted by Cymande, Parliament, Curtis Mayfield and others to some extent.  The Cazumbi compilation features bands in these areas adapting instead to more americanized rock and blues forms.  It’s kind of a weird wormhole thing going on as many american genres can be traced back to some of the original sounds and scales of African music. It makes for some incredibly interesting garage rock and some new takes that results in some very funky, very fuzzed out rock.

Save Me is a cover of an Aretha Franklin song and has a small little drum kit, and a rumbling bass over some great vocals.  You can just feel the sound on this one, the music rides low and the vocal rips high above letting your brain reside in a steady middle zone, surfing the expansion between the two.

The Krakmen start out their signature Twist with a standard blues scale before the vocals come in shouting over the top like Wooly Bully before dissapearing and letting the guitar pick up and dive into jumpy solo.  Later a sax comes in and it sounds like King Curtis’ sqawking sax when he played with the Coasters.  The song dissapears sounding like it could have gone on for another 10 minutes and that probably wouldnt have been a bad thing.

The last song I struggle to call garage rock, other than its fuzzed out nature.  But it doesn’t matter.  They found this song and it deserved to show up somewhere.  This is a spaced out spiritual over some sparse bongos, soothing back vocals and a little bit of electric guitar. If Save Me is the lead up int he first act and Krakmen Twist highlights the action of the 2nd, Muato Wa N’gingila is the music as as the day ends and things fade to the titles.