Am I the only one who doesn't want my “African” music coming from kids whose wardrobe cost more than the annual income of the musicians they're jacking?
I shouldn't judge, I haven't heard VW's new album, they might be ripping off other poor countries by now. But in the event they're still Afro-pop, here's a lesson for you affable whities whose idea of culture is a Benetton ad with a black guy in it.
Thanks to Strut, we can look forward to a whole year of exploring underground South African music of the late 60s and 70s, as they're kicking off Next Stop… Soweto, a three-part series that will extend into summer 2010. The fist 20-song disc, which will be available February 1, delves into the golden age of mbaqanga–a fusion combining elements of rural Zulu music and harmony vocal styles with Western instrumentation.
With Next Stop… Soweto, Strut trace some of the amazing music that often
only appeared on short run 45s at the time, including tracks by smaller
and lesser known bands that plied their trade under apartheid during
the years before the tumultuous Soweto uprising of 1976. Thanks to several years of painstaking research and vinyl archaeology by compilers Duncan Brooker and Francis Gooding, we're able to hear the township sounds of South Africa without a yuppy filter.
