Bulayo [LP]

Various Artists - Bulayo [LP]

Acoustic guitar masters from East and Central Africa, an expansion of Mississippi's beloved African Guitar Box project._x000B__x000B_In 1979 and 1980, a young British-Kenyan musician named John Low hit the road to learn finger-style guitar from his heroes. He traveled across Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, and Zambia. He visited giants like Jean-Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo, and Emmanuel Mulemena, whose records sold hundreds of thousands of copies across the continent in the 1950s and 60s. He also documented brilliant but previously under-recorded artists like Tanzanias Francis Kitime and Kenyas Mtonga Wanganangu._x000B__x000B_Regardless of status, John approached each artist humbly, as a student. He recorded in homes, village squares, and watering holes. The sessions are intimate and casual, the artists at ease. Its a transporting and profound listening experience - children laughing, glasses clinking, the thump of the Marantz cassette deck, and Johns single mic moving through space, sometimes documenting the vocals, sometimes zeroing in on the right hand against the strings._x000B__x000B_Five decades later, these practice tapes provide a rare glimpse into how fingerstyle guitar was actually played for family and friends, outside the tense confines of commercial studios._x000B__x000B_Some of these songs appeared on John Storm Roberts out-of print Original Music compilations, which inspired the African Guitar Box. Others have never been made publicly available. All have been expertly restored and remastered from the original tapes by Andrew Walter (Honest Jons, Abbey Road). John Lows liner notes and lyric translations provide insights into the recording context, and Tanzanian music scholar John Kitimes intro gives the musicians perspective. Licensed from John Low and the artists, pressed at Chicagos Smashed Plastic.