When was the last time you listened to music from Togo?!?! Even the biggest world music nerds seem to not be so well versed in this tiny West African nation’s rich musical heritage. We’ve heard it all: that it has poor cultural heritage, that all of the talent is sucked up by neighboring Benin, that there simply is no infrastructure in Togo to enable artists to come up with anything half decent.
Well…. it sounds to us like all of the above are well contradicted by one man: Arc Djebe. The Lomé native has been hustling on the guitar for years now – over two decades! His talent took him from Cameroon to Côte d’Ivoire, yet to this day Arc Djebe has been doing everything himself: auto-production, and auto-distribution. Which means a permanent hustle, in a country where music producers are scarce to say the least. With help from friends, occasional grants and live shows, Arc Djebe managed to record 4 mini albums, including this last one. Dagbénéva means “happiness” or “quest of happiness” in Ewe, the most common language along the Togolese coast. Six potent tracks, recorded at home, in Togo, with his band Zozodede.
You can grab the full album directly from Arc Djebe’s Bandcamp store, or from iTunes. You can also download this great great track Kumble (“power”) for freeeeeee:
Nnamdi Moweta, host of KPFK‘s Afrodicia, invites Akwaaba yetagain to share some of the sounds and stories we gathered on our recent trip to Ghana and Togo. Nnamdi is one of our number one supporters, and it’ll be a real pleasure to bring him some freshness from the Motherland… tune in today from 2 to 4pm PST (GMT – 8), either at 90.7fm in the Los Angeles area, or listen online at kpfk.org.
It’s official!! We are letting you take over 4×4’s vocals to make whatever you see fit out of this massive banger from Ghana… we heard this song playing 20 times a day on the radio, at outdoor bars, at weddings… now is the chance to see where else this track can end up!! Download the acapella track from Soundcloud above, and upload your remix to our dropbox by September 15:
The prize… is getting released on one of the most forward thinking labels of African music, he he. We will put out an EP with our favorite remixes, as we did for Ze Bula and Combination. Download the original song in nearly any format below – we just ask for your email, cool?
LONG OVERDUE!!!! We know it, and we are slightly ashamed of it… well not that ashamed really, because good things are well worth waiting for. And we are proud to announce very good things!!
At last, the winners of the Jali Bakary Konteh remix contest are in…
From Fulda / Würzburg Germany, our friends Hat+Hoodie pieced together a massive banger:
From Glasgow, Scotland, we couldn’t help but bring back the dubbed out sound of Voltergeist:
From San Francisco, California, we are excited to feature a deep cut by Señor Oz of Afrolicious:
And last but not least, a newbie on our radar, artfx! from Berlin, Germany:
This EP will come out in September, as soon as we get final cuts and master them… thanks again to all of you who submitted their remix, it was a very tough call!!! And again, congratulations to the winners, we love your choons!!!
The album is ouuuuuut! Indulge into it, plenty PLENTY fresh sounds from the land of the Black Stars… listen below, buy directly from us here or go to iTunes.
And… you can still get this great track for FREEEEE… all we ask for is your email so we can send you occasional Akwaaba propaganda, nothing too serious!
Our friend Gervase de Wilde writes for the Guardian, and we’ve been secretly hoping he’d get Just A Band a feature in the paper… but as it turns out the band shows up in the travel section as a fine example of Nairobi’s lively music scene. No need to paraphrase, just click on the image!
