"When people misuse you, give Him thanks" - Otis G Johnson
Listen to the show below!
Artist | Track | Album | Label | Year | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Otis G Johnson | Walk With Jesus | Everything: God Is Love 78 | Holy Spirit | 1978 | Lo-fi gospel minimal synth from Detroit. What a combination of words. This is the first outsider artist I have played on the program. He sings a little bit, got a drum machine playing in the back, and plays a bit on a Hammond Organ. There are probably many records just like this -- it's much easier to record by yourself even for genres that somewhat demand the participation of many -- they just haven't been found. Everything: God Is Love 78 was released on O.G. Johnson's own record label, Holy Spirit, where he mostly released his own records, including singles. But he did also operate two other labels that had other similarly obscure gospel artists... though not many. He's also been a DJ and host of gospel programs. This record was rereleased by the great Numero, one of many rerelease labels operating today. |
Omar Khorshid | Ah Ya Zain | Rhythms From the Orient | Voice of Lebanon | 1974 | 70s Egyptian bellydance music. This is particularly synthesizer-focused, which steers away from how this music would traditionally sound. Omer Khorshid was a guitarist from Cairo. After a lot of political turmoil in Egypt including shift from Soviet to USA support during the Cold War, the bread riots, and political repression of citizens, Khorshid moved to Lebanon to continue his music career which had just started getting along. That's where he produced much of his recorded output, including this record. |
Francis Bebey | Agatha | Fleur tropicale | Ozileka | 1976 | Cameroon singer-songwriter-tinged bikutsi. Bikutsi is a traditional folk music of the Ewondo people in Cameroon. Generally, Francis Bebey's discography (which is quite large) is more in line with a traditional bikutsi, most notably with 6/8 time signature. However, on Fleur tropicale, he used an instrument associated more with modern bikutsi style: the synthesizer. This record is heavy on the spoken word, as you can hear in this track, which in my mind partly earns it the singer-songwriter label. The rest is due to much of the lyrics on the record being written by Francis. |
Eddie Palmieri | Cobarde | Unfinished Masterpiece | Coco | 1975 | Descarga/salsa with jazz components from the ever-flourishing NYC salsa scene. The 70s were a big time for salsa; you had the rise of the Fania label, which had pretty much all of the big-time names from this era -- including Palmieri. This record, however, was put out by Coco, a label created by a former employee of Fania. This record is considered the peak of experimentalism in salsa, with this song being perhaps the most out-there showing of it. It really ramps up and gets crazier as the song goes on. The record itself is unfinished according to Palmieri, but Coco put it out regardless and used this 'unfinished' label as a way to market the album. |
Henri Guedon | Sainte-Marie | Cosmozouk Percussion | Epic | 1975 | Kreyol djaz (creole jazz) from Martinque. Kreyol djaz combines influences from various styles of French Caribbean music with jazz. This particular style of it though reflects the spread of salsa and other latin american music styles throughout the world. Guedon was a pioneer in exporting different types of latin music to France (Martinique has not left French ownership since the Napoleonic Wars). This record in particular fuses guaguanco, descarga, and guajira along with zouk, a sort of vocalist-focused dance/party pop music. This track is moreso a jazz fusion heater though. |
Jon Appleton | Chef D'Ouvre | Appleton Syntonic Menagerie | Flying Dutchman | 1969 | Musique concrete/sound collage from Hollywood. A collection of electronic soundscapes in a time where the concept of electronic music was mainly novelty, even when it did not carry any satirical edge like this does. I enjoy stuff like this because it really does break up the monotony of expected melodies and rhythms and such things like that. I don't mean to be pretentious, but... how about this: it's fun! Frozen lil' pizzas from Chef Boyardee! |
Cody Chesnutt | Can't Get No Betta' | The Headphone Masterpiece | One Little Indian | 2002 | The most well-known weirdo neo soul record, The Headphone Masterpiece, featuring German, Japan, Rastafarian, and UK flags on the cover without a semblance of connection to anything going on in the music. I'd recommend listening to the album yourself to truly experience it because a more accessible cut like this does not represent that weirdness very well. Same record label that put out most of Bjork's records for some reason also put out Cody Chesnutt's The Headphone Masterpiece as well. This was before The Roots covered his song "The Seed" a year later, which is what he's most known for. The record is sometimes a little goofy, mostly overtly sexual in the most absurd way -- but it is extremely stylistically experimental and adventurous in a way I have honestly never heard before in any soul music, even in recent stuff. It's really out there. |
William Onyeabor | Good Name | Good Name | Wilfilms | 1983 | Continuing on with the lo-fi elements here, here's some lo-fi synth funk from from Nigeria. Got electro elements in there as well: Roland TR-808 drum machine syncopation. Onyeabor was actually quite the success in Nigeria, enough for there to have recently been a Vice doc about him and his career titled Fantastic Man -- plus the millions of streams of his tunes on Spotify. Sort of as a side effect of afrobeat, the song is quite long, many of his songs are this way as others as well from this period. Despite the low fidelity being pretty strong here, the grooves are just as strong if not stronger. |
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