Buy anything from the World Music store and you can get the official CD from the Songlines Music Awards 2013 for just £1.99. Offer ends at 23:59 on Sunday, June 30. Learn more.
Buy anything from the World Music store and you can get the official CD from the Songlines Music Awards 2013 for just £1.99. Offer ends at 23:59 on Sunday, June 30. Learn more. |
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Product Description
Product Description
Direct from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania comes Jagwa Music, a crew of 8 youngsters playing intricate grooves at breakneck speed on traditional and makeshift percussion, a keyboard player going wild on a battered vintage Casio. Added to this are three relentless front persons - two breathtaking, spectacular dancers and a charismatic lead vocalist/MC, belting out songs about survival in the urban maze, unfaithful lovers and voodoo.
Known as Mchiriku, their music derives from popular dance styles, which underwent a transformation when the band adopted low-cost electronic keyboards and their gritty, distortion-laden sound. Jagwa Music and their peers were attracted by the Casio keyboard's lo-fi sound, hooking it up to vintage amps and megaphones. "Bongo Hotheads" was recorded live in front of a crowd of family, kids and curious neighbours at what has come to be called the Kuti Kavu Studio (but most still know it as Jolijo's backyard).
Jagwa Music are not only immensely popular in the poor suburbs of their hometown but their electrifying appearances at European festivals such as Roskilde have created a sensation. With their DIY attitude and creative use of noise they've been acclaimed as one of the most exciting bands around.
'Bongo Hotheads' includes two six minute bonus videos - 'Live in the Streets of Dar' and 'Live at Roskilde Festival.'
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Polyrhythmic Excellence
1 Oct 2012
By ATrainEnt
- Published on Amazon.com
As the Congotronics albums from Kinshasa demonstrate, one sound of young urban Africa is the shrill squeak of an antique Casio keyboard. This troupe from the 'burbs of Tanzania's Dar es Salaam (nicknamed "Bongo") combine distorted electronics with galloping rhythms hammered out on a battery of homemade drums and plastic pipes. Dubbed "mchiriku", it's crazed, urgent stuff with an incendiary live show - "We are the fighter plane," goes the boast - but the vocals are rich and tuneful and the lyrics full of homilies about respecting fellow citizens, the search for love and the timeless truth that "water does not flow uphill". -Neil Spencer, The Observer
If the internet reports about the band's legendary live sets are true, and they actually do routinely consist of two or more hours of this kind of intensity, Jagwa Music is probably unimaginably good in-person. However, until they tour the states, we have to be satisfied with this uniquely excellent album. -Sam Backer, Afropop Worldwide
And yeah, the music - seriously amazing, multi-rhythmic amazingness being amazing. The rhythm section (the largest, and loudest on this recording) are apparently oriented around a kind of `lead' drummer, and there's innumerable times on this record where you can just about perceive that it's suddenly got a smidge faster, but all the drummers are so entirely together that there's no real catching up - so either these are incredibly taught, rehearsed-to-all-hell recordings or it's a band who are just psychically intuitive with each other. -Kev Nickells, Freq
If the internet reports about the band's legendary live sets are true, and they actually do routinely consist of two or more hours of this kind of intensity, Jagwa Music is probably unimaginably good in-person. However, until they tour the states, we have to be satisfied with this uniquely excellent album. -Sam Backer, Afropop Worldwide
And yeah, the music - seriously amazing, multi-rhythmic amazingness being amazing. The rhythm section (the largest, and loudest on this recording) are apparently oriented around a kind of `lead' drummer, and there's innumerable times on this record where you can just about perceive that it's suddenly got a smidge faster, but all the drummers are so entirely together that there's no real catching up - so either these are incredibly taught, rehearsed-to-all-hell recordings or it's a band who are just psychically intuitive with each other. -Kev Nickells, Freq
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