"Ochun Mi"

Afrodesia’s new CD begins with a surprising blend of slow, Shona mbira from Zimbabwe and the deep undertow of brassy Nigerian afrobeat.  Its anthemic vocals move between English and Shona, delivered by two robust female voices, harmonizing, wailing, and trading vocal fragments in tight, rhythmic dialogue.  From the start, the music telegraphs competence in African music, but also originality.  If you’re looking for orthodoxy of any sort, look elsewhere.  This California-based ensemble is part of a new wave of American Afropop bands, not content simply to draw inspiration from recordings, but driven to travel and learn from their sources directly.  At the same time, the musicians have not thrown out their rock and pop pasts.  Those singers, Lara Maykovich and Maya Doran, have experiences in Ghana and Cuba, as well as obvious familiarity with Shona music from Zimbabwe.  They also know how to deliver a pop song with universal appeal. 

Lagos by Bus commemorates the entire band’s intrepid, overland journey from Ghana into Nigeria, where they opened for Femi Kuti at the legendary Lagos nightclub, the Shrine, home of Africa’s most widely imitated modern genre—afrobeat.  Afrobeat, with its funky grooves, trenchant brass arrangements, and feisty call-and-response vocals, is the glue that binds these nine original tracks.  But along the way, we get mbira as well as guitar-driven boogie from Zimbabwe, an Afro Cuban homage to the healing saint Babalu-aye, and on “Everyday,” the two lead women singing in Ghana’s Ga language over a funky, brass and electric guitar backbeat.  “Bus Driver” opens with the provocative line, “burn what your mother gave you,” and its power to displace and transform an African proverb is mirrored in the music, which shifts from a rhythmic, vocal intro into spare, melodic funk, then reverb-drenched reggae, a cacophonous brass interlude and ultimately, a racing afrobeat finale.

African and American pop traditions find deep common ground in the work of many contemporary afrobeat bands.  Afrodesia’s palette is still broader—love those Afro Cuban religious music on “Agayu (king of the volcano)”—but it still benefits from afrobeat’s roots in the likes of James Brown funk.  Refracted three times over, those grooves lose none of their power to move dancing feet.  Such confident and inventive fusion offers further evidence of a healthy future for US-based Afropop.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org