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African Discographies

Greetings, Platterbugs!

Updated 2 January 2026

My Best of the Year 2025 is HERE with a podcast too

New Music

& a new Batata remix from a Moroccan Dj

"Baltimore," the Randy Newman song, from Winston McAnuff & Johnny Osbourne, Inna de Yard

New video from Canalón de Timbiquí featuring Nidia Góngora (via Ellen K-N)

"Beja Power": Noori & his Dorpa Band, live (via Bob-a-loup)

Tiny Desk concert from Brasil, with Manoel & Felipe Coerdeiro

Iuna Falcão visual album "Umami" (via Thorsten Bednarz)

and while we are in Bahia, here is a live show from BaianaSystem "JoãoRock 2025"

News

Latest Muzikifan Podcast

Hanging Loose: rounding out the year with music from all over, including OK Jazz, reggae, highlife, salsa, and the Duke

EXCAVATED SHELLAC: VOICES (Dust-to-Digital DTD-61)

Jonathan Ward returns with another in his series of elegantly packaged anthologies of rediscovered 78s from his collection. While it is now possible to find archives of century-old music on line, such as the newly launched website playing music from the University of California Santa Barbara archives, it's no use jumping in without context or you quickly get lost, and this is where you need a guide like Ward who spans continents and takes whole eras and musical style in his stride as he curates the gems and situates them in the world for us. There are sixteen tracks here from familiar stops like Madagascar or India, to less-traveled spots like Bahrain and Mauritania. In addition we visit Mexico, Georgia, Mali, Turkey, Portugal, Brasil, Albania, and Morocco. The now-celebrated gravelly Tuvan throat singing style starts us off with "The Chestnut horse with cup-like hooves." You can imagine playing this for friends and having them guess where the songs are from "— Portugal"! (easy) or else just taking it as a flow, like a podcast or a focussed session, like his earlier Reeds & Strings sets. Dust-to-Digital has done major important work on the musical heritage of Africa (Opika Pende: Africa at 78) and the 2CD set of Hugh Tracey field recordings, Listen All Around: The Golden Age of Central and East African Music; they have also taken us to Morocco (Paul Bowles 1959 recordings), but this is not meant be a heavy definitive historical set, just a fun group of tunes to enjoy in the moment. In some ways it's a supplement to Ward's 2021 4-CD set called Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World's Music. So there you have it. A quick tour of the back catalog of Dust-to-Digital will show you all the wonderful once-lost music, not just that recovered by Ward, but you can explore a privately driven project that is as important in its own way as the Smithsonian or Library of Congress collections of field recordings. Outstanding to me on this new disc, are a rocking (& exceedingly scarce) track from Panama of drum and chant music, Lupe Posada from Mexico with classic "weepy" guitar and vocals that Ward calls "drunkenly howling at the moon." The guitar is played by a musician who calls himself a bouquet of chicharón (pork crackling). This 1931 piece was recorded in Los Angeles. From Brasil we hear Mota da Mota with "São Benedito é oro só," a heavy Afro-Brasilian piece also from 1930 or 1931. From Mozambique comes a very South African-sounding piece in a style known as "Shangaan guitar" which eventually developed into marrabenta; apparently Eric Gallo sent singers to London to record and this is crystal clear (I wonder how long the round-trip boatride was!). "Orira," an unaccompanied polyphonic piece from Georgia, with yodeling and handclaps, is also startling and compelling. There are people who collect rare records in order to hog them and brag that they alone have them; others who occasionally let some out into the world but don't seem to know what they have (like R. Crumb), and then great archivists like Ward who are willing to do the work to explain where the music comes from and situate it for us, and labels like Dust-to-Digital giving it voice once again.

LENINE
EITA (Casa 9)

I am sure I've said this before, but if Lenine was singing in English he would be considered one of our great songwriters like Paul Simon, Randy Newman or Carol King. This is a welcome return to music by him after a decade, even if he is lumped into the MPB category (which he rejects saying he plays a different kind: Musica Planetaria Brasileira). He presented the songs as a suite of video singles, cleverly blended together, with tributes to his parents and friends, as well as forerunners like Nana Vasconcelos & Hermeto Pascoal who are touchstones for him. Another Northeasterner, Maria Bethania also appears on "Family Photos"; each song has a different dedicatee and a different musical approach. I was quite distracted by the slick video of this album, so I had not paid close attention to the music and songs until I downloaded it. Lenine has well established themes, musical styles he leans on, which is good, and the arrangements are perfect. The opener "Confie en mim (trust in me)," references his 1999 hit "Paciencia." We have all become so selfish, there is no more empathy, he points out. So this loss of trust is one of the themes. I love the way he is attuned to everyday sounds and ambient noise: nature, birdsong, thunder and rain, simple acoustic guitar, a needle dropping on a record. Apparently he went into a long depression when Covid hit and felt he had nothing more to say. His son Bruno Giorgi snapped him out of it, which is welcome for those of us who adore him. Bruno also did the arrangements for the new album. Without understanding it fully, I get the feeling he has been paying attention to street poetry, livros do cordel, which is dying out in Brasil, but still clinging to life in the Northeast where he is from. But some of the lyrics ("Malassombro [bad shadow]") and the cover which is a simple linocut, suggest this. The last number of the brief half-hour long album, "Motivo," also features accordeon which brings us back to his Pernambucan roots.

Most recent reviews

(click on maps at the top of the page to get to continent of choice)

December 2025

Dr Nico presents African Fiesta Sukisa &
Roger Izeidi presents African Fiesta Vita Matata are both filed in Congo Classics part 2
Noura Mint Seymali is filed in Arabia part 3
Syran Mbenza's Rumba Africa is filed under Music of Congo 4
Pelengana Blo's Hunter Folk vol II is found in Mali part 6
Son Palenque's latest is filed in Colombia part 3
Africa Shangazi is filed in Kenya & Tanzania part 3

November 2025

Bizimungu Dieudonne from Rwanda, is filed under African miscellany
Philip Tabane and Malombo's Sangoma is filed in South Africa part 2
Los Wemblers can be found in Peru part 2
The Last Poets' Africanism is filed in USA part 2

October 2025

I put Cheikh Lo's latest, Maame, in Senegal part 4
The return of Radio Tarifa can be discovered in Euro misc
Salsa Dura from the Discos Fuentes Vaults is bound for Colombia part 3
Alhaji K. Frimpong, both Black and Blue albums are reviewed in Ghana part 2

September 2025

Mahotella Queens' latest is filed in South Africa, part 2
Ahmed Mukhtar and Ignacio Lusardi Monteverde's Al-hambra can be found in Old World misc
Alick Nkhata's Radio Lusaka is heard in Zambia
Nadir Ben is filed in Algeria
Los Estrellas del Caribe &
Grupo Son San are found in Colombia part 3

July 2025

Edna Martinez is filed in world miscellany, though her music is from Colombia
Music for a Revolution is definitely from Guinea
Gasper Nali and his babatoni can be found in Malawi
Haris Pilton and Balkan Voodoo Orchestra is in the Balkan and Gypsy section
Petit Goro's Dogon Blues went to Mali, part six!

...

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A DISCOGRAPHY OF DOCTEUR NICO
By Alastair Johnston

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