Yes yes yes, another wicked mixtape to treat your ears to, on a strictly African tip this time. Awesome Tapes from Africa is a man like Brian Shimkovitz from NYC, who on his own blog of the same name, uploads mp3's of cassette tapes covering a cornucopia of African music.
It seems such a shame that so much excellent African music hardly gets heard because of difficulty in locating original vinyl and tapes, and a lack of Western record company-backed distrubution. So peeps like our man Bri, who document and champion this vast wealth of music, are as rare and lovely as the gems that they find.
The mix is a hour-long selection of tracks from Shimkovitz's blog; it is hosted on the XLR8R website, an online magazine in the States, who themselves have a great catalogue of podcasts worth checking out. The mix is neatly summarised on the website, but if you haven't listened to much African music before, it is a great place to start; and if have listened to the odd African album on the tip of the iceberg, this mix will help to delve into the glorious deep below the surface.
My stand out track on the mix is some relaxed Senegalese hip hop by Bill Diakhou (track 4; 18m31s), which wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack of a gritty French gangster film. However, all the tracks are killer, with a funky fresh African vibe, and the best thing is that you can go back to the Awesome Tapes from Africa blog and check out the tape they came from. You'll run out of time long before you run out of good music, thanks Bri!!
