the musical selection from “World Africa” #206

Every Friday, The World Africa presents three new musical releases from or inspired by the continent. This week, time for electronic experiments with the Ivorian artist Kwenza, the Franco-Congolese duo Tshegue and the Ugandan group Arsenal Mikebe.

« Pain Condiment », de It does

Taking a banal everyday element to make it a hit. It is an art in which the Ivorians excel and it is not the singer Kwenza who will say the opposite, he who devotes to “condiment bread” – a sandwich well known to the Abidjanis – a piece that the Blanc Manioc label has retained for its compilation Nyamakala Beats n°4to be released on November 29. This intends to highlight “exceptional connections” born at the Maquis electroniq festival, the fourth edition of which will take place from December 6 to 8 in Abidjan, and show that “electronic hybridizations are not the preserve of the east coast of Africa”. The proof, therefore, with eleven pieces signed in particular by the Nigerian Aunty Rayzor and the Senegalese Ibaaku.

“Shuffle”, from Tshegue

Hybridization also with the duo Tshegue, whose music, described as “afropunk”, mixes in an epileptic trance genres as varied as electro, rock, blues or funk, all based on wild rhythms and songs in Lingala (and sometimes in French). Born from the meeting, in 2016, of the Congolese singer Faty Sy Savanet and the French percussionist Nicolas “Dakou” Dacunha, the group – whose name refers to the “shégués”, the street children of Kinshasa – published in mid-October his third EP, Argent, comprising six pieces certainly made for the dancefloor, but on which a wind of revolt blows. Like the bubbling Shuffle, presented as “the anthem of untamed youth”.

« Home Boiler », d’Arsenal Mikebe

Finally, head to Kampala, the mecca of electronic music in Africa thanks in particular to the Nyege Nyege Tapes label, to which we owe the first record of the group Arsenal Mikebe, Drum Machine, published in early September. In this opus of six pieces, the Ugandan ensemble formed by percussionists Ssentongo Moses, Dratele Epiphany and Luyambi Vincent de Paul, under the leadership of Portuguese “sound constructor” Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, combines a unique percussive instrument designed by master sculptor Henry Segamwenge and a legendary drum machine, the Roland TR-808, reprogrammed for the needs of the experience. The result is an avalanche of rhythms halfway between techno and traditional percussion.