Description
Made in London, these recordings were issued originally by the Zonophone record label over three years from late 1927.
The first West African Zonophone recordings date from 1922, when the Reverend J. J. Ransome-Kuti — Fela's grandfather — travelled from Nigeria to Britain, to record Christian hymns in Yoruba. Notables of 1925 sessions included the Pan-African activist Ladipo Solanke, who had come to Britain three years earlier to study Law; and Roland Nathaniels, also resident in Europe at this time, who soon afterwards recorded for Odeon in Germany, before returning to the Zonophone studios in 1927 (probably doubling as an A and R man).
These records are unhitched from the protocols of a white listenership. You can hear Caribbean influences in the music of the West African Quintet, and the promise of highlife in Harry Quashie, but — setting aside a handful of guitar-based songs — the performances here disavow fusion. This is folk, not popular music, living by word-of-mouth, better suited to small, community-based gatherings than concert halls — resilient, elemental roots music from the West African underground of 1920s Britain, encrypted with messages home about life here.
