African

This is the first in Soul Jazz Records’ new series of one-off pressings of limited-edition 1000 copies vinyl-only releases of Afro-funk/Afro-beat exact-replica, super-rare albums that were previously only ever released in Nigeria.

The series starts with Kollington Ayinla’s celebrated 1978 album ‘Blessing,’ a rare lost classic of Nigerian Fuji music, featuring Ayinla’s sharp political lyrics together with his new band Fuji ’78. ‘Blessing’ blends the heavily percussive style of Fuji music with a stunning array of modern instruments, including synthesizers, Bata drums and guitars, to create one of the most forward-thinking and heavily danceable sounds ever to come out of Nigeria – a highly successful mixture of profound Fuji rhythms and Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat.

Kollington Ayinla ranks alongside his friend and competitor Ayinde Barrister as the two most important artists to dominate Fuji music from its inception in the 1970s through to the 1990s by which time it had grown to become one of the most popular dance genres in Nigeria.

At the start of the 1980s Ayinla started his own record company, Kollington Records, to release his music and remains to this day an extremely prolific artist, having recorded over 50 albums, most of which have never been released outside of Nigeria.

Soul Jazz Records new ‘Apala: Apala Groups in Nigeria 1967-70’ is the first ever collection of Apala music to be released outside of Nigeria.

The album focusses on a wide selection of recordings made in Nigeria in the 1960s, a time when Apala music was at the height of its popularity. Apala is a deeply rhythmical, hypnotic and powerful musical style that combines the striking nasal-style vocals and traditions of Islamic music, the Agidigbo (thumb piano), and the equally powerful drumming and percussion rhythms and techniques of the Yoruba of Nigeria.

The most significant figure in Apala music is undoubtedly Haruna Ishola who features throughout this album. Ishola holds an almost mythological status in his role as populariser of Apala music in Nigeria. Ishola’s singing was believed to be so powerful that, without proper restraint, it could kill the recipient of his music.

Apala is a popular music that also functioned as a form of cultural resistance – Apala music involved no western instrumentation and is sung in the Yoruba language, its aesthetic an implicit cultural rejection of the British Empire’s colonial rule over Nigeria which lasted from 1901 until independence in 1960.

Apala music was popular and widely accepted in Nigeria due to its philosophical and profound lyrical content alongside the complex rhythmic patterns of this heavily percussive style, which highlighted many of the percussion instruments of south-west Nigeria.

Apala is one of a number of popular urban styles of music that came out of Nigeria in the 20th century and sits alongside the more well-known (in the West) styles of Fuji, Highlife, Juju and Afrobeat. Of these modern forms Apala remains perhaps the most ‘roots’ style (sometimes described as ‘neo-traditional’) due to the authenticity of its sound. It has similar Islamic roots to other neo-traditional styles of Nigeria – including Waka and Sakara – examples of which are also included on this collection contextualising the music of Apala.

These recordings were originally made and released locally by Decca and EMI Records as well as a variety of independent labels in Nigeria and have never been released outside of the country before. Soul Jazz Records are releasing this album as a deluxe double gatefold vinyl (+ download code), CD, slipcase and booklet, both containing full text and photography.

Seriously rare, killer and classic Nigerian 70s Afro-Funk, Afro-Disco & Afro-Rock tunes bought together.

Originally released as a now-long-out-of-print collectors’ 7” RSD box, this fully expanded album release now also includes extra tracks from Sonny Okosuns, Wings, Chief Kollington Ayinla and more.

Soul Jazz Records’ Nigeria Soul Power 70 album showcases the influence of funk, rock and disco on Nigerian music during the 1970s

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While for many people the fusion of funk and jazz music with Nigerian rhythms and aesthetics began with Fela Kuti and his afro-beat sound, in fact this can be traced further back to the phenomena of the 1960s Nigerian artists and house bands in nightclubs and hotels who interpreted US soul and pop music with a local flavour and none more so than Geraldo Pino, the ‘African James Brown’ who features heavily in this collection. Other similarly inspired Nigerian funk and soul artists featured here included Tony Grey and his Ozimba Messengers and Don Bruce and The Angels.

Nigeria Soul Power 70 includes a number of tracks from the group Wings originally known as BAF (Biafran Air Force) Wings, an army band formed during the Biafran civil war in Nigeria. The groups’ heavy mixture of funk, rock and African styles was popular among many Nigerian groups at the time.

Beneath the shadow of the few Nigerian artists who signed international recording deals in the 1970s – Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Chief Ebenezer Obey – lies a vast wealth of largely undiscovered musical transmutation and cultural cross-pollination, and included here are heavy afro-funk/rock and disco tracks from artists such as the legendary Sonny Okosuns as well as rare cuts from little-known outside of Nigeria - groups such as Colomach and MFB. Most of these obscure artists signed to major labels in Nigeria in the commercial slipstream that opened up as Philips, Decca and EMI tried to emulate the international success of the big three international Nigerian artists.

Finally featured here is Kollington Ayinla, one of the co-founders of Nigerian Fuji music, who gives us perhaps the heaviest of all tracks on this album. Ayinla is the great moderniser of the Fuji sound and in the late 1970s began adding Bata drums and synthesizers to his authentic music to create a powerful and heavy new fusion of traditional and modernist aesthetics, embracing both new technology and experimentation while rooted firmly in Nigerian historical lineage.

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Nigeria Soul Power 70 is released as a heavyweight gatefold double vinyl LP (+ free download code), deluxe slipcase CD and digital album.

‘Synchro Sound System & Power’ features the music of Nigeria Fuji Machine, which includes some of Nigeria's finest ‘Fuji’ master drummers and singers, and is newly recorded by Soul Jazz Records in Lagos.

Fuji is the heavily percussive and improvisational style of Nigerian popular music, at once modern and yet deeply rooted in the traditional Islamic Yoruba culture of Nigeria.

Here on this album Nigeria Fuji Machine’s striking and powerful lead vocalist Taofik Yemi Fagbenro soars above a wild and energetic backdrop of polyrhythms played on traditional talking drums, trap drums, electronic and street percussion to create a powerful wall of intense sound.

Fuji is hi-energy street music, heavily percussive which evolved out of the Islamic celebration of Ramadan, which became a major event in mid-20th century Lagos. Groups of young men walked through Muslim neighbourhoods at night singing improvised ‘wéré’ music to the accompaniment of pots, pans, drums, bells and anything else available, waking believers for the early morning prayer. By the early 1970s this music had crossed-over into popular Nigerian culture where it came to be known as Fuji, first made popular by the artist Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, as the music began to be performed commonly at parties and social events.

In the 1970s and 1980s three Nigerian artists – King Sunny Adé, Chief Ebonezer Obey and Fela Kuti – all secured international major record deals bringing popularity to the Nigerian musical styles of Juju (Adé and Obey) and Afro-Beat (Fela Kuti’s unique mixture of highlife, funk and jazz) abroad, but in the process ignoring much of Nigeria’s rich musical landscape. Fuji is, alongside Highlife, Juju, Afro-Beat, Sakara, Afro-Reggae, Waka, Igbo rap, Apala and numerous others – one of these central styles of Nigerian music.

The singer Barrister described the music as follows: ‘Fuji music is a combination of music consisting of Sakara, Apala, Juju, Aro, Afro, Gudugudu, and possibly Highlife.’ Juju performer King Sunny Adé described the difference between the two styles of Fuji and Juju somewhat competitively thus: ‘Fuji music is more or less like my music without guitars. It’s like I’m singing in a major key and they are singing in a minor. The music itself is the music of Juju music.’

Today Fuji remains a powerful popular music with deep and powerful Islamic roots which continues to modernise and attract new generations of young Nigerians and Nigeria Fuji Machine’s ‘Syncho Sound System & Power’ is a powerful and intense musical experience.

This album is released as a limited-edition heavyweight vinyl edition (+free download code), deluxe CD and digital format.

Soul Jazz Records’ latest album ‘Yoruba! Songs and Rhythms for the Yoruba Gods in Nigeria’ is newly recorded in Lagos, Nigeria.

The album is co-produced by Laolu Akins, founding member of the legendary 1970s Nigerian Afro-Funk/Rock group Blo, and Soul Jazz Records label head Stuart Baker.

This album features songs honouring the Nigerian gods of the Yoruba traditional religion – Yemoja, Obatala, Ogun, Sango and others – as well as a selection of instrumental cuts focussing on the Bata and Dundun drums. The album comes complete with extensive text and photography (40-page outsize booklet in CD/ full text in gatefold double vinyl + inners) showing the influence of Yoruba culture throughout the world and the social and historical context for the music contained here.

The enormous impact of Yoruba and West African music and culture is worldwide – from the first Afro-centric explorations of African-American jazz musicians in the 1950s such as Art Blakey, Randy Weston and Dizzy Gillespie, the explosion of Nu Yorican Latin music in New York City starting in the 1960s – Mambo, Boogaloo, Latin funk and soul - through to the sacred and powerful Afro-derived music of the religions of Santería in Cuba, Candomblé in Brazil and Voodoo in Haiti, which all came in to existence on account the Atlantic slave trade which began over 400 years ago. On a wider scale West African music remains the primary root of all African-American musical forms – from New Orleans jazz to Bronx rap, gospel, soul and more.

Yoruba! features an array of local master drummers led by Olatunji Samson Sotimirin and singers (featuring the lead vocals of Janet Olufanmilayo Abe) performing heavyweight Afro-rhythms, with talking drums, Bata and Dundun drums and a mass of percussion in these deep spiritual and sacred songs used to honour and worship the traditional and ancient Yoruba gods in Nigeria, West Africa.

'Hypnotic, spiritual rhythms' FACT Magazine

Soul Jazz Records’ are releasing Tee Mac’s ‘Night Illusion’, a lost classic Nigerian Afro soul meets disco boogie funk album originally released in Nigeria in 1980. Impossibly hard to find, the record remains practically unknown outside of Nigeria.

Tee Mac Omatshola Iseli is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger and features on Soul Jazz Records’ recent collection Nigeria Soul Fever – Afro Funk Disco and Boogie alongside Joni Haastrup, Christy Essien and others, as well as on a recent compilation ‘Nepa Oh Nepa’ (released on Hot Casa earlier this year). 

The timelessness of this soulful, ground-breaking funk jazz lost masterpiece ‘Night Illusion’ leads to comparisons with James Mason’s legendary lost classic album Rhythm of Life, with his unique individualism and intensity hinting at the boogie funk of groups such as Mass Production and Slave so loved by artists such as Moodyman and Theo Parrish.  While Fela Kuti is now a cultural icon of Nigerian music throughout the world, the recent crossover success of William Onyeabor shows just how much undiscovered Nigerian music remains waiting to be explored outside of the country.

Tee Mac was born in Lagos, the son of a Nigerian princess and a Swiss diplomat. He picked up the flute at age 7 and ten years later was studying classical musical in Switzerland under his uncle the composer J.J. Direndirger. Returning to Lagos, Nigeria in 1970 he formed the heavyweight afro rock group Tee Mac and Afro Collection (which included Johnny Haastrup on keyboards and The Lijadu Sisters on vocals). This band was famously joined by the legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker who came to Nigeria to play with them in 1971 (captured in the film Ginger Baker in Africa).

At age 24, Tee Mac moved to Germany where he co-wrote and recorded the European disco group Silver Convention (whose ‘Fly Robin Fly’ became number one in the USA charts). 

Tee Mac continues to live in Lagos today and travels the world as a composer – one of whose pieces is The City of Mer Kailash (2009), a two-hour ballet featuring over 60 dancers and a 100+ piece orchestra.

Soul Jazz Records are releasing this lost classic Nigerian album as a strictly limited-edition 1000 copies worldwide exact-replica artwork reproduction LP (+ sleevenotes + free download), CD and digital album.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Nigeria Soul Fever is their first release to explore the vast wealth of Nigerian music recorded in the 1970s. The new album comes with introductory sleevenotes by Bill Brewster (author of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life).

Packed-full with Afro-Funk, Disco and Boogie all from Nigeria, this triple album/double CD set brings together a stunning collection of diverse West African sounds. Whilst a small handful of the artists featured (Joni Haastrup, Tee Mac, Christy Essien) have seen the light of day outside Africa, this is essentially a collection of killer tracks by an array of artists completely unknown outside of Nigeria. 

Artists such as Don Bruce & The Angels, Akin Richards & The Executives, Angela Starr, Jimmy Sherry & The Music Agents. It’s no surprise that these records are extremely rare and expensive to buy individually so this album will save you going broke trying to find them.

These recordings were made at a time when Nigeria’s trade restrictions banned imported records. Whilst new musical trends (such as American soul, funk, disco etc) entered and influenced the country, the local music scene remained just that – local. Consequently, these recordings remain practically unknown to anyone outside of the country.

Nigeria Soul Fever is released as triple-album vinyl + download, double-CD digi-pack and digital download. This album follows on from Soul Jazz Records’ 1960s collection Nigeria Freedom Sounds, released last month, and will be followed by the reissue of the incredibly rare and groovy Nigerian 1980 disco boogie funk album Tee Mac’s Night Illusion.

"Excellent new soul jazz compilation Nigeria Soul Fever: Afrofunk, Disco And Boogie: West African Disco Mayhem!" THE GUARDIAN

READ Guardian top 10 Nigerian Disco full feature here