Ayub Ogada -

Date: March, 1993
Release: CAROL 2335-2
Cover Art: view / download
Buy the Album

When Peter Gabriel started the Real World recording label in the late ’80s, he created an important new outlet for the distribution of the world’s foremost musical talents. At least, that was the idea. Like any other business venture, Real World has had its share of hits, but a lot of what comes out on their label is garbage, regardless of what continent the music hails from. Some discs, though, like this one by Kenyan musician Ayub Ogada, are absolute treasures.

Ogada plays the lyre-like Nyatiti, an instrument integral to the rituals and social customs of his Luo people. The music floats out hypnotically, inducing trance: plucked notes circle in soothing, drone repetitions, bathed in sleigh bells and some lightly rhythmic percussion. These are not the complex, pulse-accelerating rhythms of say, Afro-funkster Fela Kuti or Prince Nico Mbarga. Rather, this is an unhurried, playful music, perfect in its sparseness, that goes down easy.

Ogada’s mellifluous voice – part incantation, part invitation – anchors nearly every song, but is most beautiful on the slower tunes, such as “Kronkronhinko,” and “Obiero.” Check it out.

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