Ndanka ndanka mooy japa golo chi nyaay is a Wolof proverb meaning “slowly slowly (it) catches the monkey in the bush” (~ no hurry in Africa).
Ndanka ndanka…also is a running gag between my colleague Abdoulaye and me – and it somehow describes my pleasant anticipation for the really good stuff out there on the internet: passionate music collectors (aka connaisseur de l’art) that have somehow managed to share their secret passion for the good old & rare tunes with a much bigger audience through regularly updated blogs & even full documentaries. Actually, this is what collecting music is all about. Sharing and enjoying all those stories behind artists who never really made it to the *official* (mainstream?) Hall of Fame.
(via)
Frank actually reminds me of Duncan Brooker – another crazy DJs who spends his life chasing old “plates”. If you like sites like VoodooFunk, AwesomeTapes from Africa, Benn loxo du taccu, AfroFunkForum, Akwaaba Sound System and Analoge Africa (to name just a few popular ones) and if music ethnology is part of your various interests, then these films are just for you. Enjoy!
“In some cases I’m the first person to talk to these guys about their music in thirty years … I’ve seen incredible things, heard extraordinary stories. In one instance I heard about people looking for a place to live be cause things have gotten so shitty in some of these places , that they would just go into the vaults of recording studios and just grab all the tapes, and pressing plates and old acetates and just burn it all just to make room for a place to sleep. It began to dawn on me that if I didn’t try to save this music no one would. I decided to build an archive and rather that just bootleg the music, like others often do, I’d start trying to get the license and see what more I could discover.”
– Duncan Brooker
THANK YOU, FRANK & DUNCAN!
(I’ve mentioned Legends of Afrobeat three years ago and am still hoping for a release soon. Ndanka ndanka…)
And finally, another interesting documentary, this time on (contemporary) musicians in Kinshasa:
“It’s all here…this (cultural) wealth”. – But do I say? :-)