DESCRIPTION:
Ltd Repress Rock, Funk / Soul, Afrobeat, Funk, Disco - 14 Tracks - 14 Artists
Soul Jazz Records’ Nigeria Soul Power 70 album showcases the influence of funk, rock and disco on Nigerian music during the 1970s. Originally released as a now- long-out-of-print collectors’ 7” box, this fully expanded album release now also includes extra tracks from Sonny Okosuns, Wings, Chief Kollington Ayinla and more.
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 of 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.
Please note the information is done on a artist keyword match and data is provided by LastFM.
Warning! Deleting this artist may remove other artists and scrobbles from your library - please handle this with caution!
Note: You can view albums tagged as 'Various Artists' in your library here.
The term Various Artists is used in the recording industry to designate releases featuring contributions from multiple performers. It commonly appears on compilation albums or collaborative recordings where no single artist attribution applies. On digital platforms such as Last.fm, tracks may be listed under this designation when individual artist information is missing or incomplete in metadata, resulting in automatic grouping under the generic label.
In some cases, singles credited to Various Artists are issued for charitable purposes, particularly when performers collaborate under a collective project name. Examples include Band Aid with the song "Do They Know It’s Christmas?" and USA for Africa with "We Are the World".
Various Artists is also used as a performance alias by German musician Torsten Pröfrock, founder of the DIN label. In addition to this name, he has recorded under several other aliases, including Dynamo, Erosion, Resilent, and Traktor. He has collaborated with Robert Henke and has been a member of Monolake since 2004.
The name was also used by a short-lived punk band formed in Bristol by brothers Jonjo and Robin Key, originally from Birmingham. Other members were involved simultaneously in Art Objects, which later evolved into The Blue Aeroplanes; the Key brothers also contributed as songwriters and participants in that project. After the group disbanded, the brothers formed Either / Or.
The designation Various Artists is also commonly applied to musical theater soundtracks, reflecting recordings that feature multiple cast members or ensemble performances within a single track.
Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.