Honest Jon's

V/A - Something Is Wrong: Vintage Recordings From East Africa

"Thirty‐five precious, stinging selections from an HMV run of more than 400 78s -- recordings made in Uganda and Kenya from the mid‐1930s to the mid‐1950s. Three main types of performance are featured (not forgetting a lovely early Kenyan big‐band calypso, as if straight from the pen of Lord Kitchener). Most are minstrelsy, with songs ranging dazzlingly through subjects including loneliness and death, bastards and cut‐off trousers, trains of fire and no‐good rich people, a murder mystery and a drunken punch‐up at a rumba party in Kampala, and metaphorical cocks, hard pedalling and kettles which wont boil. Set to the deep grooving of an ndingidi one‐string fiddle, the very opening verses exemplify this fluency and range, within an account of the coming of the radio to the Ugandan capital. Some were angry and confused -- they could hear the talking but see no one, and would not believe that the voice came only from the loudspeakers. The singer SSekinomu weaves in asides about female creativity and the imprisonment of Prince Mawanda, the kings eldest brother, before the song ends as it began, with thanks and compliments for the new technology, to the Bazungu, the Whites. Other minstrels accompany themselves on various sorts of lyre, and guitars carrying the influences of U.S. country music and Congolese 78s, the influx of Congolese musicians, and the harmonies of Christian church music. There are also tough, raw contributions on button‐accordion: Listening to this kind of Kikuyu song is more a feat of endurance than an aesthetic pleasure," noted the musicologist Hugh Tracey at the time. There is taarab music from the Swahili‐speaking communities of the east coast, and Arab and Indian communities in ports like Mombasa, which had imported Egyptian and Indian music since almost the start of the century. Lilting melodies are provided by violins or Indian harmoniums, sometimes also an oud, along with Indian or Arab percussion. Finally, there is the startling sound of four larger Ugandan ensembles, with songs about getting drunk and the relative merits of prostitution and motherhood, and the kings deportation by the British, deploying "the man who crunches rocks between his teeth." The style dismayed the missionary Robert Ashe, who visited the court of the Kabaka in 1884: "Our ears were deafened with the din which a motley band of musicians were making. Kettledrums and hand drums were rolling, horns braying, flutes screaming ... while blind musicians twanged away on their banjos, the whole making a most discordant harmony." Luxuriously presented, like a small hard‐cover book, with full notes, including extensive translation and haunting photographs; with the recordings brilliantly restored at Abbey Road." -Honest Jons.

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After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
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