John Metcalfe announces new album and reveals first track ‘Xylem’
Tree is set for release on vinyl, CD and digitally via Real World Records on 22 September 2023.
Fri, 26 May 23
Released 24 June 2022
Liner notes
Talazo fuji music is big music, made by many drummers. Big messages. Big confidence. Dense, throbbing rhythms that carry the pulse of West Africa. This is Nigeria’s most popular style of modern music and King Waisu Ayinde Marshal is its brightest star.
Born Waisu Ayinde Adewale Omogbolahan Anifowoshe in Lagos in 1957, he started singing with ‘Were’ groups as a young boy, and at 17 joined the band of Fuji music star Sikiru Ayinde Barrister as a roadie— an opportunity to be intimately involved with both great music and top-flight musicians.
In 1976 his boss travelled to Britain for two months with the band, leaving Wasiu Ayinde with nothing to do, so he decided to form his own band. Starting on the party circuit, he slowly rose through the ranks until he achieved what he set out to do— to start a revolution.
Taking the dynamic dance floor sakara rhythm, he simplified the music, brought in more drums like the congo and sakara, and created the Talazo beat. In the process he reinvented Fuji music.
Dispensing with the philosophical tales and proverbs of his competitors’ music, Wasio Ayinde concentrates on a street-oriented youth beat dominated by drums, drums, and more drums.
Recording this album was a triumph of production finesse working against the clock. The band were delayed in London and arrived eight hours late for the one-night session, but producer David Bottrill calmly placed his microphones among the 22 musicians in record time and rolled ape. Wasiu Ayinde conducted the massed musicians with verse— a Barenboim of the beat. The studio audience rose to its feet. On time, in time, a good time— another Talazo Fuji had started.
Gallery
Reviews
King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, who learned his trade as a roadie with Barrister, gives us a symphony of rhythm, a brilliant set of intertwining drums that never sounds overloaded or heavy-handed, providing great freedom for his sublime, aching vocals. Given dignity and resonance by discreet keyboard interventions, the effect is almost elegiac. Sandy Nelson, eat your heart out. Folk Roots
Further Listening
Released 08 May 1993
Released 25 June 2015
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