You Never Know is now available to buy on the Northern Thorns BandCamp page.
CDs on the way soon!
Tag: music (Page 1 of 4)
Matthew LaVoie’s Fantastic Orchestre Kiam History
Matthew Lavoie found me through this very website because I was nerding out and blogging about my favorite band Orchestre Kiam. We had some correspondence on the band (which was wonderful, as I often feel I have no peers regarding this matter), and I’m proud to have contributed some info and recordings to his comprehensive history of the great 70s Kinshasa band Orchestre Kiam. Check out this Afropop Worldwide post on Lavoie’s work and the band. Be sure to click all the links, and if you like classic Afropop and soukous music, check out the free ZIP downloads.
Here’s one of precious few photos of the group known to exist:
Orchestre Kiam
Poster for the new show:
Northern Thorns, Stella Crest, Brandon Krebs at Barboza August 6th 2017 8pm $8, 21+
Northern Thorns Stella Crest Brandon Krebs at Barboza August 6 Show Poster
But I found a new image of Orchestre Kiam that I’d not seen before. Also I read that both guitarists are now dead, as are a lot of the musicians from the golden era in Kinshasa. I guess there wasn’t much hope of a reunion anyway.
There was also a Kiam song on YouTube that I hadn’t heard, posted a couple of weeks ago. Mayika is the name, and now I’m only missing two songs: Yule and Niamaraley(sp?)
This is a great song, classic sebene riffs and a very nice ensemble vocal call. See what you think:
Northern Thorns had been performing a song called Malevolence for quite a few shows, though I’d taken it out of our live set and never put it on Soundcloud because I don’t consider it finished. When I completed Kill Me Again, I replaced it with that in the set.
It’s about a string of killings/disappearings/suppressings of pan-African leaders during the cold war, and how the 1960’s kicked off a renewal of imperialism that had existed on the continent since the European age of discovery. The lyrics, which need a bit of work still, include an adapted piece of a Patrice Lumumba poem:
“These hosannas, tuned to your sorrows, give you hope of a better world to come.”
Especially because of the subject matter, and because I am a white American man writing about black African struggle, I want the words to be their best form before I release this one. I’m taking December to edit charts, rerecord parts, reimagine melodies, etc. where I think that’s needed. This song will be getting a whole new comping pattern and more. I’ll get it out online before 2017.
Also, thank you Google for this entirely helpful definition of the word ‘malevolence.’
