Last year I started making mix CDs (“mixtape” sounds so much more legit so I’m going to use that term in the future) of African music I had run across from various ethnomusic blogs and YouTube. I then annoyed some of my friends and delighted others by passing them out semi-indiscriminately. I tried to kind of give them a theme, i.e. all hard-soukous, all catchy highlife etc., but I was making them before I had a decent understanding of the attributes of the genres and traditions. But, here’s the first one I did:

Africa Mix 1 (band – song)

  1. Kiam – Ifantu
  2. Stukas – Samba
  3. Zaiko Langa-Langa – Zaiko Wa Wa
  4. Kiam – Kamiki 1
  5. Kiam – Kamiki 2
  6. Zaiko Langa-Langa – Ngeli Ngeli
  7. Okukuseku Band of Ghana – Atanfo Wmohyere
  8. Basokin – Basongye

The songs are long, so eight tracks basically filled a CD. There was no theme to this one, I just put a bunch of songs that really stuck out to me on it. If anyone would like a copy of this mixtape, contact me.

– Adam