There's an interesting little tidbit I wasn't able to work into a piece I recently wrote on German DJ Frank Gossner, who spent three years in West Africa trawling for rare 45s and LPs of African funk, Afrobeat, Nigerian disco, and Ghana highlife from the 1970s. Gossner talked about African pop's role as gatherer and narrator when it came to information (in a way, I suppose, that's akin to hip-hop or even English punk). "Music means much more in African than to the average Western consumer," he told me. "Music is the main ingredient of native, African religion. Music also doubled as books and as newspapers to transport news and history."
One of the examples he pointed to was a track named "Nama" that was included on his blog's Deeper and Deeper mix. It's a classic Mandingue standard about a ferryboat sinking on the way to an independence celebration. The accident occurred in 1971 and killed 14 passengers: 13 young girls and the driver, who was named Nama. Roughly 90 seconds before the song concludes, an eerie, distorted electronic sound cuts in; the noise was recorded to mimic the metal gurgle of the boat's dying engine as it slowly sank.
It's evidence of Frank's earlier point (pop music as storyteller), with the end result being a pointed sentimentality that crosses both language and cultural divides.
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