Yaaba Funk album review: Afrobeast

Afrobeast
Yaaba Funk (Yaabaphone)
Released 10.05.10

Highlife music originated in Ghana in the 1800s and enjoyed a golden age during the 1950s and 1960s. The defiant orchestra of talking drums, xylophones and calabash shakers layered with lutes, fiddles, penny whistles and all manner of small portable instruments provided the perfect soundtrack for a continent – chafing at the constraining binds of colonialism – to express their hunger for independence.
The seed that sprung from the heart of Ghana flowered across Africa, each incarnation distinctive. Sierra Leone built on highlife and created the hybrid palm-wine music; Congo fused it with their native soukous sound, while Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti infused it with American funk and wah wah electric guitars and invented afrobeat.

London band Yaaba Funk have continued the tradition of mixing and blending by melding highlife, afrobeat and funk with the bass-heavy sounds that exemplify much of London music to create a new offshoot.

Their debut album, Afrobeast, comes four years after the band’s formation. It opens with the glowing introduction, Me Nye Me Dofo, a warm, funk-soaked track dominated by guitar phrases that taste of sunshine and open-air revelry. The track is dedicated to broadcaster Charlie Gillett who introduced Britain to Youssou N’Dour and Salif Keita, raising the profile of world music through his BBC radio show.
The second track, Bukom Mashie, is a reworked cover of a traditional Ghanaian song that started life as a dance-floor-filler and remains so in its latest manifestation. It begins with a stark, rump-shaking talking drum, a rhythm soon intensified by guitar and horn accents, which compliment each other in a samba-like beat. Trying not to dance is like trying to eat gum without chewing.

Afrobeast is filled with mid and up-tempo songs expertly crafted to get an audience up and moving. It is therefore remarkable that with such a rhythm driven, buoyant genre of music, two of the strongest songs on the eight-track album are the slower ones.

The restrained plucking of an electric guitar opens Kalabuliman with an aching sense of sorrow. ‘They came with the bible and left with our land’, the translation of the song’s title reads. You grasp the hurt of people betrayed by politicians and religious leaders in the mournful humming vocals and plaintive mouth organ wailing in the background.  But like the resilience of a people who rise and rise and rise a third of the way in the tempo picks up, the vocals grow in strength and horns surge confidently to punctuate phrases.  A subtle transition and the track is suddenly bold and joyful.

Mutani N’Africa (When you pray to your gods, also pray to your leaders), similarly transforms from a sombre guitar melody kept in time by a steady shaker into a strident marching drum roll with an upbeat samba feel.

Afrobeast takes highlife from the sun-scorched streets of Ghana and roots it in the urban grind of London, adding a compelling new chapter to the continuing story of a genre that galvanised a generation, underscored a movement and prevails despite the current trend for all things western. Along with delivering an accomplished album Yaaba Funk have further succeeded in capturing the energy, excitement and gaiety of their live performances. Listening to their album is like bringing the party home with you.

Afrobeast will be out on 10 May 2010